Frank Billings Kellogg was an American statesman who served in the U. S. Senate and as 45th U. S. Secretary of State. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for co-authoring of the Kellogg–Briand Pact.
Background
Kellogg was born in Potsdam on December 22, 1856 to Frederick A. Kellogg and and Amy F. Kellog. His family moved to Minnesota in 1865.
Kellogg's father took the family to Minnesota to farm, but the endeavor was not prosperous.
In 1887, at age 31, Kellogg became a partner in a prestigious law firm in St. Paul, Minnesota, headed by his cousin, Cushman Kellogg Davis.
Education
Kellogg worked on the family farm and managed to obtain six years of formal education, an accomplishment for children of hard-working farming families. He determinably worked to be become a lawyer and escape the miseries of farm life.
Although he had no formal education beyond grade school, Kellogg studied law in a Rochester, Minn. , office specializing in corporate law.
As special assistant to the U. S. attorney general during the administration of President Theodore Roosevelt, Kellogg was responsible for the prosecution of the Standard Oil Company in 1910-1911 and other government antitrust suits.
Career
Kellogg passed the bar in 1877, and he described his success as "a life line thrown to rescue me from a desperate struggle for a livelihood.
"As a young attorney, he took every case that came his way.
These government victories led to the greatest single trust case of the era, the prosecution of the Standard Oil Company for violating the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.
This victory inspired newspapers to describe Kellogg as "the trust buster. "
In 1906 he began prosecution of the Union Pacific Railroad, which was eating up its competition at an alarming rate.
By this time, Kellogg had undergone a conversion in political thinking.
He began his career as a Republican conservative, but by 1912 he admonished his fellow lawyers to "stand for modern economic legislation, necessary to the development of the people.
"In 1916 Kellogg was elected as a Republican Senator to the U. S. Congress, representing the state of Minnesota.
He was, however, defeated in his 1922 bid for re-election.
He was named secretary of state in 1925.
Kellogg tried unsuccessfully to limit naval armaments at the Geneva Naval Conference of 1927, and in 1929 he helped draw up the Kellogg-Briand Pact, renouncing war as an instrument of national policy. After retiring from the State Department in 1929, Kellogg served from 1930 to 1935 as a judge on the Permanent Court of International Justice at The Hague.