MEIER, JULIUS

MEIER, JULIUS (1874–1937), U.S. governor. Meier was born in Portland, Oregon. He became president and general manager of his family's mercantile firm, Meier and Frank Company in Portland. Meier developed the Columbia River highway system. During World War I, he was northwest regional director of the Council of National Defense. When his former law partner, the Progressive Republican candidate for governor in 1930, died during the campaign, Meier reluctantly agreed to run as an Independent against a regular Republican and a Democrat and won. During his term as governor (1931–35), he fostered conservation of the state's natural resources, formation of the state police system, and establishment of a non-political judiciary, and he demanded rigid economies in state expenditures. While governor, he served as president of Congregation Beth Israel in Portland (1933–35), which his father had helped to found. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: H.M. Corning (ed.), Dictionary of Oregon History (1956), 165; R. Neuberger, in: Opinion, 4:9 (1934), 10–12; J.J. Nodel, The Ties Between (1959), 128; E. Pillsbury, in: American Hebrew, 129 (1931), 509–22; B. Postal, Jewish Tourist Guide to the U.S. (1954), 520–3; UJE, S.V. (Robert E. Levinson)