Cleo Frank Craig was born on April 6, 1893 in Rich Hill, Missouri, United States. He was the youngest of seven children of John Stuman Craig, a salesman, and Missouri Ann Davis, who had founded the mining town during the 1880's. His parents had selected the name Cleo before his birth, hoping for a daughter.
Craig attended public schools in Rich Hill, where he was valedictorian of his high school class in 1909, and he graduated from the University of Missouri with a B. S. in electrical engineering in 1913.
Immediately after graduation, he went to work in St. Louis for the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) as a plant equipment inspector.
Craig held a variety of positions at AT&T plants in the Midwest, including division inspector (1913), district plant chief (1919), and district plant superintendent (1920). In 1922 he was transferred to AT&T's Long Lines Division in New York City, where he was a plant accountant.
He spent the years 1925-1927 in Atlanta as a division plant superintendent in charge of Long Lines facilities in the southeastern states, then returned to New York City as special representative in AT&T's General Department.
Craig became general manager of Long Lines in 1933 and in 1940 was elected vice-president of Long Lines and made a member of its board of directors. The following year he joined the board of Bell Telephone Laboratories and was appointed AT&T's vice-president in charge of personnel relations.
Craig was in charge of AT&T's labor relations during World War II and the immediate postwar period. He negotiated with the National Federation of Telephone Workers and settled the telephone workers' 1947 strike against AT&T. Craig was considered a possible successor to AT&T president Walter S. Gifford when Gifford resigned from AT&T to become ambassador to Great Britain in 1948. The presidency, however, went to another AT&T vice-president, LeRoy A. Wilson. Craig took over Wilson's vacated post of vice-president for finance and revenue and was elected to the AT&T board of directors in 1949. When Wilson died in June 1951, the board of directors elected Craig as AT&T's president on July 2, 1951. Craig headed AT&T at a time when it was expanding and upgrading its facilities to satisfy pent-up postwar demand. The number of telephones in the AT&T system increased from 22 million to 35 million between 1945 and 1950, and grew to 46 million by 1955. AT&T's annual revenues increased accordingly: $1. 9 billion in 1945, $3. 3 billion in 1950, and $5. 3 billion in 1955. AT&T made numerous technological advances during Craig's presidency: the replacement of thousands of central office switches to inaugurate the beginnings of nationwide direct-dial long-distance service; the installation of more than 200, 000 miles of coaxial cables and microwave relays to accommodate the rapidly expanding national television networks, NBC, CBS, and ABC; and the laying of the world's first undersea telephone cable. The new direct-dial technology eliminated the need for large numbers of telephone operators and reduced the cost of long-distance services in comparison with the still-expensive local service. Congressional pressure prompted AT&T to develop new accounting and separations procedures, starting with the Charleston Conference separations plan of 1953, which resulted in long-distance rates subsidizing local telephone service. This cross-subsidization encouraged the growth of competing long-distance telephone companies during the following decades.
Craig was also involved in the negotiations with the United States Department of Justice that ended an antitrust case filed against AT&T in 1949. The 1956 consent decree accepted by Craig allowed AT&T to retain ownership of its Western Electric production facilities, but it had to refrain from any manufacturing activities not related to telephone operations. The consent decree prevented AT&T from entering the computer business, which experienced a period of rapid growth after the invention of the transistor by AT&T's Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1948. AT&T made its transistor technology available to any company willing to pay a licensing fee, thereby feeding the growth of the lucrative new industry from which it had agreed to exclude itself. Craig oversaw AT&T's laying of the world's first undersea telephone cable, a joint venture of AT&T, the British Post Office, and the Canadian Overseas Telecommunications Corporation. The $42 million line ran from Newfoundland to Scotland and could carry thirty-six simultaneous telephone conversations, which was three times the previous capacity of the existing radio-telephone link.
In late 1956, Craig became AT&T's chairman of the board, and Frederick Kappel succeeded him as AT&T's president. Craig retired as chairman the following year, but he remained a member of AT&T's board of directors until 1960.
Craig was one of a cadre of white Anglo-Saxon Protestant executives who rose to power under the guidance, and during the long tenure, of AT&T president Walter Gifford. He continued Gifford's policy of presenting AT&T to the public as a unique company carrying out a national mission to provide full-service telephone operations under a government-protected monopoly. But the financial accounting and separations procedures initiated in the 1950's led to crosssubsidies, which, combined with the development of the new microwave and computer technologies, later caused the rise of competing telephone equipment manufacturers and providers of long-distance telephone service--and the breakup of AT&T in the 1980's. Craig died near his home in Ridgewood, New Jersey.
On September 7, 1914, he married Laura Heck; they had three children. Craig's wife died in 1962, and he married Esther Abbott Sutton in 1965.
