Background
He was born on May 30, 1893 in Nashville, Tennessee, United States, the son of Paul Lowe Sloan, a merchant and civic leader, and Anna Mae Joy Sloan.
He was born on May 30, 1893 in Nashville, Tennessee, United States, the son of Paul Lowe Sloan, a merchant and civic leader, and Anna Mae Joy Sloan.
He obtained the LL. B. from Vanderbilt University in 1915.
After university he was admitted to the Tennessee bar. He was associated with his father in the early years of his career.
During World War I he became a first lieutenant in the infantry, served overseas, and was discharged as a major in the officers' reserve corps. He also was a lieutenant colonel in the Georgia National Guard and a colonel in the Tennessee National Guard.
From 1919 to 1922 Sloan served as assistant to the chairman of the American National Red Cross. In 1922 he became secretary of the Copper and Brass Research Institute. In 1926 he became secretary of the Cotton and Textile Institute, serving as president and chairman of the board from 1932 to 1935. He was also chairman of the Cotton Textile Code Authority under the New Deal. He also was chairman of the Consumers Goods Industries Committee under the NRA. A director of some of the nation's largest corporations, Sloan dealt with corporate and government officials at the highest levels.
As Commissioner of Commerce for New York after 1940, he sought to attract business and industry to the city, and as chairman of Mayor Fiorello La Guardia's Business Advisory Board he worked closely with the War Production Board.
Sloan became active in the international economic community following World War II. He was chairman of the board of trustees of the International Chamber of Commerce in 1951. In 1951 Sloan headed the American delegation to the International Chamber of Commerce Congress in Lisbon.
In 1938 Sloan became a member of the board of the Metropolitan Opera Association, and in 1940 he was chairman of a fund-raising committee that netted $1. 3 million, exceeding its initial goal by $300, 000. That year he was elected president of the Metropolitan Opera Association. Another drive for funds to tide the Met through the war brought $318, 000 in 1944. In 1946 Sloan negotiated the right of the Metropolitan Opera Association to determine the number and competence of chorus members without obtaining the consent of the Metropolitan Opera Guild.
Sloan made repeated efforts for repeal of the federal admissions tax on nonprofit musical organizations, a carryover from World War II, and urged subscribers to contribute to help erase the Met's deficits. The repeal of the tax in June 1951 enabled the Met to raise ticket prices by 20 percent without passing on the increase to the purchaser.
He died in New York City shortly before he was to have assumed the post of president of the International Chamber of Commerce in Tokyo.
He urged the signing of peace treaties with Japan and West Germany, and supported the American technical assistance program and treaties for ending double taxation on incomes earned abroad. Sloan also sought a stable international monetary fund and encouraged American agencies abroad to adopt a more assertive position in explaining the benefits of the competitive free-enterprise system.
He was optimistic that the government, management and labor could work together to resolve problems plaguing the industry. He nonetheless believed that free enterprise had an important role to play in research, education, and the fine arts - both as a means of keeping the spirit of voluntarism alive and as a method of checking further encroachments and controls by big government in American life.
He was a skillful negotiator.
On November 30, 1929, he married Florence Lincoln Rockefeller. They had two daughters.