Leo Crowley

Leo Thomas Crowley (August 15, 1889 – April 15, 1972) was a senior administrator for President Franklin D. Roosevelt as the head of the Foreign Economic Administration. Previous to that he had served as chief of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and as Alien Property Custodian. Crowley was a significant administrator, troubleshooter, and political operative for Roosevelt from 1934 to 1945.

In 1943, Time magazine dubbed Crowley the "Nation's #1 Pinch Hitter," and one commentator called him FDR's "manager par excellence". Historians later discovered that late in the 1930s, senior Washington officials learned that Crowley had embezzled from his banks in Wisconsin in the 1920s and 1930s. This information was suppressed because of Crowley's political and administrative usefulness. Biographer Stuart Weiss wrote that Crowley's story is:

the darker story of the businessman as speculator and embezzler, whose fraud was covered up in Wisconsin and Washington....[in part it is] the morally complex and compelling story of Crowley as a bureaucrat and politician in Washington, administering multiple major agencies, often simultaneously;...but also deeply involved in conflicts of interest a later generation would find unacceptable and even incomprehensible.

Leo Crowley was born to Thomas and Katie Crowley in Milton, Wisconsin, immigrants of Irish Catholic origin. He went to the University of Wisconsin. His father worked for the Milwaukee Road. Young Leo delivered groceries and saved his tips from customers. In 1905, with $1000 he bought a part of the General Paper Company, some of the products of which he had been bringing to customers. He worked hard to grow the company, and his share in it, until he owned it outright in 1919. That year he took over the T. S. Morris company with financing from Milo Hagen and W.D. Curtis. Selling stock in this company relieved its debt, and he bought a wholesale grocery for his brothers to run, and land in Madison, Wisconsin.

Crowley began his entry into the political arena by supporting Albert G. Schmedeman for governor of Wisconsin. The biographer Weiss says "He managed Schmedeman as a parent might his children, and as he managed his family and most of the nurses at Saint Mary's Hospital."

Crowley served as a delegate for Al Smith at the Democratic National Convention. He thus came in contact with Jouett Shouse and John J. Raskob, operatives for Al Smith. Progressivism was strong in Wisconsin, as expressed by Senator John J. Blaine and the newspaper Capital Times edited by William T. Evjue. Crowley was effective in bringing about a progressive-democratic alliance for the election of Franklin Roosevelt.

From the mid-1930s, Leo T. Crowley was more than just the head of a powerful agency the FDIC. He also negotiated with Congressional leaders on banking issues and played a central role in designing new federal banking laws. He promoted Roosevelt's political interests in Wisconsin by working with the state's left-wing Progressive Party for the 1936 and 1940 elections. At the same time Crowley also served as a crucial link between Roosevelt, and right-wing forces in Congress and the national bank community. In 1940, he was considered --but not chosen--for the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee.

It was the Glass–Steagall Act that created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), one of the most popular elements of the New Deal because it protecting the bank accounts of local depositors. Biographer Weiss tells of the incredible tale of how the nearly-bankrupt Crowley became the leader in banking security and thus ended the epidemic of bank runs that had closed thousands of small banks.