Hopkins, Harry

Hopkins, Harry (Lloyd)

(1890–1946) social worker, public official; born in Sioux City, Iowa. He held administrative positions in welfare organizations (1913–32), including the Red Cross and the New York Tuberculosis Association. In 1931 Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed him director of New York's Temporary Emergency Relief Administration. When Roosevelt became president, Hopkins became federal emergency relief administrator (1933), director of the Works Progress Administration (1935), and helped set up various relief and rehabilitation programs, distributing over $8.5 billion in unemployment relief (1933–1938). From 1938–40 he was secretary of commerce. Throughout World War II he was Roosevelt's closest confidante, personal aide, and chief liaison to foreign governments, supervising the Lend-Lease program, chairing the Munitions Assignment Board, and attending conferences from Casablanca to Yalta. Winston Churchill dubbed him "Lord Root of the Matter." In 1945 he successfully represented President Truman as special assistant in Moscow and at the San Francisco United Nations Conference.

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.