Edward Reilly Stettinius was an American executive, industrialist, and assistant secretary of war.
Background
Edward was born on February 15, 1865 at St. Louis, Missouri, United States, a son of Joseph and Isabel (Riley) Stettinius. The father had come of Maryland German stock and after a venture in river steam-boating had been employed for many years by a wholesale grocery firm at St. Louis. He died when Edward was only three years old.
Education
The boy was a student at St. Louis University, in the preparatory and collegiate departments, from 1874 through 1881.
Career
After studies he followed several years of employment by local business concerns and banks and after that one or two only partially successful personal ventures. His mother died in 1891 and in the following year he went to Chicago, becoming treasurer of Stirling & Company, manufacturers of machinery.
Later he became vice-president and general manager and in a reorganization that occurred in 1905 he was made president; after a consolidation in 1906 with Babcock & Wilcox, he was made vice-president.
Outside a small group of business associates, Stettinius was comparatively unknown when in 1909, at the age of forty-four, he was made president of the Diamond Match Company, of which in 1908 he had become treasurer. A single act of his administration brought him widespread prominence.
On January 28, 1911, his corporation freely dedicated to the public a patent (of November 15, 1898) for a substitute for the poisonous white phosphorous used in the manufacture of matches.
After the Allies, in 1915, had retained the banking firm of J. P. Morgan & Company to handle their purchases of war supplies in the United States, the firm made a nation-wide canvass in search of a man able to control and bring to fruition so vast and unprecedented a business.
The choice finally fell upon Stettinius, who after a few months resigned the Diamond Match presidency. His task was not merely to make contracts with persons and corporations offering products and materials desired by the Allies; he had to see that war munitions in enormous quantities should be produced in record time from remodeled and often improvised plants, whose owners were at first quite unversed in the munitions industry.
Yet many such plants turned out within a stipulated period large consignments of shells that fully met the technical requirements set up by the Allied governments. This was accomplished so promptly and satisfactorily that Stettinius, almost over night, became an outstanding figure in the war.
How his success impressed his immediate business associates is indicated by the announcement in January 1916 of his admission as a member of the Morgan firm. Within two years the total of Allied purchases through his agency reached $3, 000, 000, 000 - truly a record for such transactions.
After the entry of the United States into the war, Stettinius was appointed surveyor-general of purchases, and, on April 16, 1918, as second assistant secretary of war.
In July 1918 he was sent to France as special representative of the Secretary of War in the matter of foreign orders for war materials placed by the American Expeditionary Force.
Returning to New York after the Armistice, Stettinius left the government service in January 1919 and remained with the Morgan firm until his death at Locust Valley, Long Island. He died at Locust Valley, New York on September 3, 1925.