Franklin Knight Lane

Franklin Knight Lane (1864-1921), American statesman and secretary of the interior in the administration of President Woodrow Wilson. Lane was born on a farm near Charlottetown on Prince Edward Island, a Maritime province of Canada, but he grew up in California after his family moved there in 1871. He was admitted to the bar in 1888 after receiving his education at the University of California and Hastings College of Law in San Francisco. Over the following years Lane worked as a reporter for the Oakland Times and the Alta California and acted as special correspondent in New York City for the San Francisco Chronicle. In 1891 he purchased the Tacoma Evening News, but it failed three years later.

Returning to San Francisco, Lane established a law partnership with his brother and devoted himself to fighting civic corruption. In 1898 he served on the commission to draft a city charter and was elected to the first of three successive terms as city and county attorney. A Democrat, he ran unsuccessfully for governor of California in 1902 and for mayor of San Francisco in 1903.

In 1905 President Theodore Roosevelt appointed Lane to the Interstate Commerce Commission, where he strove to achieve equitable relations between shippers and railroads, establishing new regulations and procedures. In 1913 President Woodrow Wilson named him secretary of the interior. As a Westerner, conservationist, and reformer, Lane’s appointment matched the progressive mood of the period and won general approval. During his tenure he formulated programs for the development of Alaska, fuller use of the public domain, operation of the National Park Reserves, and the harnessing of hydroelectric resources. As a member of the Council of Defense after the outbreak of World War I (1914-1918), he became a vigorous proponent of the entry of the United States into the conflict. Lane resigned as secretary of the interior in March 1920 to accept the vice presidency of Edward L. Doheny's Pan-American Petroleum Company.