Background
Edwin Thomas Meredith was born on December 23, 1876, on a farm near Avoca, Iowa, United States. He was the son of Thomas Oliver and Minnie Minerva (Marsh) Meredith, who were of English and Welsh ancestry.
1920
Secretary Meredith speaking at an Arbor Day event, circa 1920
Edwin Thomas Meredith
Edwin T. Meredith and his family
Highland Park College (later Des Moines University)
(Excerpt from Cooperative Relations in Agricultural Develo...)
Excerpt from Cooperative Relations in Agricultural Development: Address of E. T. Meredith, Secretary of Agriculture Before the Land-Grand College Association, Springfield, Mass., October 20, 1920
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1920
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1920
agriculturalist journalist Political activist publisher
Edwin Thomas Meredith was born on December 23, 1876, on a farm near Avoca, Iowa, United States. He was the son of Thomas Oliver and Minnie Minerva (Marsh) Meredith, who were of English and Welsh ancestry.
Edwin Meredith was educated in a country school and later attended high school in Marne, where he was one of only two students to graduate in 1892. Later that year he moved to Des Moines and entered Highland Park College to study business. His college career lasted only a few months, however, as he shifted his time and interest to his grandfather’s newspaper.
At the age of eighteen, Edwin Meredith devoted all of his time to the paper, serving in the capacity of a bookkeeper, conducting the correspondence, and selling advertising. His grandfather gave him as a wedding present the Farmers' Tribune which he transformed into a non-partisan farm paper with a state-wide circulation. Tobacco and liquor advertisements were refused. Profiting in this venture, in 1902 Edwin Meredith embarked upon a greater project, founding Successful Farming, and two years later he sold the Farmers' Tribune in order that he might devote his entire time and attention to the new publication.
Edwin Meredith was a political progressive with a passionate commitment to agriculture, and he used his publications to advance the cause of the family farmer. He also believed that politics offered farmers generally and him personally the opportunity to promote the cause of American agriculture. Although he began his political career as a Roosevelt Republican, Edwin Meredith soon shifted his allegiance to the Democratic Party. He ran for the U.S. Senate in 1914 and for governor two years later, but lost both races. Edwin Meredith never again sought elective office. He devoted substantial time to politics but had many other interests. He was widely acknowledged by his peers in the printing and advertising industries and served terms as president of the Agricultural Publishers Association and the Associated Advertising Clubs of the World. Edwin Meredith also was active in a number of social causes and business organizations. He was a trustee of Drake University, Des Moines University, and Simpson College. He also was a director of the Iowa National Bank and, from 1915 to 1925, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He achieved the 33rd degree of the Masonic Order and served as Sovereign Grand Inspector General of the Scottish Rite Masons in Iowa. Although Edwin Meredith never won elective office, Meredith never lost his interest in politics. He served on several advisory boards and commissions in the Woodrow Wilson administration and came to know and admire William Gibbs McAdoo, President Wilson’s son-in-law and secretary of the treasury. As a reward for his hard work in support of Wilson and McAdoo, the president selected Edwin Meredith in 1920 as his secretary of agriculture.
In 1922 Edwin Meredith purchased the Dairy Farmer, and in the same year, he founded Fruit, Garden, and Home, which in August 1924 became Better Homes and Gardens. Meanwhile, the publishing plant was greatly enlarged and the circulation of his periodicals increased. He created an innovation in the publication of farm papers which was generally adopted by other editors. In the first number of Successful Farming, he announced that he would make good any loss to paid subscribers sustained by trusting any deliberate swindler advertising in his columns and that any such swindler would be publicly exposed. Soon afterward Edwin Meredith made this guarantee more effective by the promise that if the purchaser of any article advertised in Successful Farming found it to be otherwise than represented, his money would be returned. In the days when patent medicine was the backbone of most advertising revenues, he closed the advertising columns of Successful Farming to it, thus making a noteworthy contribution to the cause of "truth in advertising. "He devoted his publications to farming in the Middle West, and to better homes in all parts of the country.
In January 1920 Edwin Meredith was appointed a secretary of agriculture by President Wilson, succeeding David F. Houston and serving with distinction until the end of the Wilson administration. His name was mentioned as a possible presidential nominee of the Democratic party in the campaigns of 1924 and 1928. He held a number of positions on various boards and commissions. Edwin Meredith was a member of the Board of Excess Profit Advisors appointed by Secretary McAdoo in 1917, a member of the Labor Commission to the British Isles appointed by President Wilson in 1918, a director of the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank from 1918 to 1920, and a director of the United States Chamber of Commerce from 1915 to 1919 and from 1923 to his death.
(Excerpt from Cooperative Relations in Agricultural Develo...)
1920(Volume No.153)
Edwin Meredith first voted as a Republican but early became affiliated with the Democratic party. He was the party's candidate for United States senator in 1914 and for governor in 1916 but was defeated in both contests. He was an ardent prohibitionist, a champion of "farm relief," tariff reform, adequate military preparedness, tax reform, and the World Court and the League of Nations.
Edwin was interested in the boys' and girls' club movements and was an active and enthusiastic supporter of the 4-H Club.
Independent, resourceful, and public-spirited, Edwin Meredith was a born leader.
Quotes from others about the person
The principal speaker, his friend and former cabinet colleague, Josephus Daniel, judged Meredith to be "a solid man, a forthright, downright, straightforward man, direct, candid, genuine to the core,..a man who would stand the test of time."
On January 8, 1896, when Edwin Meredith was nineteen years of age, he was married to Edna C. Elliott of English and Irish ancestry.