– P –

PALESTINE. See ISRAEL.

PANAY INCIDENT. The USS Panay was a gunboat used by the U.S. Navy to patrol the Yangtze River in China to protect American lives and commerce. On 12 December 1937, it had been picking up American consular staff from Nanking when it came under attack by Japanese aircraft and was sunk. Three lives were lost and 48 were wounded. Following protests, the Japanese government apologized for the attack and paid an indemnity of $2.2.million. The incident did much to increase public antipathy toward Japan.

PATTERSON, ROBERT PORTER (1891–1952). Born in Glen Falls, New York, Robert Patterson was a graduate of Union College in 1912 and Harvard Law School in 1915. After working in a law firm headed by Elihu Root, he served in the National Guard in the expeditionary force that went to Mexico in 1916. During World War I, he served with distinction in the army and was wounded and awarded the Silver Star and Distinguished Service Cross. After the war, he established a law firm in New York City. In 1930, he was chosen as a judge on the U.S. District Court for southern New York, and in 1939 he was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit. In 1940, Patterson became an assistant to Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson and in 1941 was appointed as undersecretary. Patterson played a major part in organizing the mobilization for war, and in 1945 he was made secretary of war by President Harry S. Truman. He left in 1947 to resume his private law practice. Patterson died in a plane crash in 1952.

PATTON, GEORGE SMITH (1885–1945). George S. Patton was born in California and educated at Virginia Military Institute and West Point Military Academy, where he graduated in 1909 and joined the cavalry. In 1912, he competed in the pentathlon in the Olympic Games. Patton took part in the punitive expedition against Mexico in 1916 and 1917 and then in France during World War I. He was aide to General Jack Pershing before being assigned to the new tank corps. He led a tank brigade at the Battle of St. Mihiel in 1918 and was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his bravery.

After the war, Patton attended cavalry school and later the army war college. In 1932, he was one of the officers who led troops against the Bonus Army in Washington, D.C. After the United States joined World War II, Patton commanded the First Armored Corps in Africa. In July 1943, he took command of the 7th Army during the invasion and campaign in Sicily and was responsible for the seizure of Palermo, Italy. Known for his intemperate language and aggressive manner, Patton caused a public outcry when he called two soldiers in a field hospital cowards and struck one of them. General Dwight D. Eisenhower made him issue a public apology but refused to court-martial him. Patton led the 3rd Army following the D-Day invasions of Europe, and he helped turn the tide during the Battle of the Bulge in 1944, when he led his forces more than 100 miles in bad weather to relieve the army in Bastogne, Belgium. After the war, Patton was placed in command in Bavaria, Germany, but he was removed for failing to impose the policies of denazification as rigorously as required. He also urged that a firm stand be taken against the Soviet Union. Patton died following a road accident.

PEALE, NORMAN VINCENT (1898–1993). An influential preacher and minister, Norman Vincent Peale was born in Bowersville, Ohio, to a religious family. He graduated from Ohio Wesleyan College in 1920 and worked as a journalist before entering Boston University in 1921 to study for the ministry. In 1924, Peale became minister to a church in Brooklyn, New York, and immediately began to attract large congregations to hear his sermons. In 1927, he moved to a Methodist church in Syracuse, New York, but in 1932 took over the Marble Collegiate Church in New York City and joined the Reformed Church of America. The following year he also began to preach via the radio, and his new radio program, The Art of Living, began to attract large audiences. Peale also distributed his sermons by mail as Guideposts magazine. His books, A Guide to Confident Living (1948) and The Power of Positive Thinking (1952), were both best sellers. With Billy Graham, Peale was one of the two most influential religious figures in postwar America. A film of his life, One Man’s Way, was made in 1963. He opposed the election of John F. Kennedy because of his Catholicism and subsequently became closely associated with Richard M. Nixon and his family. President Ronald Reagan awarded Peale the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1984.

PEARL HARBOR. Located on the island of Oahu in Hawaii, Pearl Harbor became the base for the U.S. Pacific Fleet in April 1940 in response to growing tensions between the United States and Japan. As relations further deteriorated and war seemed likely, in January 1941 the Japanese admiral, Isoruku Yamamoto, began to plan a surprise preemptive attack on the harbor. When this was approved by the government of Hideki Tojo, Yamamoto moved his fleet to the Kurile Islands in November and early in the morning of 7 December launched an air attack from 275 miles north of Pearl Harbor.

Although U.S. intelligence knew an attack was imminent, they had no idea of where or when. At the time of the bombing, negotiations between Japan and the Roosevelt administration were still ongoing in Washington, D.C. In two hours, on a day Roosevelt said would “live in infamy,” the Japanese sank 18 warships, destroyed almost 200 aircraft, and killed 2,403 U.S. service personnel. The U.S. aircraft carriers were at sea and escaped damage. Other vital resources remained undamaged, and the attack did not prove to be the devastating setback the Japanese had wanted. Rather, it provided the rally cry, “Remember Pearl Harbor” and helped bring about the rapid mobilization of the U.S. war effort. The Pearl Harbor site is now a national historic site, and the sunken USS Arizona remains a memorial to those who died.

PEEK, GEORGE NELSON (1873–1943). George N. Peek was born in Polo, Illinois, and studied briefly at Northwestern University in 1891. He worked first as an office assistant and subsequently found employment with Deere and Webber, a branch of the John Deere Plow Company. In 1901, Peek became general manager of the Deere Company in Omaha, Nebraska, and in 1914 vice president in charge of sales in Deere’s main office in Moline, Illinois. During World War I, he was an industrial representative on the War Industries Board and in 1918 became commissioner of finished products. In 1919, Secretary of Commerce William C. Redfield appointed Peek to chair the Industrial Board of the Department of Commerce, but Peek resigned after only a few months due to conflict over price issues with the railroad director, Walker D. Hines.

From 1919 to 1923 Peek was president and general manager of the Moline Plow Company. He resigned over differences with the company’s vice president, Hugh S. Johnson. As president of the American Council of Agriculture, Peek supported the government farm support initiatives proposed in the McNary-Haugen bills between 1924 and 1928. He was an active supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 and was appointed to head the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) in 1933. However, Peek did not accept that there was a farm surplus and opposed the AAA program to reduce production, and Roosevelt was forced to ask for his resignation after only a few months. He was appointed instead as adviser on foreign trade and president of the Export-Import Bank, but again differences over policy led to his resignation in 1935. Peek became a critic of New Deal farm policies and Roosevelt’s interventionist policies. In 1936, he supported Republican Alf Landon, and he was also a member of the National Committee of the America First Committee established in 1940 to keep the United States out of the European wars.

PELLEY, WILLIAM DUDLEY (1890–1965). Born in Lynn, Massachusetts, William Pelley became a journalist after leaving school and wrote for such magazines as Collier’s and the Saturday Evening Post. He traveled widely in Europe, served with the YMCA during World War I, and was in Siberia with the U.S. Army in 1919. He subsequently spent time in Russia and became anticommunist and anti-Semitic. Returning to the United States in 1920, he was a successful author and scriptwriter in Hollywood until 1929. In 1928, he claimed to have had an out-of-body experience, and he began to write about spiritual matters and politics. He established Galahad College in Asheville, North Carolina, in 1932, and after Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in Germany, he formed the right-wing Silver Legion with its uniformed Silver Shirts group in 1933. The Silver Legion, which had a membership of about 15,000, was briefly associated with the followers of Huey Long and Father Charles Coughlin, but in 1936 Pelley ran as the presidential candidate for the Christian Party. He received less than 1,600 votes. In 1941, after suggesting that the government had lied about the extent of the losses at Pearl Harbor, he was arrested and charged with sedition and treason. Pelley was sentenced to 15 years in prison in 1942 and was not released until 1950, at which time he resumed his career as a publisher.

PERKINS, FRANCES (1882–1965). Born Fannie Coralie Perkins, Frances Perkins was a graduate in chemistry and physics of Mount Holyoke College and Columbia University. She taught from 1904 to 1907 and also worked in the Chicago Commons and Hull House settlements. Perkins became executive secretary of the New York Consumer’s League from 1910 to 1912 and worked as an authority on industrial safety with the New York Committee of Safety from 1912 to 1917. She served on the Industrial Commission of New York State in 1921 and was appointed by Alfred E. Smith to chair the New York State Industrial Board in 1926. She held the position until 1929, when she became secretary of labor for New York under Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt. She worked to improve workmen’s compensation, conditions and hours of work, and factory inspection, and she called for unemployment insurance at the national level. Following his election to the presidency, Roosevelt made Perkins the first woman cabinet officer when he appointed her secretary of labor in 1933.

Perkins was involved in shaping several pieces of New Deal legislation, including the Social Security Act and Fair Labor Standards Act. She also tried to persuade the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations to come to some agreement but was not successful. Employers often attacked her for being too soft on trade unions, and in 1938 there was an attempt to impeach her for failing to deport the Australian-born leader of the Californian longshoreman, Harry Bridges.

During World War II, many of the functions of the Labor Department were handled by war agencies. Perkins remained at her post until July 1945, when President Harry S. Truman appointed her to the Civil Service Commission. She held the position until 1952. Afterward Perkins became a lecturer at a number of universities and in the late 1950s held a visiting professorship at Cornell.

PHILIPPINE INDEPENDENCE ACT, 1934. Also known as the Tydings-McDuffie Act, the Philippine Independence Act was approved on 24 March 1934 and provided for the Philippine Islands to achieve independence after a 10-year transitional period of constitutional development. The Philippines gained their independence under the act on 4 July 1946.

POINT FOUR PROGRAM. The fourth point of President Harry S. Truman’s inaugural address on 20 January 1949 called for a “bold new program” of scientific and technical assistance for the “underdeveloped areas” of the world. Intended as part of the policy of containment in the Cold War, the program was approved by Congress in May 1950 with an appropriation of $35 million. Some of this was to support the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization programs of aid, and further appropriations were recommended in 1951 and 1952. Although assistance was given to more than 30 countries, in reality the amount of aid provided was a mere fraction of the appropriation.

POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE (PAC). The PAC was first established by the Congress of Industrial Organizations in 1944 to circumvent controls placed on direct political contributions by trade unions under the War Labor Disputes Act. The PAC enabled funds to be raised to support candidates. Generally this meant support for Democratic candidates. In the 1960s, other groups, businesses, and organizations adopted PACs.

POLLOCK, JACKSON (1912–1956). Hailed as America’s “greatest living painter” in 1949, artist Jackson Pollock was born in Cody, Wyoming. He studied under Thomas Hart Benton in New York City in the 1930s and for a time was employed by the Works Progress Administration. In 1946, he began the distinctive style of painting by dripping paint onto the canvas to create abstract patterns. He achieved national prominence through an article in Life magazine in 1949 and became a best-selling artist in the early 1950s. He died in an automobile crash. See also ART.

PORTER, COLE (1891–1964). Prolific songwriter Cole Porter was educated at Worcester Academy, Yale, and Harvard’s law and music schools. Having already written several musical comedies and hundreds of songs while at Yale, in 1916 he and T. Lawrason Riggs wrote a musical comedy, See America First, produced on Broadway in 1916. Porter went to France in 1917. A number of his songs were included in English musical shows from 1918 to 1922. Porter’s music was part of Within the Quota, performed in Paris and New York in 1923, the Greenwich Village Follies in New York in 1924, Paris in 1928 also in New York, La Revue des Ambassadeurs performed in Paris in 1928, and Wake Up and Dream performed in London in 1929. Porter rose to even greater prominence in the 1930s with songs for shows and movies, the most famous being “Night and Day” from The Gay Divorcee (1932), “I Get a Kick out of You” from Anything Goes (1934), “Begin the Beguine” from Jubilee (1935), “I’ve Got You under My Skin” from the movie Born to Dance (1936), and “In the Still of the Night” from the film Rosalie (1937). He continued to write throughout the 1940s and 1950s, most notably for Kiss Me, Kate (1948), Can-Can (1953), and the film High Society (1956), for which his song “True Love” won an Academy Award. However, Porter’s sophisticated, languid, and often sensual music seemed to belong more appropriately in the interwar period. See also CINEMA; LITERATURE AND THEATER.

POTSDAM CONFERENCE, 1945. Following the defeat of Nazi Germany, the leaders of the victorious Allied powers met at Potsdam, near Berlin, for a conference from 17 July to 2 August 1945. It was the first opportunity for the new U.S. president, Harry S. Truman, to meet his British and Soviet counterparts, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin. Churchill was replaced on 27 July by Clement Attlee, who became prime minister following his election victory. Although no substantive agreements were reached, those made at the Yalta Conference on the division of Germany into zones were confirmed, but there was some indication that the Russians would oppose moves toward economic reunification. The Eastern Frontier between Germany and Poland was also agreed on, but the amount of reparations to be paid to the Soviet Union was scaled down considerably. Truman indicated that he expected elections and a new government to be established in Poland. He also informed Stalin that the United States had developed a new and powerful weapon but made no direct reference to the atomic bomb. Stalin confirmed his intention to enter the war against Japan. Code-named “Terminal,” the Potsdam meeting was the last meeting of the respective heads of state for 10 years as relations quickly deteriorated with the onset of the Cold War.

POUND, EZRA (WESTON) LOOMIS (1885–1972). Ezra Pound studied at the University of Pennsylvania and Hamilton College and graduated with an M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1906. After being dismissed from a teaching position in 1907 for “bohemian” behavior, Pound traveled in Europe before settling in London, England, where he became part of the literary avant-garde from 1908 until 1920. He remained an expatriate for the rest of his life. Pound’s first volume of poetry, A Lume Spento, was published in 1908. This was followed by Personae (1909), Canzoni (1911), and Ripostes (1912). During this period, he established the Imagist movement and later joined the Vorticists, with whom he published two volumes of BLAST: A Review of the Great English Vortex between 1914 and 1915. After World War I, Pound published Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920) and worked with T. S. Eliot on Waste Land (1922). In 1921, Pound joined the expatriate set, including Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway in Paris, but in 1924 he moved to Rapallo, Italy, where he remained until the end of the war.

During the interwar period, Pound produced his Cantos series of poems, published from 1925 to 1940. He increasingly identified with Italy and Benito Mussolini, was critical of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, and wrote Jefferson and/or Mussolini in 1937. Cantos XXXI to LXXI appeared in the 1930s. Between 1941 and 1943 Pound made several broadcasts for Radio Rome attacking U.S. policies. Accused of treason, he was arrested in 1945 and after an imprisonment in Pisa, Italy, was transferred to Washington, D.C., where he was found unfit to stand trial. From 1945 until 1958, Pound was held in an insane asylum. His work the Pisan Cantos appeared in 1948 and was controversially awarded the Bollingen Prize in Poetry in 1949. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1950. Those who felt that he had been a traitor during the war criticized both awards. Pound published several other works before his death, but none reached the level of his earlier poetry. See also LITERATURE AND THEATER.

POWELL, ADAM CLAYTON, JR. (1908–1972). Born in New Haven, Connecticut, Adam Clayton Powell Jr. moved to New York City with his family in 1909. After briefly attending City College, he graduated from Colgate College in 1930 and completed a master’s degree in religious education at Columbia University in 1932. Powell accepted a position as business manager at his father’s church in Harlem and then succeeded his father as pastor in 1937. Using the pulpit and a regular column in the black newspaper, Amsterdam News, Powell was active in mobilizing black protests against discrimination in New York. He was involved in the National Negro Congress, encouraged “Don’t buy where you can’t work” boycotts of white-owned stores, and in 1938 helped found the Greater New York Coordinating Committee on Employment.

In 1941, Powell became the first black person elected to the New York City Council, and in 1944 he won election as a Democrat—although also with support of the Republicans—to the U.S. House of Representatives to become, with William L. Dawson, only the second black congressman at the time. During World War II, he published the militant paper, People’s Voice, and worked for the Office of Price Administration. A flamboyant and independent man, Powell supported Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956 because he felt he had done more for civil rights. In 1960, Powell forced Bayard Rustin to resign from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference because of his homosexuality. However, in 1967 Powell himself was accused of having misused public money for personal gain and was excluded from the House. In 1969, the Supreme Court ruled in his favor, and he returned to Congress, but in 1970 be failed to be renominated.

PRESIDENTIAL SUCCESSION ACT, 1947. Under the terms of the law of 1886 providing for the order of succession to the presidency in the event of removal, resignation, death, or incapacity of the president, the next in line after the vice president was the senior cabinet officer, that is, the secretary of state. Harry S. Truman, who had assumed the presidency following Franklin D. Roosevelt’s death, did not think this was democratic since cabinet officers are appointed rather than elected. He therefore recommended making the next in line of succession after the vice president the speaker of the House of Representatives, followed by the President pro tempore of the Senate, and then the cabinet officers in order (State, Treasury, Defense, and so forth). The act was passed and the changes went into force on 18 July 1947.

PROGRESSIVE PARTY. Following Henry A. Wallace’s announcement of his candidacy for the presidency in December 1947, a Progressive Party was formed in July 1948 to support Wallace and Senator Glen Taylor of Idaho as his running mate. The party opposed the Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan, called for better relations with the Soviet Union, and was against the peacetime draft. It was endorsed by the Communist Party of the United States of America and American Labor Party. In the election, it received just over 1 million votes, less than 3 percent of the popular vote.

PUBLIC HOUSING ADMINISTRATION (PHA). Created in July 1947 as part of the reorganization and rationalization of government agencies, the Public Housing Administration took over the functions of the United States Housing Authority and Federal Public Housing Authority.

PUBLIC WORKS ADMINISTRATION (PWA). Established under Title II of the National Industrial Recovery Act in 1933 as the Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works to combat unemployment and to “prime the pump” of the economy, the PWA was funded with $3.3 billion to be granted to support state and municipal public works projects. The act provided 30 percent of the cost of projects with the rest in the form of loans. Harold Ickes was appointed to head the administration. Although the PWA ultimately spent almost $6 billion and provided jobs for 2 million workers on numerous projects, including the Grand Coulee Dam, it was regarded as too slow and ineffective. In 1933, the Civil Works Administration was created under Harry Hopkins to provide immediate short-term work relief, and in 1935 the Works Progress Administration was set up as a more effective alternative. The PWA was incorporated into the Federal Works Agency in 1939.

PURGE OF 1938. Angered by conservative members of the Democratic Party who were forming a conservative bloc with Republicans in Congress, President Franklin D. Roosevelt actively intervened in the elections of 1938 to try to block the nomination of several incumbent Democrats. Such an action was unprecedented and was referred to as the “purge,” echoing the actions of totalitarian leaders in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. In the event, the attempt failed, and only one of the conservatives was defeated. It also increased the impression that the president was assuming dictatorial powers and increased opposition rather than reducing it.

PYLE, ERNEST (ERNIE) TAYLOR (1900–1945). Famous war correspondent Ernie Pyle was born in Indiana. He did not complete his studies at the University of Indiana, but after brief service in the navy in 1918, he began work in newspapers. After working with the Washington Daily News, Pyle moved to New York City to write for the New York Evening World and Evening Post. He returned to Washington, D. C., to become editor of the Daily News from 1932 to 1935, before becoming a roving reporter for the Scripps Howard newspaper chain. In 1940, Pyle went to Great Britain to cover the “Blitz,” and after 1941 he was a war correspondent with the U.S. Army in Europe, Africa, and Asia during World War II. His reports of the life of ordinary soldiers captured the imagination of the public, and he was dubbed “the most widely read correspondent.” His collected reports were published as Ernie Pyle in England (1941), Here Is Your War: The Story of G.I. Joe (1943), and Brave Men (1944). Pyle was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his writing in 1944 but was killed in the fighting in Okinawa in 1945.