Irving Ives

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Irving McNeil Ives
United States Senator for New York
In office January 3, 1947 – January 3, 1959
Preceded by	James Michael Mead
Succeeded by	Kenneth B. Keating
Speaker of the New York State Assembly
In office January 1, 1936 – December 31, 1936
Preceded by	Irwin Steingut
Succeeded by	Oswald David Heck
New York State Assemblyman for Chenango County
In office February 11, 1930 – December 31, 1946
Preceded by	Bert Lord
Succeeded by	Janet Hill Gordon
Born	January 24, 1896 Bainbridge, New York
Died	February 24, 1962 Norwich, New York
Resting place	Greenlawn Cemetery in Bainbridge, New York
Nationality	American
Political party	Republican
Spouse(s)	(1) Elizabeth Minette Skinner Ives (married 1920–1947, her death) (2) Marion Mead Crain Ives (married 1948–1962, his death)
Children	George Ives Parents: George Albert and Lucie Hough Keeler Ives
Alma mater	Oneonta High School Hamilton College (Clinton, New York)
Occupation	Politician, banker, insurance agent[1]
Religion	Presbyterian[2]
Military Service
Allegiance	United States
Service/branch	United States Army
Years of service	1917–1918
Rank	First Lieutenant
Battles/wars	Meuse-Argonne and Saint-Mihiel in World War I

Irving McNeil Ives (January 24, 1896 – February 24, 1962) was a Moderate Republican United States Senator for his native New York; he served two terms from 1947 to 1959.

From 1930 to 1946, Ives was a state representative. In this capacity, he was the minority leader in 1935 and the Speaker in 1936, and Majority Leader from 1937 to 1946, when he was elected in a strongly Republican year to the U.S. Senate. He focused on labor and civil rights issues^[3] and supported the Civil Rights Act of 1957, which established the Civil Rights Commission, which was empowers a national focus on rooting out racial discrimination. However, he was no longer in office for the votes on the 1960, 1964, and 1968 Civil Rights Acts, which were signed into law by U.S. Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Lyndon B. Johnson.^[4]

Background[edit]

Irving Ives was born in Bainbridge in Chenango County in south central New York, halfway between Binghamton and Oneonta. He was the son of the former Lucie Hough Keeler (1860–1941) and George Albert Ives (1857–1942), who worked in the coal and feed businesses.^[5] His ancestors came from England and settled in 1635 in Boston, Massachusetts. They were involved in the establishment of the Quinnipiac Colony in 1638.^[5][6]

After graduation from Oneonta High School in 1914,^[3]he enrolled at the private liberal arts institution, Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, named for Founding father and the first Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton. After two years he left Hamilton to enlist in the United States Army Infantry following the American entry into World War I under the leadership of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson.^[7] During the war, he served with the American Expeditionary Forces in France and Germany. He fought in the battles of the Meuse-Argonne and Saint-Mihiel.^[6] He was honorably discharged as a first lieutenant, when the war ended in 1919 and then resumed his studies at Hamilton College and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1920 with membership in Phi Beta Kappa Society.^[3]

Career[edit]

From 1920 to 1923, Ives earned $25 per week as a clerk for J. P. Morgan & Company in New York City.^[5] In 1923, he joined Manufacturers Hanover Corporation, with prompted his move to Norwich, also in Chenango.^[6] He remained with Manufacturers Trust for seven years until 1930, when he entered the general insurance business in Norwich.^[5][1]

On February 18, 1930, Ives won a special election for the Chenango County seat in the New York Assembly to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Bert Lord (1869–1939). He was reelected many times and remained in the Assembly until 1946. His speakership extended for only one year because his fellow liberal Republicans disagreed with Ives' opposition to a social welfare program advanced by Democratic Governor Herbert Henry Lehman (1878–1963).^[8] Ives stepped aside in favor of Oswald David Heck (1902–1959), who subsequently named Ive sas the Republican Majority Leader.^[9]

The year before he left the Assembly, Ives, as the chairman of the Joint Legislative Committee on Industrial and Labor Conditions, received nationwide attention for his Ives-Quinn Act of 1945, the first state law to prohibit discrimination in employment on the basis of race or national origin.^[10] Ives also introduced legislation to create the state Department of Commerce and the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University in Ithaca, at which Ives was a trustee and a dean from 1945 to 1947.^[3]

U.S. Senator[edit]

In 1946, Democratic Senator James Michael Mead (1885–1964) announced that he would run for governor but was defeated by Moderate Republican Thomas E. Dewey, who won the second of his three terms. In his bid to succeed Senator Mead. In the general election, with 52 percent of the vote, defeated former Governor Lehman in the general election, during which he became the first Republican to be endorsed by the American Federation of Labor, precursor of the AFL-CIO.^[3] Ives was the first Republican to represent New York in the Senate since James Wolcott Wadsworth, Jr. (1877–1952), who was defeated for reelection in 1926.^[11]

Despite his moderate reputation, Ives supported the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947 and voted to override President Harry Truman's veto of the landmark legislation, which allows states to enact right-to-work laws strongly opposed by organized labor. This cost Ives the support of organized labor.^[3] Senator Ives was a delegate to the 1948 Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which nominated his friend Thomas Dewey, who lost his second bid to President Truman, Ives' His first wife, Elizabeth Minette Skinner (1898–1947), the mother of their son, George Ives, died after an illness of two years. The next year in 1948, Ives wed his longtime secretary, Marion Mead Crain (1902–1996).^[6]

Ives was reelected to the Senate 1952; he defeated, 55 to 37 percent, John Cashmore (1895–1961), the Brooklyn borough president from 1940 until his death in office.^[12] Ives received the largest number of votes hitherto ever won by a candidate in New York, carrying all but three of the sixty-two counties.^[3] A strong supporter of General Eisenhower, he served as a delegate to the 1952 Republican National Convention in Chicago, Illinois, at which Eisenhower defeated the more conservative U.S. Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio and with his running mate, Richard M. Nixon of California, went on to win the general election against Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson and U.S. Senator John Sparkman of Alabama.

In 1954, Ives ran unsuccessfully in a bid to succeed Dewey as governor of New York. In one of the closest elections in state history, he lost to Democrat William Averell Harriman (1891–1986) by 11,125 votes.^[3] Ives was a delegate to the 1956 Republican National Convention in San Francisco, California. In 1958, he co-sponsored a bill with then Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts to correct abuses within organized labor.^[3]

In 1958, Ives declined to seek a third term in the Senate and was succeeded by another Moderate Republican, Kenneth B. Keating, who was elected along with still another Moderate Republican, Nelson Rockefeller, who unseated Governor Harriman and won the first of four terms as governor. Then in 1964, Keating lost his bid for reelection, when presidential nominee Barry Goldwater of Arizona fared poorly in New York. Keating, though he ran ahead of Goldwater in the state, still lost to Democrat former United States Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, younger brother of President Kennedy, with whom Ives had collaborated on the labor legislation.

Ives died in Norwich, New York at the age of sixty-six.^[3] He and his first wife are interred at Greenlawn Cemetery in his native Bainbridge, New York.^[1]

References[edit]