Franklin Knight Lane

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Franklin Knight Lane : biography

15 July 1864 – 18 May 1921

Despite his role in the Hetch Hetchy controversy, Lane was friendly towards the National Park movement, and in 1915 hired Stephen Mather to oversee the parks for which the Department was responsible. Mather, a self-made millionaire and member of the Sierra Club, had written Lane a bitter letter in late 1914, complaining that the national parks were being exploited for private profit. Lane was intrigued by Mather’s letter, made inquiry, and found that Mather was well thought of by Lane’s friends—and had, like Lane, attended the University of California. Mather’s advocacy led to the establishment of the National Park Service in 1916.

In 1915, Lane returned to San Francisco to open the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. The President was supposed to open the fair, but was unable to attend, and sent the Interior Secretary in his place. In 1916, Wilson appointed Lane to lead the American delegation and meet with the Mexican commissioners at Atlantic City, New Jersey about the unstable military situation in Mexico. These negotiations led to the withdrawal of United States troops from Mexico.

The Interior Department had never had a central headquarters, but had worked from offices scattered across Washington, with the bulk of the department located in the old Patent Office building. The Secretary lobbied for a new building for the Department, and, after Congress appropriated the funds, construction went ahead and the building was opened in early 1917. The structure, located at 1800 F Street N.W., now houses the General Services Administration.

Mather, who had been appointed the first director of the National Park Service, began to display apparent mental illness in 1917. His assistant, Horace Albright, reported this condition to Lane. The Secretary chose to keep Mather in his position, while allowing Albright to perform the functions of Mather’s job until Mather recovered, keeping all of this secret. According to Albright, Lane was not a conservationist, but did not care to interfere in the decisions of his officials, and so let Mather and Albright have free rein. Lane wrote in 1917:

World War I responsibilities

In 1916, Wilson appointed Lane to the Council of National Defense (CND), where he urged cooperation between the private and public sectors. He defused a difficult situation for the CND when it decided to merge its male-dominated state and local organizations with the separate Women’s Committee into a unified Field Division. Lane headed the Division, leading a board of five men and five women.

Lane bitterly opposed what he saw as the President’s hesitation to commit the country to war. He wrote to his brother George in February 1917:

Lane was a strong advocate of preparedness in the prelude to U.S. involvement in World War I. In early 1917, he urged Wilson to authorize the arming and convoying of merchant vessels. Wilson refused, but changed his mind when informed of the Zimmermann Telegram. In a critical Cabinet meeting in March 1917, Lane, with other Cabinet members, urged American intervention in the war.

With Lane’s support, the nation’s railroads voluntarily united to form a Railroad War Board to meet the emergency. Lane made many effective speeches for the Committee on Public Information. The Secretary penned two brief works for the Committee, Why We Are Fighting Germany and The American Spirit, which were well received and widely distributed. He urged businessmen to make "sacrifices as worthy as those of the men on their way to the trenches". President Wilson reportedly stopped discussing matters of importance at Cabinet meetings because the "gregarious" Lane divulged confidential matters.

Lane was a supporter of the Treaty of Versailles and of the League of Nations. He wrote articles urging, in vain, U.S. ratification of the treaty establishing the international organization.

Interstate Commerce Commission

Appointment and confirmation

The railroad companies, which were loosely regulated by the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), exercised great power in California because of the lack of alternate means of shipping freight. Lane had taken cases against those corporations in his law practice, and, in his gubernatorial campaign, had argued that they had too much power. In early 1904, Benjamin Wheeler, president of the University of California, suggested to President Roosevelt that Lane would be an admirable choice to serve on the ICC. Roosevelt agreed, and promised to name him to the next ICC vacancy. When that vacancy occurred in early 1905, Roosevelt forgot his promise and instead named retiring five-term Senator Francis Cockrell of Missouri. Wheeler wrote to remind Roosevelt that he had said he would name Lane. Roosevelt apologized for his oversight, but noted that, as he had just been re-elected, "I shall make ample amends to Lane later".