Hugh Samuel Johnson (1882–1942) army officer, public official, and author

Born on August 5, 1882, in Fort Scott, Kansas, Hugh S. Johnson was the son of Samuel L. Johnson, an attorney and rancher, and Elizabeth Mead Johnson. Educated in Wichita, Kansas, and Alva, Oklahoma, he graduated in 1903 from the U.S. Military Academy and was commissioned a second lieutenant. He then married Helen Leslie and had one son. In 1915, he received his bachelor’s degree from the University of California and in 1916 his J.D.

Johnson’s army career was significant by allowing him to meet and work with individuals and agencies that helped his career. Between 1903 and 1919, Johnson served as a quartermaster of refugees in the aftermath of the San Francisco earthquake, superintendent of Yosemite National Park, deputy provost marshal under General Enoch Crowder, with the responsibility of enforcing the Selective Service Act, and assistant director under General George Goethals of the Purchase and Supply Bureau. He also worked under Bernard BARUCH of the War Industries Board during World War I. In 1919, Johnson, a brigadier general, retired from the army. He became vice president and assistant general manager, then general counsel, and, in 1925, chair of the board of directors of the Moline Plow Company.

By 1927, Johnson, having already worked with George Peek on the McNary-Haugen programs for farm relief, was again working with Baruch until in 1933 president-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt called upon Johnson to help finalize NEW DEAL plans for economic recovery. Johnson’s contributions to the National Industrial Recovery Act were so important that Roosevelt appointed him the director of the NRA. It was in this capacity that Johnson implemented his ideas on industrial self-government through the codes of fair competition for nearly 480 different American industries. Unfortunately, despite the hopes and euphoria surrounding the NRA and its Blue Eagle, the program began to fail quickly until, in September 1934, Johnson was forced to resign. He remained within the New Deal as director of the WPA in New York only briefly. In 1935, Johnson left public service and began his “Hugh Johnson Says” column for the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain; he gradually came to oppose FDR’s later New Deal programs and openly broke with the president in 1940.

Brusque, vituperative, and alcoholic yet brilliant, Johnson (“Old Iron Pants”) died of pneumonia in Washington, D.C., on April 15, 1942.

Further reading

• Johnson, Hugh S. The Blue Eagle from Egg to Earth. New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1935. 
• Ohl, John Kennedy. Hugh S. Johnson and the New Deal. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1985. 

Michael V. Namorato