Henry Collins (official)
American civil servant and Communist
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Henry Hill Collins Jr. (April 7, 1905 – May 25, 1961) was an American government official in the New Deal National Recovery Administration in the 1930s and later the Agricultural Adjustment Administration. He was a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and the Washington D.C.–based Ware group, along with Alger Hiss, Lee Pressman, Harry Dexter White and others. He was also a "pioneer in the compiling of ornithological field guides."[1][2][3][4][5]
Early life
Collins was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on April 7, 1905, a "scion of a Philadelphia manufacturing family" in paper products. According to Collins, his ancestors came from England in 1640. He received a BA from Princeton University and a business degree from Harvard University.[1][2][4][5]
Collins was a childhood friend of Alger Hiss in Baltimore.[3][6] Whittaker Chambers also described Collins as "my personal friend."[1]
Initially, Collins worked in the family paper business. He left during the Great Depression for work in the federal government during the New Deal.[5]
Government career
In 1933, Collins worked in the National Recovery Administration. He also worked at the Agricultural Adjustment Administration and the US Department of Labor.[2][3][7] He also worked for the Soil Conservation Service, the US Department of Labor, and a House committee on migration.[3] In 1941, he joined the U.S. Small Business Committee, then a Military Affair subcommittee.[3]
During World War II, Collins served as a captain in the Army, fought at the Battle of the Bulge, and won three ribbons and "five European campaign stars." Immediately after the war, he worked for six months as a district official for displaced persons in Germany as part of the States Department's division of occupied territories. Collins remained in government service until 1947.[4][3][5]
In 1948, he was serving as executive director of the American Russian Institute in New York and living at 58 Park Avenue, New York (as testified before HUAC in 1948).[2][3][7][8][9][10]
Alleged espionage activities
In August 1948, as the Hiss Case began, he appeared under subpoena before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and would answer no questions of substance.[3][4]
In 1950, Ware lived at the San Cristobal Valley Ranch near Los Alamos, New Mexico, and its atomic proving grounds. During testimony in 1953, Collins declared, "The ranch was a perfectly legitimate business operation."[3]
In 1952, Nathaniel Weyl confirmed under oath that Collins had been a member of the Ware Group founded by Harold Ware and inherited by Whittaker Chambers.[3]
Subpoenaed again in 1953, he declared, "I will not be a finger man for this committee."[3]
Personal life and death
Collins married Susan B. Anthony II, great-niece of Susan B. Anthony.[2] He married Mary Evans Collins with whom he had two sons and one daughter.[5]
Collins once spotted a prothonotary warbler for Alger Hiss.[5]
Collins died age 57 on May 25, 1961, at Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx after a car crash two days earlier.[2][5]
Works
In addition to books on American and Soviet government, Collins may have authored some dozen books on birds.[11]
- America's Own Refugees; Our 4,000,000 Homeless Migrants (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941)[12]
- The Constitutions of the 16 Constituent or Union Republics of the USSR: A Comparative Analysis (1950)[13]
- Bent's Life Histories of North American Birds (edited) (1960)
- Bird Watchers' Guide (1961)