Second of two parts. Read part one here.
During World War I, President Woodrow Wilson asked his trusted Secretary of the Treasury William Gibbs McAdoo to be also director general of the railroads, where he oversaw movement of supplies to the American Expeditionary Force. Meanwhile McAdoo organized the Liberty Loan Drives, which raised $21 billion for the merchant marine.
By Armistice Day 1918, McAdoo, a former Chattanoogan, was exhausted physically and financially. He announced his resignation the next day and returned shortly afterward to New York City to found McAdoo, Cotton & Franklin, among whose law clients were the founders of United Artists. He then moved to California to concentrate on his political career.
McAdoo ran twice for the Democratic nomination for the presidency, losing to Alfred E. Smith allies, James M. Cox in 1920 and John W. Davis in 1924. When Smith was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1932, McAdoo swung the convention tide to Franklin D. Roosevelt with California’s 44 votes. He had hoped to be on the ticket with FDR, but William Randolph Hearst opposed his inclusion. In 1933, he was elected U.S. senator for California, supporting injury compensation, unemployment insurance and compensation, the eight-hour workday and the minimum wage. Defeated by attorney Sherman Downey in the 1938 Democratic primary, he retired from public life and became president of American Shipping Lines, reflecting his life-long interest in public transportation.
McAdoo’s first wife, Sarah, whom he married in Chattanooga in 1885, died in 1912. They had four children. He married Woodrow Wilson’s daughter Eleanor at the White House in 1914. They had two children. After “20 years of happiness,” her health was such that she could not tolerate the Washington climate. He offered to resign, but Eleanor did not think that wise. The court in Los Angeles granted an uncontested decree for divorce in 1935. Two months later McAdoo, 71, married Deborah Isabel Cross, 26, a U.S. Health Service nurse.