Word: pinchot
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Lawyer Fine had hung out his shingle in Wilkes-Barre, had enlisted and gone overseas in the A.E.F., studied at Dublin's Trinity College and come home again to Republican county politics. That year, T.R.'s ally, lean, aristocratic Gifford Pinchot, decided to run for governor of Pennsylvania. The great fighter for "conservation" against the heedless exploitation of the "robber barons" was Fine's political hero. Fine became Pinchot's state campaign manager...
Enter the P.M.A. Pinchot was a "liberal" and a "reformer," but the words in his day did not carry quite the same meaning as they do today. Throughout his political career, Pinchot's strongest ally was Joe Grundy, owner of a Bristol, Pa., textile plant, who founded the Pennsylvania Manufacturers' Association. Grundy was a new kind of political boss. To Cameron and Quay the money to be made in politics was an incidental increment of political power; to Penrose money was just a means to political ends. But Grundy & friends were primarily businessmen, interested in politics...
...Pinchot appointed Fine to a judgeship. Fine took the job reluctantly, more to protect his prestige as a patronage dispenser than because he wanted it. In 1947 Governor James Duff promoted him to the Pennsylvania Superior Court. Each time, after his appointment was up, Fine was elected to the posts. It never bothered Fine-and it never bothered most of the people in Luzerne County-that he was a political boss and a judge at the same time...
...mine patch was thrilled to be the confidant of so big a man. "I felt highly honored to be in the presence of Francis Shunk Brown," says Fine. "I looked up to him with the most profound respect and admiration." But Fine told him that if ever Gifford Pinchot, to whom he owed his judgeship, should decide to run for governor again, he would have to support Pinchot. Brown thought that quite proper. Three years later, when Pinchot actually tried for the nomination against Francis Shunk Brown, the situation grew a little tight for Fine...
...first, not being sure of Pinchot's plans, he favored Brown. When he dropped in to see Pinchot in Washington, on his way to Florida, Mrs. Pinchot, snapped: "You're against Gifford!" Fine promptly returned to Pennsylvania, told Brown he had to go to work for Pinchot. Brown was hurt. "I didn't mean that Pinchot owned you for life," he said. As Fine recalls it: "We both had a tear and I left." Pinchot won with a slim majority of 21,000. Fine's own Luzerne County gave him a majority...