Harry Lloyd Hopkins

Harry Lloyd Hopkins 1890-1946, American public official, b. Sioux City, Iowa. A social worker, he was appointed (1931) head of New York's Temporary Emergency Relief Administration by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, then governor of New York. Two years later, after Roosevelt became President, Hopkins was made chief of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) and of the Civil Works Administration, which grew out of the FERA. In 1935 he became head of the Works Progress Administration. Hopkins was made Secretary of Commerce in Dec., 1938, but resigned in Aug., 1940, because of ill health. An intimate friend of President Roosevelt, Hopkins was a special assistant to the President during World War II. He administered the lend-lease program in 1941 and went on several missions to London and Moscow. After Roosevelt's death, he went as President Truman's representative to Moscow to settle problems that had arisen over Poland and the organization of the United Nations. In July, 1945, he retired from public life.

Hopkins, Harry Lloyd (b. 17 Aug. 1890, d. 29 Jan. 1946). US presidential adviser Born in Sioux City, Iowa, as a young man he came to New York as a social worker. As Governor of New York State, Franklin D. Roosevelt made Hopkins his adviser on social and welfare policies, a position he retained when Roosevelt became President and throughout the years of the New Deal. His record in public social service was perhaps without equal: head of New York's Emergency Relief Administration (1931), of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (1933–4), of the Works Progress Administration (from 1935), and then Secretary of Commerce (1938–40). He was Roosevelt's manager when he ran for a third term as President in 1940, after which Hopkins formally retired from office because of poor health. Subsequently he continued to serve as Roosevelt's close confidant. Before and after the USA entered World War II he served as Roosevelt's untitled second-in-command. Hopkins was ultimately involved in most matters concerning US wartime policy. He played a pivotal role in the San Francisco Conference of 1945 which launched the Charter of the UN, and in the Allied conference at Potsdam. He was a close friend of Winston Churchill.