Shelby Scates - Warren G. Magnuson and the Shaping of Twentieth-Century America

THE EMIL AND KATHLEEN SICK LECTURE-BOOK SERIES
IN WESTERN HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY

THE EMIL AND KATHLEEN SICK LECTURE-BOOK SERIES
IN WESTERN HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY

Under the provisions of a Fund established by the children of Mr. and Mrs. Emil Sick, whose deep interest in the history and culture of the American West was inspired by their own experience in the region, distinguished scholars are brought to the University of Washington to deliver public lectures based on original research in the fields of Western history and biography. The terms of the gift also provide for the publication by the University of Washington Press of the books resulting from the research upon which the lectures are based. This book is the sixth volume in the series.

The Great Columbia Plain: A Historical Geography, 18051910, by Donald W. Meinig

Mills and Markets: A History of the Pacific Coast Lumber Industry to 1900, by Thomas R. Cox

Radical Heritage: Labor, Socialism, and Reform in Washington and British Columbia, 18851917, by Carlos A. Schwantes

The Battle for Butte: Mining and Politics on the Northern Frontier, 18641906, by Michael P. Malone

The Forging of a Black Community: Seattles Central District, from 1870 through the Civil Rights Era, by Quintard Taylor

Warren G. Magnuson and the Shaping of Twentieth-Century America, by Shelby Scates

Shelby Scates

Copyright 1997 by the University of Washington Press
First paperback edition 2015
Printed in the United States of America

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Scates, Shelby.

Warren G. Magnuson and the shaping of twentieth-century America / Shelby Scates.

p. cm.(Emil and Kathleen Sick lecture-book series in western history and biography)

Includes index.

ISBN 978-0-295-99534-2 (acid-free paper)

1. Magnuson, Warren Grant, 19051989. 2. LegislatorsUnited StatesBiography. 3. United States. Congress. SenateBiography. 4. United StatesPolitics and government20th century. I. Title. II. Series

E840.8.M343S33 1997

328.73'92

[B]DC21

97-24392

CIP

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standards for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI A39.48-1984.

To Jermaine Magnuson and the Bumblebeeskeepers of the flame, transmitters of the lamp

T o the casual observer, Senator Warren Magnuson dropped a lot of false leads about his character and competency in the last twenty years of his forty-nine-year political career. From a distance, he looked too lackadaisical, even lazy, certainly uninspiring. Yet his bills kept passing into laws reshaping American society and the Pacific Northwest landscape. Journalists watching the legislator from close range saw another Magnuson, a master at work on his art. I was one such, and this gap in perceptions enhanced a question about the man: how (and why) did he get so good (or so bad)? This biography derives from that question.

Modest to a degree almost unknown in politicians of the late television age, Magnuson didnt make a lot of noise about either himself or his work. To the end he resisted requests for a detailed recounting of his life and times, although he did give a lengthy report on his friendship and working relations with Lyndon Johnson to the Johnson Library at the University of Texas.

Instead, the man had to be found in his papers at the University of Washington Library and through newspapers and books in the Washington State Library in Olympia, and finally through interviews with his friends and associates: in sum, through research. Wherewithal for this came from a grant by the Burlington Northern Foundation for which the author is grateful. I trust future generations will share this gratitude. Don Ellegood, the wise and delightful director emeritus of the University of Washington Press, pushed the project and kept the writer inspired. More help and encouragement came from University of Washington professors emeritus Tom Pressly and Brewster Denny and from Stimson Bullitt, himself the writer of a classic study of modern American politics and a piercing autobiography. Professors Pressly and Richard Kirkendall of the University of Washington and George Packard of the Johns Hopkins School of International Studies were gracious and thorough critics of the books early draft, sparing the reader more errors of fact and emphasis than the author dares admit. Karyl Winn and Gary Lundell of the UW Library archives and Gayle Palmer and Vince Kueter of the Washington State Library were more than helpful in my pursuit of books and papers. They were tolerant of an overly impatient interloper in the world of academia. Arlene Seidel, clerk of the Senate Commerce Committee, generously shared time, office space, and committee records. Joe Ortiz of Twentieth Century-Fox International directed an innocent pilgrim toward an understanding of Hollywoods all-powerful studio bosses, now pass.

Mrs. Nancy Hevly, my longtime colleague on the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, was merely invaluable to this project as an editor and fellow fact-miner in the volumes of Magnuson papers scrupulously catalogued and stored in the archives of the UW Library.

In the last analysis, however, only the writer remains accountable to the reader for the facts and judgments of this biography.

Shelby Scates, Seattle, November 1996

T he funeral mourners went down from the grand Episcopalian cathedral in Seattle to the northeast side of Capitol Hill, where the wake was arranged in a large mansion smelling of May blossoms. They came to this second celebration to tell Maggie stories.

Maggie, Warren Grant Magnuson, the individual most responsible for the shape and prosperity of the Pacific Northwest, was dead after eighty-four years of joy, hard living, and legislation that also helped define twentieth-century America by increasing civil rights, mandating corporate accountability, and funding medical research. The mighty and the lowly, not a godly mix, had filled St. Marks great hall to witness his last parade in a coffin borne by ten pallbearers, Bumblebees, members of Senator Magnusons staff in the last decades of his fifty-year political career. He let his record speak for itself and that record, like his name, carried heft.

The funeral had been a sober church ceremony for one accustomed to a cup and a laugh, until the Reverend Lowell E. Knutson, a Lutheran minister, said that Maggie will get few words of praise for religious piety. Muted laughter interrupted. Maggie was not a man for prayer breakfasts, even less for hypocrisy.

Magnuson had taken care of the little guys, the working stiffs, yet never failed the big guys of the downtown Rainier and University Clubs, if it served the broader interests of the people. He was a liberal determined to endure, a democrat confident that capitalism could flourish, given government help, and thus best serve the country.