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Ralph Edward Flanders (September 28, 1880 – February 19, 1970) was an American mechanical engineer, industrialist and politician who served as a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Vermont. He grew up on subsistence farms in Vermont and Rhode Island and was an apprentice machinist and 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 back 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 industrial and 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 Union 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 created 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.
Flanders's career began with an apprenticeship, progressed into engineering, journalism, management, policy consulting, banking, finance, and finally politics when he was elected U.S. Senator from Vermont.
Unable to afford college tuition after his high school graduation, in 1896 Flanders's father bought him a two-year apprenticeship at the Brown & Sharpe Manufacturing Company, a leading machine tool builder. In addition to learning machining and drafting during his apprenticeship, Flanders also supplemented his training through courses at the International Correspondence Schools and the Rhode Island School of Design. Following his apprenticeship, he worked for various machine tool companies in New England. Despite his lack of a formal university education, he was a autodidact scholar, who read extensively in the literatures of science, engineering and the liberal arts.
In 1909, while working long hours on his definitive book on gear cutting machinery, his energy gave out and he suffered a "nervous breakdown". He took time off to recover, and in 1910 he accepted an offer to work at a machine tool company in Vermont. He continued to write on technical and other matters throughout his life and developed a broad philosophy of the role of industry in society. In 1938, he received a Worcester Reed Warner Medal in recognition of his technical writing.
In 1910, he moved to Springfield, Vermont to work as a mechanical engineer for the Fellows Gear Shaper Company. He was already friendly with James Hartness, the president of the Jones & Lamson Machine Company (J&L), another company in town. In 1911, Flanders married Hartness' daughter, Helen. Shortly afterwards, Hartness hired Flanders as a manager of the department at J&L that built the Fay automatic lathe. Flanders redesigned that lathe to achieve higher productivity and accuracy. He became a director in 1912 and president of the company in 1933 after Hartness retired. As president of J&L, Flanders implemented a continuous production line to manufacture the Hartness Turret Lathe instead of building each machine individually, attempting to bring some of the efficiencies of mass production to machine tool building. By 1923, he had acquired and assigned more than twenty patents to J&L.
Flanders and his brother, Ernest, were instrumental in developing screw thread grinding machines. These incorporated advances in thread technology (furthered by the Hartness optical comparator) and Flanders's engineering calculations for gear-cutting machinery. In 1942, the two brothers received the Edward Longstreth Medal of the Franklin Institute as recognition of this accomplishment, which improved the accurate manufacture of die-cut screws in soft metal and solved the problem of thread-grinding on hardened work. The award also recognized their development of a precision grinding machine that enabled rapid production of at the start of jet aircraft age, which made it possible for companies including General Electric to manufacture far more quickly than they could previously.
During the Great Depression Flanders began to write about social policy. His major concern was human development in a technological era. He addressed employing spiritual guidance with a "program of human values" to achieve a good life. Nevertheless, his underlying goal was to achieve "full employment". So, he kept himself grounded in economic principles, as understood and debated during that era.
In 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt's Secretary of Commerce, Daniel Roper, appointed Flanders to the Business Advisory Council, which was created to provide input to the administration on matters affecting business. The Council then made Flanders chairman of the Committee on Unemployment. This committee recommended addressing the problem both geographically and by industry. Flanders reported, however, that when the committee made its recommendations President Roosevelt was preoccupied with augmenting the Supreme Court and ultimately chose the undistributed profits tax instead—a choice that Flanders felt discouraged capital investment.
In 1933, the National Industrial Recovery Act created the National Recovery Administration (NRA). The NRA allowed industries to create "codes of fair competition," intended to reduce destructive competition and to help workers by setting minimum wages and maximum weekly hours. Flanders was appointed to the industrial advisory board of the NRA. In a speech before a 1934 conference of the code authority members, attended by President Roosevelt, Flanders opposed a proposal by the Roosevelt administration to require that businesses cut worker hours by 10 percent and raise wages by 10 percent in order to spread employment more widely. Ultimately, economic policy moved away from the codes system.
In 1937, Vermont Governor George Aiken appointed Flanders to two commissions: first, the Special Milk Investigative Committee to study ways to modernize dairying in Vermont; and second, the Flood Control Commission, which chose Flanders as its chairman. This commission was to negotiate with other New England states a means of sharing costs in a system of flood-control dams as part of recovering from the massive floods of 1927 and attempting to prevent a reoccurrence.
In 1940, the New England Council elected Flanders president. The governors of the New England states had established this council to study industry and commerce in their states. Flanders's role increased his awareness of the labor and business assets in New England. He also tried to alert his peers to the prospect of U.S. involvement in the expanding Second World War.
In 1942, Flanders became involved in the Committee for Economic Development (CED), an offshoot of the Business Advisory Council, whose purpose was to help re-align the nation to a peacetime economy after the war. Flanders reported helping to shape the CED's recommendations to Congress on roles for the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
In 1944, he was elected to a two-year term as president of the Federal Reserve Bank in Boston. During this period, the bank helped establish the Boston Port Authority to revitalize New England's capacity for sending and receiving goods by cargo ship.
In 1946, Georges Doriot, Flanders, Karl Compton and others organized American Research & Development (AR&D). This was the first venture capital company to invest—according to a set of investment rules and goals—in a pool of fledgling companies. Flanders served as a director of AR&D.
In August 1946, incumbent Senator Warren Austin resigned to accept U.S. President Harry S. Truman's appointment as Ambassador to the United Nations. The contest for the Republican nomination in the ensuing special election was between Flanders and Sterry R. Waterman. Flanders won the August 13 primary, which was then tantamount to election in Vermont. On November 1, Governor Mortimer R. Proctor appointed Flanders to complete the remainder of Austin's term. With Flanders certain to win the November 5 election for the term that started in January 1947, his appointment to complete the two months left in Austin's term gave him seniority over the freshman Senators who were elected on the same day. Vermont had not elected a Democrat to any statewide office since the founding of the Republican Party in 1854, and as expected, Flanders easily won his contest, receiving 75 percent to Democratic nominee Charles P. McDevitt's 25. Flanders was overwhelmingly reelected in 1952, taking 72 percent to Democratic nominee Allan R. Johnston's 28. He declined to seek a third term in 1958.
Flanders referred to the Marshall Plan as an important application of moral law to public policy. He said that the plan's true purpose was to fend off Communism through the economic restoration of Europe—not to provide relief to Europe (something beyond the powers of the U.S.), nor to enhance gratitude towards the U.S., its prestige or power.
Flanders felt that, to quell inflation, wage increases should be tied to productivity increases, rather than the cost of living. He recommended splitting gains in productivity three ways: to the worker for higher wages, to the company for higher profits and to the consumer for lower prices. He felt that with this approach everyone would benefit at the company level and in the national economy. Such an approach would require mutual respect and understanding between labor and management.
Flanders's relations with organized labor were amicable. He welcomed the United Electrical Workers Union into Jones & Lamson Machine Company. J&L became the first company in Springfield, Vermont to be unionized.
Flanders felt that spending 62% of federal income on defense was irrational, when the Soviet government claimed it wished to avoid nuclear conflict. He advocated that the development of "Atomic- and Hydrogen-bombs be paralleled with equally intense negotiations towards disarmament." For him, "gaining the co-operation of the Soviet government on an effective armament control," was most important.
The Barre Montpelier Times Argus reported:
Other reactions were not so favorable. People who wrote the Rutland Herald "hinted at retribution for McCarthy's foes" and called McCarthy "a demigod above the law of the U.S.A. ... If you disagree, you are RED." William Loeb, owner of the Burlington Daily News, wrote, "It would take somebody as stupid as Senator Flanders to finally swallow the Democratic bait on the subject of Senator McCarthy." In a speech that Flanders did not mention in his autobiography, the Times Argus article reported that on June 1, 1954 Flanders
... addressed the Senate on 'the colossal innocence of the junior Senator from Wisconsin.' Comparing McCarthy to 'Dennis the Menace' of cartoon fame, the Vermonter delivered a scathing address in which he lambasted the Wisconsin man for dividing the nation. 'In every country in which communism has taken over,' he reminded the Senate, 'the beginning has been a successful campaign of division and confusion.' He marveled at the way the Soviet Union was winning military successes in Asia without risking its own resources or men, and said this nation was witnessing 'another example of economy of effort ... in the conquest of this country for communism.' He added, 'One of the characteristic elements of communist and fascist tyranny is at hand as citizens are set to spy upon each other.' 'Were the junior Senator from Wisconsin in the pay of the communists, he could not have done a better job for them.' 'This is a colossal innocence, indeed.'
On June 11, 1954, Flanders introduced a resolution charging McCarthy "with unbecoming conduct and calling for his removal from his committee membership." Upon the advice of Senators Cooper and Fulbright and legal assistance from the Committee for a More Effective Congress he modified his resolution to "bring it in line with previous actions of censure." The text of the resolution of censure condemns the senator for "obstructing the constitutional processes of the Senate" when he "failed to cooperate with the Subcommittee on Privileges and Elections of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration and acting "contrary to senatorial ethics" when he described the Select Committee to Study Censure Charges and its chairman in slanderous terms. Time reported that a "group of 23 top businessmen, labor leaders and educators ... wired every U.S. Senator (except McCarthy himself) urging a favorable vote 'to curb the flagrant abuse of power by Senator McCarthy.'" The Senate censured McCarthy on December 2, 1954 by a vote of 65 to 22. The Senate Republicans were split 22 to 22. For a further treatment of this episode, refer to Joseph McCarthy – Censure and the Watkins Committee.
A 1990 article in the Rutland Herald characterized the reaction in Vermont to Flanders's role in the McCarthy censure as "sour". It concludes that Flanders's convictions did not necessarily reflect the priorities of his constituency, which regarded the issue as "not our problem".
During his lifetime, Flanders received more than sixteen honorary degrees from institutions that included Stevens Institute of Technology (M.E.), Dartmouth College (M.S., LL.D.), 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 Springfield on February 19, 1970. He was buried at Summer Hill Cemetery in Springfield alongside his wife and members of the Hartness family.
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