(London : Jonathan Cape 1950. First UK edition. No. of pag...)
London : Jonathan Cape 1950. First UK edition. No. of pages: 320. Description: 320 p. ; 22 cm. Subjects: Roosevelt. Franklin Delano. 1882-1945 --Yalta Conference (1945).
Edward Reilly Stettinius Jr. was an American businessman who was a corporation executive and United States secretary of state.
Background
Edward was born on October 22, 1900 in Chicago, Illinois, United States, the younger of two sons and third of four children of Edward Reilly (Riley, Rilley) and Judith (Carrington) Stettinius.
His mother was a Virginian of colonial English ancestry. His father, of German descent, was a native of St. Louis; active in many business enterprises, he became president of the Diamond Match Company (1909 - 1915), a partner in the banking house of J. P. Morgan and Company, and a War Department official during World War I. Young Edward grew up in Chicago and in Staten Island, New York.
Education
After graduating from the Pomfret School in Connecticut, he entered the University of Virginia in 1919. An indifferent student, he neglected his studies for YMCA work, Sunday school teaching, and missionary work among the poor in Albemarle County, Virginia, and left college without a degree in 1924.
Career
Stettinius began after college as a stockroom clerk at GM's Hyatt roller-bearing division and soon rose to employment manager. In 1926, as special assistant to Pratt, he instituted one of the automobile industry's first group insurance plans, improved working and sanitary conditions, and helped formulate advertising policy.
Stettinius moved in 1934 to the United States Steel Corporation as a vicepresident. He was influential in the company's decision to recognize the steel workers' union in 1937. The following year he became chairman of the board of United States Steel. Stettinius supported the basic economic goals of the New Deal.
His liberal social views early came to the attention of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who in 1933 appointed him to the Industrial Advisory Board to act as a liaison officer with the National Recovery Administration. Affable and informal, Stettinius proved himself a patient and effective administrator. Roosevelt called Stettinius into government service again in 1939 as chairman of the War Resources Board, established to survey potential American war needs, and the following year placed him on the new National Defense Advisory Commission, at which point Stettinius resigned from U. S. Steel to devote full time to government service.
He became director of priorities of the Office of Production Management in January 1941 and, nine months later, administrator of lend-lease. The smoothness with which this vital program functioned under his direction won him acclaim both at home and abroad.
In September 1943 Roosevelt appointed Stettinius undersecretary of state and charged him with the task of reorganizing the State Department, whose structure had failed to adapt to its expanded functions during World War II. Among other changes, Stettinius eliminated administrative duplication, created a set of offices to deal with daily problems, thus giving the undersecretary and the assistant secretaries more time for broad policy questions, and established two top-level committees, one on policy and one on postwar programs. He also strengthened the department's relations with the White House, Congress, and the public.
On December 1, 1944, after the resignation of the ailing Cordell Hull, Roosevelt named Stettinius secretary of state. Stettinius' tenure coincided with the crucial period at the close of World War II during which the Allied powers began to plot the course of the postwar world. It was clear that Roosevelt planned to keep most foreign policy decisions in his own hands and to negotiate personally with other heads of state. Stettinius, it was generally agreed, was selected primarily for his talents as a harmonizer, his effectiveness in implementing policy decisions, and his commitment to the ideals of a world security organization.
He did not originate substantive foreign policy, and at times seemed to lack the confidence to deal with major policy perplexities; yet he selected strong men for key positions in the department, displayed a talent for getting them to work together, and often recommended forcefully to the president the ideas of these aides.
As undersecretary he had headed the American delegation to the seminal Dumbarton Oaks Conference in 1944, at which the Allies accepted as a basis for negotiation the State Department's proposals for structure of the United Nations.
In February 1945 he accompanied Roosevelt to the Yalta Conference with Churchill and Stalin, at which it was decided to call a conference in San Francisco at the end of April to form the new organization. Stettinius subsequently attended the Inter-American Conference in Mexico City to reassure the nations of Latin America that the creation of the United Nations would not prevent the development of a hemispheric security system. The resulting Act of Chapultepec laid the foundation for the Organization of American States in 1948.
After Roosevelt's death in April 1945, President Truman asked Stettinius to continue in office and head the American delegation to the San Francisco Conference. Its successful outcome owed much to his dedication of purpose, which communicated itself to other delegations and to the American public, and to his skills as a conciliator, both within an American delegation made up of strong individualists and in the private meetings of representatives of the Big Five powers.
When the Russians demanded unanimous consent in the Security Council to consider disputes, Stettinius sent word to Stalin that the United States would never agree to this proposal and succeeded in having it withdrawn. President Truman, who did not fully share Roosevelt's confidence in Stettinius, accepted his resignation as secretary of state at the close of the San Francisco Conference, but appointed him chairman of the United States delegation to the United Nations Preparatory Commission and, in January 1946, chairman of the American delegation to the first session of the U. N. General Assembly, as well as American representative on the Security Council.
He resigned in June of that year. He lived during his retirement at his estate on the Rapidan River, Virginia.
He died of a coronary thrombosis at the home of a sister in Greenwich, Connecticut, at the age of forty-nine.
Achievements
Edward Reilly Stettinius was popular for his service as United States Secretary of State under Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman from 1944 to 1945, and as U. S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Stettinius' most notable contributions as secretary of state centered on his vigorous efforts to establish the United Nations.
Prematurely white-haired, with dark eyebrows, blue eyes, tanned face, and a quick smile, Stettinius was striking in appearance and inspired goodwill.
Connections
On May 15, 1926, he married Virginia Gordon Wallace, daughter of a prominent family of Richmond, Virginia. They had three children: Edward Reilly, and the twins Wallace and Joseph. They had three children: Edward Reilly, and the twins Wallace and Joseph.
