The Quiet World_ Saving Alaska's Wilderness Kingdom, 1879-1960 - Douglas Brinkley [181]
Back at Columbia, Douglas was on fire. All his professors—Underhill Moore chief among them—were astounded at his intelligence. You could see it in his eyes. He could revise commercial law casebooks or explain the Pleistocene epoch with equal ease. Douglas worked hardest when taking on a big company, defending the people against a fat cat. Mischievously Moore unleashed Douglas against a Portland cement company that had supposedly cooked its books. But Douglas’s belligerent attitude worried Dean Stone, who had just been confirmed to serve on the Supreme Court. The new justice selected Albert McCormack, a fine choice, to be his clerk, rather than the brilliant but wild Douglas. “The world was black,” Douglas said of this snub. “I was unspeakably depressed that for all those years and all that work, I had so little to show for it. The one opportunity I wanted had passed me by.”26
Douglas had a choice after graduating from Columbia: go back to Yakima to practice law or join a Wall Street firm. He did the latter. But Douglas was arrogant—and his voice was strained and defiant—when he was interviewing at New York firms. Famously, he was interviewed by John Foster Dulles, who would go on to become Dwight D. Eisenhower’s secretary of state. Dulles, who tended to be pompous, was condescending. So Douglas turned the tables on Dulles: the interviewee started interviewing the eminent establishment lawyer. According to Douglas, to irritate Dulles even more, on his way out of the interview he tipped Dulles a quarter for helping him on with his coat. The job went to somebody else. But Douglas was hired by the prestigious firm Cravath DeGersdoff, Swaine, and Wood (later Cravath, Swaine, and Moore).
After only four months at Cravath, confused, like an athlete with a mild concussion, Douglas left New York and moved back to Yakima. “The only bird I ever saw was a pigeon,” he complained of New York. “I longed for the call of the meadowlark, the noisy drilling of the pileated woodpecker, the drumming of the ruffed grouse.”27 He soon regretted the decision, however. Working his New York connections, he found a job teaching at Columbia. Douglas’s legal career now soared. Yale University Law School wisely poached him. He became an expert on commercial litigation and bankruptcy. By the time Douglas was forty-one, he was an associate justice on the Supreme Court. From 1929 to 1934 he wrote five legal casebooks and almost twenty articles. What gave Douglas such authority was his wizard-like expertise on corporate reorganization and bankruptcy law. If a U.S. corporation got too big, Douglas always prepared to break it down to size. Working on Wall Street had made Douglas feel that some investment bankers were truly pathetic, preferring money to “love, compassion, hiking, or sunsets.”28
With the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932, Douglas had an opening to positively affect the consciousness of his time. Main Street’s anger at Wall Street had deepened since the stock market crash of 1929. At Yale University, where Douglas was the distinguished Sterling Professor of Law, he had already earned a reputation for his no-nonsense approach and for insisting that the federal government regulate big business to achieve transparency. When Congress passed the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1933, granting the Federal Trade Commission regulatory power over security sales, Douglas was tapped by the Roosevelt administration to head the Securities and Exchange Commission. He had few ties with the WASP establishment, but he formed an alliance with the Catholic tycoon Joseph P. Kennedy.29 The entire Kennedy family liked the cut of Douglas’s jib. At long last he had a sponsor. Other New Dealers also took a shine to Douglas; they included Abe Fortas, Tommy “the Cork” Corcoran, and Lyndon Johnson.
Insiders in Washington, D.C., were soon astounded by Douglas’s love of the wilderness. Like a sudden storm, Douglas could take over a Georgetown