SR0796 94TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY

SR0796 LRB094 21777 KXB 60193 r

SENATE RESOLUTION

WHEREAS, The members of the Illinois Senate are saddened to learn of the death of John Kenneth Galbraith, who passed away on April 29, 2006; and

WHEREAS, Dr. Galbraith spent more than 25 years on the Harvard University faculty and advised Democratic presidents and candidates from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Bill Clinton; and

WHEREAS, As an author, Dr. Galbraith wrote many books; one of the most influential was "The Affluent Society" in 1958, which argued that overproduction of consumer goods was harming the public sector and depriving Americans of such benefits as clean air, clean streets, good schools, and support for the arts; and

WHEREAS, Dr. Galbraith was generally considered to have been an apostle of the theories advanced by British economist John Maynard Keynes: that government could promote full employment and a stable economy by stimulating spending and investment with adjustments in interest and tax rates, and deficit financing; He lamented what he believed was an excess accumulation of private wealth at the expense of public needs, and he warned that an unfettered free market system and capitalism without regulation would fail to meet basic social demands; This was echoed in "The Affluent Society."; and

WHEREAS, In the early 1960s, while serving as President John F. Kennedy's ambassador to India, Dr. Galbraith expressed grave doubts about increasing U.S. involvement in the cankerous conflict brewing in Southeast Asia that would erupt into the Vietnam War; later that decade, he was chairman of the leftleaning Americans for Democratic Action, and he backed the unsuccessful antiwar presidential candidacy of Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy in 1968; and

WHEREAS, Regarded by admirers such as Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) as a "true Renaissance man," Dr. Galbraith also wrote about the art of India and penned several novels including one work of fiction, "The Triumph" (1968), about the final days of a Central American dictatorship and its relationship to what the author called "an uncontrollably funny institution" -- the U.S. State Department; and

WHEREAS, In 2000 Dr. Galbraith received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the U.S. government's highest civilian honor from President Bill Clinton; and

WHEREAS, John Kenneth Galbraith was born Oct. 15, 1908, on a small farm near Iona Station in Ontario, Canada; from his father, a leading figure in the local branch of the Canadian Liberal Party, he inherited his politics, his wit and his height; As a child he accompanied his father to political rallies; and

WHEREAS, He studied animal husbandry at Ontario Agricultural College at Guelph and later received a doctorate in agricultural economics at the University of California at Berkeley; In 1934, Dr. Galbraith joined the Harvard faculty, where he would serve with several interruptions until he retired in 1975; He became a U.S. citizen in 1937, then left the country on a year-long sabbatical as a research fellow at Cambridge University in England, where he became a disciple of Keynesian economics; and

WHEREAS, Dr. Galbraith served a year on the economics faculty at Princeton University in 1939, then came to Washington to work with the National Defense Advisory Committee, established to prepare the U.S. economy for war; His mentor in the federal bureaucracy was Leon Henderson, a leading New Dealer; Henderson put Dr. Galbraith in charge of the price division in the Office of Price Administration, which was arguably the most powerful civilian post in the management of the wartime economy; and

WHEREAS, Starting in 1943, he spent five years writing and editing at Fortune magazine and took leaves of absence for special assignments; After Germany surrendered in 1945, he went to Europe to direct the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey; and

WHEREAS, After rejoining the Harvard faculty in 1949 as professor of economics, he wrote the books that brought him renown as an economic thinker; besides "The Affluent Society," there was "American Capitalism" (1952), "The New Industrial State" (1967) and "Economics and the Public Purpose" (1973); and

WHEREAS, On the political front, Dr. Galbraith campaigned for John F. Kennedy in the 1960 presidential election; in 1961 he took a two-year leave from Harvard to serve as ambassador to India; aside from the India-China border war of 1962, there was rarely a full day's work to be done, so the ambassador used the extra time to write more books; among them were "Indian Painting" (1968), an art book he wrote with Mohinder Singh Randhawa, and his first novel, "The McLandress Dimension" (1963), a satire written under the pseudonym Mark Epernay; After leaving New Delhi, Dr. Galbraith wrote "Ambassador's Journal" (1969), a day-to-day account of his service in India; and

WHEREAS, After his retirement from Harvard, Dr. Galbraith continued to write, travel and speak to packed auditoriums; he wrote an autobiography, "A Life in Our Times" (1981); he was host of the British-made television series "The Age of Uncertainty" and author of a best-selling book by the same name; with Soviet economist Stanislav Menshikov, he wrote "Capitalism, Communism and Coexistence: From a Bitter Past to a Better Prospect; and

WHEREAS, In 1999, Dr. Galbraith wrote "Name-Dropping," a collection of remembrances of famous figures he'd encountered, including Harry S. Truman and Jawaharlal Nehru; He divided his time between his home in Cambridge, summers at his "unfarmed farm" in Newfane, Vt., and a chalet in Gstaad, Switzerland, where he spent winters skiing; he is survived by his wife, Catherine Atwater Galbraith, whom he married in 1937; and three sons, Alan, Peter, and James; One son, Douglas, preceded him in death; therefore, be it

RESOLVED, BY THE SENATE OF THE NINETY-FOURTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that we extend our sincere condolences to the family and friends of Dr. John Kenneth Galbraith, truly a great part of American economic history; and be it further

RESOLVED, That a suitable copy of this resolution be presented to the family of John Kenneth Galbraith.