Joseph F Guffey

Early life

Joseph Finch Guffey was born December 29, 1870, at Guffey Station in Sewickley Township, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania to John and Barbaretta (Hough) Guffey. He was the last born of his brothers; James C, and Alexander S, and sisters; Ida Virginia, Pauletta, Mary Emma, Jane Cambell, and Elizabet Irwin. He attended but did not graduate from Princeton University. As a Princeton student, he became a disciple of Professor Woodrow Wilson. During Wilson's tenure as Princeton president, Guffey, and other former students were vocal supporters of Wilson's Quad Plan. He was instrumental in helping Wilson to secure the Democratic presidential nomination in 1912.

World War I

He was a member of the War Industries Board (Petroleum Service Division), as well as the Director of the Bureau of sales in the Alien Property Custodian's office during World War I.

Guffey, who owned an oil company with his two sisters, suffered financial setbacks in oil speculation during World War I and was indicted by a federal grand jury for mis-use of the funds under his control as Sales Director. The charges were later dropped as part of a deal made during the Harding/Coolidge Administrations' Teapot Dome Scandal. He was a member of the Democratic National Committee from 1920 through 1928.

United States Senate

Guffey and his lieutenant, David L. Lawrence led a resurgence of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party. Guffey was elected to the United States Senate in 1934, unseating Republican Senator David Reed. Guffey was the first Democrat to win election as Senator from Pennsylvania since William A. Wallace won election in 1874. In that same year, George H. Earle III became the first Democratic Governor of Pennsylvania since the 19th century.

He was the chairperson of the Mines and Mining committee, and was a fervent supporter of the President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal in the 1930s. He supported the aggressive politics of Henry Wallace, who compared the Republicans with fascists.

Guffey spoke out against Harry Anslinger (who had been appointed to lead the newly formed Federal Bureau of Narcotics by his father-in-law Andrew Mellon) for referring to "niggers" in official correspondence. He caused a controversy in Pennsylvania when he backed Lieutenant Governor Thomas Kennedy, who was a close associate of mine workers union head John L. Lewis, over lawyer Charles Alvin Jones who was backed by Governor George Earle and other Democratic leaders. Jones later lost the general election to Republican Arthur H. James. Guffey was at the same time working with Lewis, demanding that Pleas E. Greenlee replace Charles F. Hosford Jr. who had been ineffective as chairman of the National Bituminous Coal Commission.

In April 1943, British scholar Isaiah Berlin wrote a confidential analysis of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for the British Foreign Office, and succinctly characterized Guffey as:

a noisy Administration supporter who wraps himself in the Roosevelt flag and has been advocating for a fourth term for some time. A very typical Pennsylvania politician who has decided to throw his lot in with the President and has thus become an obedient party hack not of the purest integrity. Consistently votes in the opposite direction to his fellow Senator from Pennsylvania, James Davis.

He was reelected in 1940, with Claude Pepper campaigning with him. Guffey was less influential after the Republicans took control of the Congress and reversed some of the laws helping labor unions, eventually passing the Taft-Hartley Act after Guffey was defeated by Governor Edward Martin by a wide margin in 1946.

Retirement

After leaving the Senate, Guffey retired to Washington, DC, where he died in 1959. Upon his death, he was returned to West Newton, Pennsylvania for burial in the West Newton Cemetery.