In
1930, Pinchot won election to a second term as governor. There he
battled for the regulation of public utilities, relief for the unemployed,
and construction of paved roads to "get the farmers out of the
mud." For two years, he and the Assembly fought over the utilities
issue. The Governor went straight to the people through the newspapers,
radio, and the mail. Although the House passed three bills to regulate
rates, the Senate sided with the utilities and the proposals were
defeated. He also placed his own men on the Public Service Commission,
which he then sought to control, and through it the utilities. Pinchot
believed in "the principle of Theodore Roosevelt that it is the
duty of a public servant to do whatever the public good requires unless
it is directly forbidden by Law."
The Depression hit Pennsylvania severely, and by 1931 there were almost
a million unemployed. The governor took a personal concern for the
needy. Before taking office he founded a committee on unemployment.
He gave more immediate assistance also, such as to a woman who was
jailed and fined $17.90 for killing a woodpecker to feed her children.
Realizing that state aid would not be sufficient to curb the effects
of the Depression, he was one of the first of the governors to decide
that federal aid was needed. Pinchot gave a moralistic tone to the
relief effort as he continually urged state and federal governments
to aid the deprived. In response, President Hoover and the Congress
established the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to assist banks
and businesses, and eventually extended direct aid to the states.
State and federal funds for the unemployed were distributed on a non-partisan
basis by the Pennsylvania State Emergency Relief Board.
Governor Pinchot recognized other neglected groups in Pennsylvania.
Women, Jews, and blacks were included in his administration. "Pinchot
Roads" were promoted for the benefit of the farmer to transport
his product to the consumer. Economical, but adequate, means were
devised to pave twenty thousand miles of road. A limited amount of
machinery was used so that more work could be given to the unemployed.
This was probably the accomplishment for which Pinchot was best remembered.
In 1933, the bituminous coal miners at W.S. Steel's "captive
mines" struck. The mine owners refused to recognize the United
Mine Workers union, despite federal law requiring collective bargaining.
The National Guard was called in but admonished by Pinchot to remain
neutral. Pressure exerted by Pinchot and President Franklin D. Roosevelt
caused the company to recognize the union.
With Pinchot's approval, a special session of the Assembly ratified
the Twenty-first Amendment to the federal Constitution, which repealed
the prohibition amendment. The Assembly also established the Liquor
Control Board, a state monopoly for the sale of liquor.
During his last year as governor, Pinchot, for the third time, ran
unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination for election to the U.S.
Senate. As usual, he received little assistance from the leaders of
his party, whom he had greatly annoyed by supporting the economic
recovery programs of Democrat Franklin Roosevelt. During the last
three months of his term, the governor was confined to a New York
City hospital and Mrs. Pinchot in effect became the acting governor,
but the Republican voters overwhelmingly defeated him. He was seventy-two.
In his remaining years, the ex-governor gave advice to the president,
wrote a book about his life as a forester, and devised a fishing kit
to be used in lifeboats during World War II. On October 4, 1946, he
died, age eighty-one, of leukemia. The Pinchots' mansion, Grey Towers,
in Milford, has been given to the U.S. Forest Service to serve as
a museum and training center for foresters.