Irving Ives

Irving McNeil Ives (January 24, 1896 – February 24, 1962) was an American politician from New York.

Life

He served overseas in the U.S. Army during World War I, rising to the rank of first lieutenant before he left the army in 1919. He then attended Hamilton College and entered the banking and insurance businesses.

He was a Republican member of the New York State Assembly from 1930 to 1946; being Minority Leader in 1935, Speaker in 1936, and Majority Leader from 1937 to 1946.

Ives was the founding Dean of the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University. He appointed Maurice F. Neufeld to the faculty, who was later to rise to Professor Emeritus.

He was elected a U.S. Senator from New York in 1946, and re-elected in 1952, serving from 1947 to 1959.

He was a delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1948, 1952 and 1956.

In 1954, he ran for Governor of New York. In one of the closest Governor's races in state history, he was very narrowly defeated by Democrat W. Averell Harriman.

In New York state politics and in national Republican politics, he was known as a moderate member of his party and as a strong supporter of Thomas E. Dewey.

Ives served as the founding dean of the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations and its primary building is named Ives Hall in his honor.

He died at Chenango Memorial Hospital in Norwich, NY, and was buried at the Greenlawn Cemetery in Bainbridge, NY.

Ives is best remembered for the success of his "Ives-Quinn Act", passed in 1945, this act was one of the earliest examples of racial employment legislation. The Ives-Quinn Act pre-dated the Civil Rights Act by nearly twenty years.

Senator Irving Ives is remembered with his desk on display in the Chenango Museum where it is on display all year long.

References

• Irving Ives at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• [1] Political Graveyard
• [2] The gubernatorial election, in TIME Magazine