was an American statesman who was Secretary of the Interior, head of the Public Works Administration (PWA), and head of the Petroleum Administration for War (PAW), under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The PAW was charged with coordinating the efforts of the government, the military, and the energy industry to insure a secure supply of fuel for the nation’s war effort. In his role as Interior secretary, he came into frequent conflict with business interests both as a conservationist and because of the public programs he set up. President Truman accepted Ickes’s resignation in 1946 from the cabinet in an argument over Truman’s nomination of Edwin W. Pauley, an oil executive, as Undersecretary of the Navy.