The Evening Star (June 10, 1946)
ON THE RECORD —
Vermont industrialist may succeed Austin
By Dorothy Thompson
BARNARD, Vermont – The appointment of Sen. Austin to succeed Edward Stettinius as United States delegate to the United Nations, may, and I hope will, open the gates of the Senate to one of the ablest men in the United States: Ralph E. Flanders. Mr. Flanders ran against Gov. Aiken in the last senatorial primary contest and was defeated. This was not extraordinary, for George Aiken was an extremely popular governor and in this predominantly agricultural state had the support of the Farm Bureau. Mr. Flanders is an industrialist, and a remarkable one.
But although three other candidates have presented petitions in the primary, none of them is so formidable an opponent as Gov. Aiken was, and Mr. Flanders’ stature has been increasingly recognized in Vermont. Mr. Flanders will have strong support from many not usually active in party politics, but anxious that Sen. Austin’s seat should be filled with a man of equal ability, and by one with knowledge of foreign affairs. That Mr. Flanders has, along with wide experience in public administration.
Mr. Flanders was born on a rocky hill farm at Barnet, and he has the imagination, quiet and creative enterprise spirit which this little state breeds into a relatively large number of her sons. At one time Vermont had the largest number in proportion to her population of entries in “Who’s Who.” Mr. Flanders, a born inventor, is largely self-taught since the time he apprenticed himself in machine shops. Eventually he went to Jones & Lampson, machine tool makers of Springfield, Vermont, and in the course of time became its president. His wife is the daughter of the former president and founder, a scientific genius and one-time governor of the state, James Hartness.
Mr. Flanders carried on the inventive tradition of the company, which often has wished to keep him at the drafting table rather than in the public eye. His company, though situated in a town of 5,000 people, even off a railway, was rated during the war as one of the most important concerns in America. Springfield produced a fifth of all American machine tools.
Fortune, which saw that Mr. Flanders is not the conventional type of business man, devoted an article to him last year. His interest in industry is scientific and organizational. He is little driven by the “profit motive.” He lives in a beautiful ancient house, but not a grand one, and keeps but one servant. The chief feature of his home is a large, discriminately selected library, and Mr. Flanders is better read than most professors, and in a wide range of subjects.
Having once had an ardent Marxian as a house guest, I drove with him to Springfield and had an entertaining afternoon listening to the industrialist challenge the Marxian on Marx, whom Mr. Flanders had obviously read more thoroughly than his Socialist opponent.
Mr. Flanders is an open-minded man, a genuine liberal, in the sense of “the liberal tradition” so brilliantly exposed in the recent book by William Aylott Orton of Smith College. He is a Christian – in his household grace is always said before meals – a patriot, a regionalist without being a sectionalist, and a man thoroughly familiar with what is going on in the country and in the world, in science, industry and politics.
Blunt intellectual courage is also one of his qualities. He was a member of the industrial advisory board to NRA, and in the atmosphere of Hugh Johnson’s flying cats and “Hail to the Chief” which had his fellows speechless, he rose to say a few well-considered words concerning the probable results of some of the proposed policies. He has foresight and invariably sees the logical process of development from source to effect.
He was on the Committee on Economic Development set under the Department of Commerce, and was chairman of its research committee, which did some of the straightest if not most heeded thinking during the Roosevelt administration. He was no conventional anti-New Dealer but he was anti many specific programs from reasonable motives. His research committee can be credited for finding a compromise formula for Bretton Woods.
Mr. Flanders has done advisory and expert jobs on the Vermont Planning Commission, WPB, and the Economic Stabilization Board, is president of the New England Council, the liveliest regional organization in the country, and has been, until recently, president of the New England Federal Reserve Bank. He was a Willkie Republican and definitely belongs to the liberal wing of the party. He is concerned with building bridges between government, industry and labor, and between the nations of the world.
Thoroughly aware of the social implications in scientific development, he is gifted with an uncommon amount of common sense, open-minded to change, but impatient of sloganized and imprecise thinking, deeply interested in education, and allergic – too allergic for a politician – to personal publicity, and the last man to awaken hopes in any pressure group.
Vermont, if it sends Mr. Flanders to the Senate, will indeed have elected a senator of the United States.