Garfield, James Rudolph

Related Category: U.S. History: Biographies

1865–1950, U.S. Secretary of the Interior (1907–9), b. Hiram, Ohio; son of President James A. Garfield. After being admitted to the Ohio bar in 1888, he became a lawyer in Cleveland. He was a member of the U.S. Civil Service Commission (1902–3) and commissioner of corporations in the Dept. of Commerce and Labor (1903–7) before being given a cabinet post under President Theodore Roosevelt. Garfield was a noted advocate of the conservation of natural resources. In the 1912 election he aided Roosevelt and the Progressive party in their unsuccessful bid for power.