New York (State). Governor (1933-1942 : Lehman)

Governor Herbert Lehman called this crime conference on July 23, 1935 in response to the U.S. Attorney General's National Crime Conference held in Washington in 1934. The national conference stressed the need for a coordinated law enforcement program throughout the nation.

The New York conference, held September 30 to October 3, 1935 in Albany, was a forum for discussion of crime and crime prevention by attorneys, judges, law enforcement administrators, government officials, and others with law enforcement responsibilities or interests. The conference was conducted in four general sessions with reports from five round table (subcommittee) discussion groups.

The recommendations generated by this conference led to Governor Lehman's anti-crime program, presented to the legislature in 1936. The legislature made substantial revisions to the Code of Criminal Procedure and the County, Executive, Judiciary, Correction, and Penal Laws.

From the description of Proceedings, recommendations, and background files of the Governor's Conference on Crime, the Criminal and Society, 1935-1936. (New York State Archives). WorldCat record id: 80414883

Herbert Henry Lehman was born in New York City on March 28, 1878. He married Edith Altschul in 1910 and together the couple adopted three children. A successful businessman and philanthropist, Lehman first entered government service as an officer during the First World War, rising from the rank of captain to colonel while serving with the General Staff Corps in Washington, D.C. Governor Alfred E. Smith appointed Lehman to a number of Democratic Party and election campaign posts during the 1920s. With Smith's continued support, Lehman was selected as Franklin Delano Roosevelt's running mate in the 1928 gubernatorial election. Serving two terms as Roosevelt's lieutenant governor, Lehman developed policies aimed at combating the widespread unemployment and failures of banking institutions that accompanied the onset of the Great Depression.

When Governor Roosevelt sought and received the Democratic nomination for president in 1932, Lehman was nominated to run for governor. Elected by an overwhelming margin in his initial effort, he was subsequently reelected in 1934, 1936, and 1938. Following his 1938 victory, Lehman commenced the first four-year gubernatorial term mandated by a recent amendment to the state's constitution. In December 1942, he resigned the governorship upon President Roosevelt's request that he immediately assume the directorship of the newly created Office of Foreign Relief and Rehabilitation Operations.

Upon the organization's inception in November 1943, Lehman was elected first director general of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, a position he held until March 1946. He returned to politics later that year and was defeated in his initial bid for election to the United States Senate. However, Lehman triumphed in a special election called in 1949 to fill a seat vacated by the resignation of Senator Robert F. Wagner. In what would be his final bid for public office, Lehman was elected to a full senatorial term in 1950. In 1957, he returned to private life but continued to work for reform within the Democratic Party in New York City. Herbert Lehman died on December 5, 1963 at the age of eighty-five.

As governor during the bulk of the Depression years, Lehman's leadership and advocacy were instrumental factors in the state's adoption of the "Little New Deal," a series of state relief and reform programs that closely resembled the federal New Deal. Lehman supported state legislation that expanded relief for the unemployed and extended social security benefits to the elderly, physically disabled, and fatherless families. He worked effectively for the establishment of public housing, a minimum wage system, tighter controls on child labor, collective bargaining rights for workers, and government-fixed milk prices to increase the standard of living of the state's farmers. While often modeled after and paralleling its federal counterpart, New York's "Little New Deal" actually extended benefits to communities and individuals excluded from or inadequately represented by federal programs. Lehman, more than any of his predecessors in the governor's office, actively supported state intervention to assure a minimum standard of living for citizens unable to provide for themselves.

For further information concerning the life and political career of Herbert Lehman, see Ingalls, Robert P. Herbert H. Lehman and New York's Little New Deal. New York: New York University Press, 1975; and Ingalls, Robert P. "Lehman, Herbert Henry." In American National Biography, vol. 13, ed. John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, 435-437. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

From the guide to the Central subject and correspondence files, 1933-1942, (New York State Archives)