JThe son of a coal miner, John S. Fine rose to face post-war
challenges as governor and the birth of “suburbia.” Fine was born
in a mine “patch” home in the anthracite coal town of
Alden, Newport Township, Luzerne County, on April 10, 1893. Fine
was the son of Jacob W. Fine and Margaret Croop Fine. Fine learned
about hard work at a young age as he labored on the coal company’s
farm, plowing fields, milking cows, and doing other chores. While
Fine was still young, the family moved to Nanticoke where he attended
Nanticoke High School and wrote community news part time for a
small newspaper.
After graduating from high school, Fine earned his LL.B. degree
from Dickinson Law School in Carlisle in 1914. The following
year he was
admitted to the Luzerne County Bar, practicing law in Wilkes-Barre,
near his hometown of Nanticoke, until the start of World War
I. In May 1917, Fine enlisted in the 23rd U. S. Army Engineers,
advancing
to the rank of sergeant. In 1919, while stationed in Ireland,
the future governor advanced his education with post-graduate
work
at
the University of Dublin’s Trinity College. He was discharged
from the military in August 1919 and returned to his law practice,
eventually as a partner in the firm Coughlin and Fine.
His direction toward public service and politics was noted soon
after law school when he became Republican district chairman,
Fourth Luzerne
District, serving 1916 to 1920, except during military duty.
He became secretary of the Republican County Committee, 1920–1922 and
Luzerne County Republican chairman, 1922–1923. In 1927, Fine
began a 23-year career as a court judge. Governor Gifford Pinchot
appointed him to the bench of the Court of Common Pleas, Luzerne
County, where he served from January 3, 1927, through a successful
public election for a ten-year term that November, and was re-elected
for another ten years in November 1939. Soon after that election,
on December 5, 1939, at the age of 46, Fine married Helene Pennebecker
Morgan, and from this marriage were two children, John Sydney Jr.
and Donald.
On July 15, 1947, he was elevated to the Pennsylvania Superior
Court after being appointed by Governor James Duff to fill
a vacancy left
by retiring Judge Thomas Baldrige. In November 1947, Fine
was successfully elected to a permanent term, serving until
he
began his campaign
for governor on March 1, 1950. Fine was the choice of Governor
Duff to succeed him as governor and together they campaigned,
with Duff
running for the U. S. Senate. A continuing feud between Duff
and the Pennsylvania Manufacturers Association forced Fine
to contend
with a bitter multi-million dollar primary among opposing
Republican factions, but he was victorious in the primary.
In the fall
election of 1950, Fine faced the charismatic Democratic mayor
of Philadelphia,
Richardson Dilworth, a Yale cum laude graduate and a former
marine with a Purple Heart from World War I and a Silver
Star in World
War II. Dilworth’s running mate was Michael A. Musmanno, who eventually
became a state Supreme Court justice. Duff managed a victory by a
slim 86,000 vote margin, the narrowest margin for a Republican in
twenty years. Fine’s favored lieutenant governor nominee,
Lloyd H. Wood, defeated Musmanno by 126,000 votes.
Fine’s term would be a tough challenge and within three months
personal tragedy struck. During the campaign in late October 1950,
Fine’s wife Helene fell from a platform and began to suffer
from severe headaches. A month after the inauguration, Mrs. Fine
underwent surgery, but her condition became critical and she died
on April 23 following more brain surgery at University Hospital in
Philadelphia. Fine was only the second Pennsylvania governor to be
widowed while in office, the other being Simon Snyder in 1810. The
bitterness of the loss to his family was nearly matched by the bitterness
of a divided legislature arguing over the governor’s tax
proposals.
One of the problems of postwar Pennsylvania was a lingering
recession and an unemployment rate that had doubled in
just two years prior
the Fine administration. Fine inherited requirements
to meet interest payments, mandatory teacher salary increases,
veterans’ bonuses,
and other state government expenses combined to be about $120 million
short of revenues. In addition, the postwar “baby boom” was
just beginning. While the upper grades of public schools were not
yet feeling the effect of the population boom, the lower grades were
becoming strained to accommodate more pupils. School enrollments
increased by about 38,000 students each year of Fine’s term.
A new word, “suburbia,” was coined as areas and counties
surrounding cities began to have population explosions, from 50
percent growth in suburban Harrisburg, for example, to 46 percent
in Montgomery
County, and 387 percent for the new community of Bristol. The urban
areas, such as Philadelphia, Harrisburg, and Lancaster grew by
more than 18 percent.
School buildings were generally becoming run-down, classrooms
understaffed and overcrowded, equipment outdated and
worn out, and only half
of the state’s teachers held college degrees. There were still
more than 330 one-room schools and the average teacher’s salary
was just $3,410 per year. The poor state of the Commonwealth’s
schools was despite the fact that education expenditures had been
tripled since 1940, but it was inadequate to meet the modern demands
of educating the state’s growing population.
Fine believed strongly that state government was in
need of reorganization and the Department of Health
was one
such agency
updated to meet
the health needs of local communities. Fine expanded
mental health programs, highway programs, and a clean
up of state
waterways
begun in previous administrations. The governor formed
the Chesterman Committee to study government structure
and to
make recommendations.
However,
recommendations were not completed until after Fine
left office. To pay for new or expanding programs,
Fine proposed
a one half
percent income tax, but the General Assembly rejected
the idea. The governor
wanted to avoid increasing the tax burden on businesses,
believing that it would cause more unemployment. In
fact, he gave employers
retroactive tax credits in connection with the Unemployment
Compensation Reserve Fund. Fine instead turned to other
revenue sources. Except
for a limited six-month sales tax during the Pinchot
administration, the state’s first permanent sales tax, amounting to one percent,
was passed in 1953 and has increasingly remained a part of Pennsylvania’s
budget ever since. Under the State Public School Building Authority,
created in 1947, more than $430 million was borrowed and committed
to 714 school building projects, the biggest school building boom
in state history. In 1951, the legislature expanded the ability
of local school districts to form their own taxing authorities.
Fine also signed laws in 1951 providing training in
areas such as nursing for the unemployed, licensing
for commercial
homes
for the
elderly, rehabilitation programs for drug users,
and safety regulations in the handling of liquid gases.
Pennsylvania had been ranked
near the bottom in public health by the American
Public Health Association
and Fine saw to improvements in health care. He approved
a pay raise for legislators, congressional redistricting,
allowing
a truck weight
limit increase from 15,000 to 60,000 pounds, and
extending the
Turnpike into his native Luzerne County.
Although Fine came down on the side of privacy when
he vetoed the General Assembly’s attempt to publish the names of welfare
recipients, he considered himself a Cold War warrior and was a
strong anti-Communist. Because of the fervor raised with the hunt
for Communists
in the United States during the era of Joseph McCarthy, whom Fine
supported at the time, the Communist Party was outlawed and Fine
required all state workers, including teachers in state supported
colleges, to each sign a loyalty oath. In his farewell address,
Fine expressed the fear of many Americans who firmly believed that
a surprise
Russian nuclear attack and war with the Soviet Union was a real
possibility.
During the second half of his administration, Fine
signed into law a uniform child adoption law,
prison reform,
and he established
the
Governor’s Commission on Race Relations, a cross-section
of respected civic leaders to work with local communities to end
discrimination.
At the same time, he opened up the State Police to African Americans
and ended segregation in the state divisions of the National Guard.
Fine initiated the construction of the State Vocational Rehabilitation
Center at Johnstown, of which the dedication would be left to the
next governor, George Leader. Other rehabilitation centers around
the state were established to retrain injured workers. The governor
also sought revisions in the state constitution, but Pennsylvanians
voted down the idea and would not be ready for such a change until
1968. Fine was the first Pennsylvania governor to have
his inauguration televised, but television would
also prove
to cut both
ways. During the National Republican Convention
in July 1952, Fine
led the Pennsylvania
delegation. Privately, Fine supported General
Douglas McArthur for president, but a group within his
own delegation favored
Senator Robert Taft. Fine requested time from
the chair of the convention
to caucus his delegation before casting votes,
which would normally be granted as a floor courtesy
to
a state delegation.
The chair
reportedly
reneged on the request, which made Fine appear
indecisive to television viewers. Further, Fine
was snubbed
by the convention leadership
when he sought to cast Pennsylvania’s vote to put Dwight Eisenhower
over the top as the party’s nominee. Again, the discourtesy
made the governor appear foolish to viewers. This incident hurt Fine’s
public image and overshadowed his accomplishments as governor.
Fine faced great challenges in a postwar economy,
political enemies within his own party, negative
headlines from
the news media,
and a booming population, but despite overwhelming
opposition in some
instances, his administration reached many
noteworthy goals that he set. It was also during Fine’s term of office that Dr. Jonas
Salk, who was working at the University of Pittsburgh, succeeded
in finding a vaccine for polio, which had crippled thousands of Pennsylvanians,
as well as people around the world. Philadelphia was reorganized
under a new charter and the nation’s first commercial nuclear
generating plant became operational in 1954 in Shippingport, Beaver
County.
Following his term of office, Fine returned
to the practice of law and lived on a farm
in Loyalville,
Luzerne County.
He also
partnered with his brother-in-law
in coal stripping and construction. In 1957, he made
an unsuccessful bid to return to the bench on
the Common Pleas
Court
of Luzerne County.
John S. Fine died on May 21, 1978, and is
buried in Oak Lawn Cemetery in Nanticoke,
Luzerne
County.
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