Senator Lewis Baxter Schwellenbach

United States senator and judge who stumbled upon our nation's biggest secret. Born in Superior, Wisconsin, Lewis Schwellenbach moved with his family to Spokane when he was eight years old. He became active in politics while attending the University of Washington. Noting that Washington State was full of Republicans, Schwellenbach chided that he became a Democrat so he "could get in on the ground floor" (Time, Oct 15, 1945). He became a lawyer in 1921, and later provided the defense in a well-publicized murder case, which helped Schwellenbach gain some prominence, even though he lost the case. Much of his law practice involved working with and for labor unions. After losing his bid for governor of Washington State in 1932, he successfully ran for the U.S. Senate in 1934, where he led the supporters of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal legislation. In 1940, President Roosevelt appointed Schwallenbach as a federal district judge. While dealing in 1943 with a large land condemnation deal for a DuPont processing plant, Judge Schwellenbach happened upon the Top Secret "Manhattan Project," from which our nation developed the world's first atomic bomb. In 1945, he was named secretary of labor by President Harry S. Truman, whom Schwellenbach had supported during Truman's successful bid for the senate five years earlier. As a politically-aware secretary of labor, Schwellenbach was able to change the Labor Department from one that primarily gathered statistical information to one that actively sets policy.