Ralph Flanders

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Ralph Flanders bigraphy, stories - Mechanical engineer, industrialist, U.S. Senator from Vermont

Ralph Flanders : biography

September 28, 1880 – February 19, 1970

Ralph Edward Flanders (September 28, 1880 – February 19, 1970) was an American mechanical engineer, industrialist and Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Vermont. He grew up on subsistence farms in Vermont and Rhode Island, became an apprentice first as a machinist, then as a draftsman, before training as a mechanical engineer. He spent five years in New York City as an editor for a machine tool magazine. After moving to Vermont, he managed and then became president of a successful machine tool company. Flanders used his experience as an industrialist to advise state and national commissions in Vermont, New England and Washington, D.C. on public economic policy. He was president of the Boston Federal Reserve Bank for two years before being elected U.S. Senator from Vermont.

Flanders was noted for introducing a 1954 motion in the Senate to censure Senator Joseph McCarthy. McCarthy had made sensational claims that there were large numbers of Communists and Soviet spies and sympathizers inside the federal government and elsewhere. He used his Senate committee as a nationally televised forum for attacks on individuals whom he accused. Flanders felt that McCarthy’s attacks distracted the nation from a much greater threat of Communist successes elsewhere in the world and that they had the effect of creating division and confusion within the United States, to the advantage of its enemies. Ultimately, McCarthy’s tactics and his inability to substantiate his claims led to his being discredited and censured by the United States Senate.

Biographical

Flanders was born oldest of nine children in Barnet, a town in Caledonia County in northeastern Vermont, and spent much of his childhood in Rhode Island. In his autobiography, Senator from Vermont, Flanders described life on his family’s subsistence farms in Vermont and Rhode Island, before he left to work in the machine tool industry for most of his career. In his first years as a machinist and draftsman, he spent his vacations traveling by bicycle over country roads between Rhode Island and Vermont and New Hampshire. Later, he lived for a time in New York City where he edited a machine tool magazine, but after five years decided to move back to Vermont. In 1911, he married Helen Edith Hartness, daughter of inventor and industrialist James Hartness. They made their home in Springfield, Vermont, where Flanders became president of the Jones & Lamson Machine Company. Flanders and his wife had three children: Elizabeth (born 1912), Anna (also known as Nancy—born 1918), and James (born 1923).

Notes

Legacy

Flanders was the author or coauthor of eight books, including his autobiography, Senator from Vermont. He wrote about many issues: the problems of unemployment, inflation, ways for achieving a cooperative relationship between management and labor, and his belief that “moral law is natural law” and should be an integral part of everyone’s education. His papers are located at the Special Collections Research Center]] Library and at the Special Collectionshttp://cdi.uvm.edu/collections/getCollection.xql?title=Congressional%20Papers/ of the University of Vermont’s Bailey-Howe Library.

During his lifetime, Flanders received more than sixteen honorary degrees from institutions that included Dartmouth College, Harvard University (LL.D.), Middlebury College (D. Sc.) and the University of Vermont (D. Eng.). His wife, Helen Hartness Flanders, was a folk song collector and author of several books on New England ballads.

Flanders died in 1970 and he is buried in the Summer Hill Cemetery in Springfield, Vermont, alongside his wife, Helen, and members of the Hartness family.

Flanders’s Senate legacy has continued to inspire Vermont politicians. In his May 24, 2001 speech announcing his departure from the Republican Party, Vermont Senator James Jeffords cited Flanders three times and spoke of him as one of five Vermont politicians who, “spoke their minds, often to the dismay of their party leaders, and did their best to guide the party in the direction of those fundamental principles they believed in.” In speeches to Georgetown University Law Center and Johnson State College, Senator Patrick Leahy cited Flanders as one of three Vermont politicians who showed, “the importance of standing firm in your beliefs,” “that conflict need not be hostile or adversarial” and who, “rose up against abuses, against infringements upon Americans’ rights when doing that was not popular.”