James William Good

JAMES WILLIAM GOOD was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on 24 September 1866; graduated from Coe College, Iowa, 1892; studied law at the University of Michigan Law School and received his degree in 1893; was admitted to the bar in the same year; practiced briefly in Indiana then returned to Cedar Rapids to form a partnership with Charles J. Deccon; was city attorney of Cedar Rapids, 1906–1908; was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1909 to 1921, was chairman of the Appropriations Committee, 1919–1921, and had a substantial part in the establishment of the national budget system; resigned in 1921 to return to the practice of the law in Evanston, Illinois, as a partner in the firm of Good, Childs, Bobb & Wescott; served as western campaign manager for Calvin Coolidge in 1924 and Herbert Hoover in 1928; served as Secretary of War, 6 March–18 November 1929; died while in office in Washington, D.C., on 18 November 1929.


The Artist

Douglas Chandor (1897–1953) established homes in New York City and Weatherford, Texas, after moving to the United States from his native England in 1926, and quickly developed a successful portrait business with a number of prominent Americans as his subjects. He painted President Hoover, Vice President Curtis, and the entire Hoover cabinet including Secretary Good in 1929. Among his later subjects were President and Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, House Speaker Sam Rayburn, Bernard Baruch, and Andrew Mellon. In 1946, Chandor painted Winston Churchill and Mrs. Churchill at a moment when the wartime leader, no longer Prime Minister, was launching his six-volume, Nobel Prize-winning memoir.

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Portrait, James William Good

JAMES WILLIAM GOOD
Hoover Administration
By Douglas Chandor
Oil on canvas, 35¼" x 27¼", 1929


page created 6 March 2001


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