George Rublee was born in Madison, Wis. , the son of Horace Rublee, a Vermont-born newspaper editor and owner, a founder and state chairman of the Wisconsin Republican party, and minister to Switzerland, and of Kate Hopkins. Rublee lived in Switzerland until he was eight years old, when his father became editor and part owner of the Milwaukee Sentinel.
Rublee was the only member of Groton's first graduating class in 1886, received the A. B. from Harvard in 1890, and then spent two years in Europe. He earned the LL. B. at Harvard in 1895.
Rublee taught for one year at Harvard Law School. After two years of practice in Chicago, he moved to New York City in 1898 to practice with Victor Morawetz, a leading corporation lawyer. Shrewd investments made Rublee a fortune, and in 1900, at the age of thirty-two, he retired to the fashionable social life of Europe, where he became a favorite tennis partner of the king of Sweden.
Later he returned to the United States and joined the New York law firm of Spooner and Cotton. In 1910 he assisted Louis D. Brandeis in presenting the case against Secretary of the Interior Richard Ballinger before a Senate investigating committee. He supported Theodore Roosevelt for president in 1912, but after Woodrow Wilson's election he helped Brandeis draft financial legislation for the new administration. In 1913 he went to Washington as Brandeis's liaison with congressional committees. Rublee wrote the key provision of the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914. President Wilson had favored enactment of detailed definitions of prohibited corporate practices. Rublee feared that would lead to endless disputes and evasions, and that a better approach was to outlaw unfair practices in general terms and give the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) powers to determine whether a particular practice was unfair and to issue cease-and-desist orders. He persuaded a friend, Congressman Raymond B. Stevens of New Hampshire, to introduce a bill so drafted. In what Arthur S. Link called the "decisive event in the history of the anti-trust program, " Wilson supported the Stevens bill and Rublee's draft was incorporated as section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act.
Wilson gave Rublee an interim appointment to the FTC, on which he served without pay for eighteen months (March 1915 - September 1916). Senate Republicans objected to him on the ground that as a Progressive Republican he was more of a Wilson Democrat than a regular Republican. Also, he had opposed the election in 1914 of Senate Republican leader Jacob H. Gallinger of New Hampshire, where Rublee had a residence. Therefore, under traditional "senatorial courtesy" the Senate refused to confirm appointment of a nominee to whom his senator objected. Nevertheless, Wilson made extensive use of Rublee's services.
In 1916 he was appointed to a commission to report on the operation of the Adamson Eight-Hour Law, and in 1917 to the Commercial Economy Board of the Advisory Council of National Defense, to the Priorities Committee of the War Industries Board, and as special counsel to the Treasury Department. In 1918-1919 Wilson sent him to London as American delegate to the Allied Maritime Transport Council, which pooled and allocated shipping for war use. Here, in association with Jean Monnet and others, Rublee became enthusiastic about the prospects of a new world order and returned to America to fight for the League of Nations.
In 1921, Rublee joined the Washington law firm of Covington, Burling, Rublee, Acheson and Shorb, in which one of the partners was the future secretary of state, Dean Acheson. Rublee accompanied Ambassador Dwight Morrow to Mexico in 1928 and helped him settle disputes over properties owned by American citizens and the Roman Catholic Church.
In 1930 he served as a referee for the government of Colombia in a dispute with foreign capitalists over oil holdings, and his decision for Colombia was accepted. He continued as adviser to Colombia until 1933.
In 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Rublee director of the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees--the five members of which represented the United States, France, Britain, Scandinavia, and South America--which was to negotiate an agreement with the Nazi government that would allow the emigration of German Jews with their property. The Germans agreed to do so if the emigration was financed by a loan to Germany that would be repaid with extra exports of German goods. Discouraged by the unwillingness of other countries to accept either Jewish refugees or the German method of repayment, Rublee resigned in 1939.
In 1940, Secretary of State Cordell Hull appointed Rublee chairman of the Subcommittee for Political Problems of the Advisory Committee on Problems, which planned for the postwar world, but ill health severely limited his participation. In 1947-1948 he served as president of the Harvard Alumni Association. He died in New York City.
Quotes from others about the person
His friend and law partner, Dean Acheson, wrote that Rublee's life alternated between periods of "contented languor touched with melancholy" and "passionate. .. seizure which carried him to heights of brilliant and tireless effort. " Perhaps, said Acheson, the "favor of fortune" prevented Rublee from acquiring the discipline to extend himself consistently to his full potential, but "few men have ever so absorbed the interest and devotion of their friends. "
On January 12, 1899, Rublee married Juliet Barrett; they had no children.
