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Administrative History

Thomas Edmund Dewey was born in Owosso, Michigan on March 24, 1902. He married Eileen Hutt in 1928 and together the couple had two sons. A Columbia Law School graduate, Dewey entered public service for the first time in 1931 when he became chief assistant United States attorney for the Southern District of New York. In 1935, Governor Herbert Lehman appointed him special prosecutor to investigate and prosecute racketeers. In 1937, Dewey was elected New York County district attorney. He ran successfully for governor three times, obtaining the office first in 1942 and retaining it in both the 1946 and 1950 elections. While serving as governor, he twice campaigned unsuccessfully as the Republican Party's candidate for the presidency (1944 and 1948). Following completion of his third gubernatorial term, he returned to private law practice. Thomas E. Dewey died on March 16, 1971, just eight days shy of his sixty-ninth birthday.

Thomas E. Dewey is best remembered for establishing New York's state university system and initiating construction of the New York State Thruway. As governor, Dewey blended fiscal conservatism with a personal conviction that government bore a share of the responsibility for the welfare of the citizenry. He took measures to increase governmental efficiency and balance the state budget, leading to reductions in spending and decreases in state taxes. He initiated investigations of the state's workers' compensation and mental health care systems, as well as the state police and municipal governments including the city of Albany. Dewey encouraged the state Department of Commerce to assist New York businesses in obtaining contracts during the Second World War, but also began taking measures to ease conversion to a peacetime economy before demobilization of the armed forces.

Dewey sponsored expansion of minimum wage coverage and advocated equal pay for equal work by women. He obtained legislative consent to establish a system of unemployment insurance for returning veterans prior to the end of hostilities and reorganized the state Health and Social Welfare departments to improve services for the blind, aged, and dependent children. Dewey was a strong proponent of civil rights and actively supported the state's landmark 1945 "Law against Discrimination," which established the administrative machinery to eliminate discrimination in employment based on race, color, creed, or national origin. He also introduced public health programs to counter tuberculosis and other deadly diseases, and sought to address overcrowding in state hospitals through both improved outpatient treatment and new construction.

For further information concerning the life and political career of Thomas E. Dewey, see Smith, Richard Norton. Thomas E. Dewey and His Times. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982; and Rae, Nicol C. "Dewey, Thomas Edmund." In American National Biography, vol. 6, ed. John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, 521-523. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.