Alger Hiss

Alger Hiss: Family, Biography, Interesting Facts, Beliefs, Early Life, Papers (1999)

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Alger Hiss was one of five children born in Baltimore, Maryland, to Mary "Minnie" Lavinia (née Hughes) and Charles Alger Hiss. Both parents came from substantial Baltimore families who could trace their roots to the middle of the eighteenth century. Hiss's paternal great-great grandfather had emigrated from Germany in 1729, married well, and changed his surname from "Hesse" to "Hiss".[4] Minnie Hughes had attended teacher's college and was active in Baltimore society. Shortly after his marriage at age 24, Charles Hiss entered the business world and joined the dry goods importing firm of Daniel Miller and Co. He did well, becoming an executive and stockholder. When Charles's brother John died suddenly at age 33, Charles assumed financial and emotional responsibility for his brother's widow and six children in addition to his own expanding family.[5] Charles also helped his wife's favorite brother, Albert Hughes, find work at Daniel Miller. Hughes at first distinguished himself and was promoted to treasurer of the firm, but then he became involved in a complicated business deal and was unable to meet the financial obligation that was part of a joint agreement.[6] As a matter of honor, Charles Hiss felt compelled to sell all his stocks to make good his brother-in-law's debts, as well as to resign from the firm. This was in 1907, the year of the great financial panic. After inconclusive attempts by relatives to find him a job, Charles fell into a serious depression and took his own life, cutting his throat with a razor. His widow, Minnie, who had made the most of her former prosperity and social position, now had to rely on her inheritance and assistance from family members. Alger Hiss was two years old at the time of his father's death and his brother Donald was two months old. As was customary in those days, they were not told of the circumstances of Charles Hiss's death. When Alger learned of it inadvertently years later from neighbors, he angrily confronted his older brother Bosely, who then told him the truth. Shocked, Hiss resolved to devote the rest of his life to restoring the family's "good name".[7] Although shadowed by melancholy, Hiss's early childhood, spent in rough and tumble games with his siblings and cousins who lived close by, was not unhappy. Their Baltimore neighborhood was described by columnist Murray Kempton as one of "shabby gentility.[8] (Two further tragedies occurred when Hiss was in his twenties: his elder brother Bosley died of Bright's disease and his sister Mary Ann committed suicide.)[9] Hiss learned to compartmentalize and to seek out paternal surrogates. At school he was popular and high performing. He attended Baltimore City College (high school) and Johns Hopkins University, where he was voted "most popular student" by his classmates and graduated Phi Beta Kappa. In 1929, he received his law degree from Harvard Law School, where he was a protégé of Felix Frankfurter, the future U.S. Supreme Court justice. During his time at Harvard, the famous murder trial of anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti transpired, which ended in their conviction and execution. Like Frankfurter, who wrote a book about the case, and like many prominent liberals of the day, Hiss maintained that Sacco and Vanzetti were convicted unjustly. In 1929, Hiss married Priscilla Fansler Hobson, a Bryn Mawr graduate and grade school teacher. Priscilla, previously married to Thayer Hobson, had a three-year-old son, Timothy. Hiss and Priscilla had known each other before her marriage to Hobson. Hiss served for a year as clerk to Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., before joining Choate, Hall & Stewart, a Boston law firm, and later the New York law firm then known as Cotton, Franklin, Wright & Gordon. During the era of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal, Hiss became a government attorney. In 1933, he served briefly at the Justice Department and then became a temporary assistant on the Senate's Nye Committee, investigating cost overruns and alleged profiteering by military contractors during World War I.[10] During this period, Hiss was also a member of the liberal legal team headed by Jerome Frank that defended the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) against challenges to its legitimacy. Because of intense opposition from agribusiness in Arkansas, Frank and his left-wing assistants, who included future labor lawyer Lee Pressman, were fired in 1935 in what came to be known as "the purge of liberals."[11] Hiss was not fired, but allegations that during this period he was connected with radicals on the Agriculture Department's legal team were to be the source of future controversy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alger_Hiss