Jesse Isidor Straus served as the American ambassador to France from 1933 to 1936.
Background
Jesse was born in New York City, New York, United States. He was the son of Isidor and Ida (Blun) Straus and a nephew of Nathan and Oscar S. Straus. He was the eldest of seven children (four sons and three daughters). His uncle Oscar Solomon Straus (1850–1926) was the first Jewish United States Cabinet Secretary, serving as Secretary of Commerce and Labor from 1906 to 1909.
Education
He was educated at the preparatory school of Julius Sachs in New York and at Harvard, graduating in 1893.
Career
After working for a time as a bank clerk in New York, Straus joined the dry goods store of Abraham & Straus in Brooklyn, in which his father was a partner.
In 1896 he became a junior executive in the department store of R. H. Macy & Company, then owned by his father and his uncle Nathan. Macy's was then on 14th Street in Manhattan.
In 1900 Jesse and his younger brother Percy were given the task of finding a new location for the store farther uptown, and they chose the site at Herald Square where the present enormous store was built, opening late in 1902. Percy became a junior executive in 1897, and the youngest brother, Herbert, in 1903.
Upon the death of his father in 1912 Jesse took over the supervision of the business, and when it was incorporated, in 1919, he was elected president. Mostly through his genius, it is said, Macy's became the world's largest retail merchandising business under one roof.
By 1930 its annual sales were only slightly under $100, 000, 000.
As governor, Roosevelt appointed him to the State Commission for the Revision of Taxation and in 1931 made him head of the state's Temporary Emergency Relief Administration. (Straus chose as his deputy a young New York social worker, Harry Hopkins, who thus began a long association with Roosevelt. )
In 1932, when Roosevelt ran for president, Straus organized the Roosevelt Business and Professional League and campaigned ardently. Early in 1933 Roosevelt appointed him ambassador to France. The Macy store had long had an agency in Paris, and Straus's frequent trips to France on business and pleasure had given him a considerable knowledge of that country and a good command of its language. To accept the new position, he resigned the presidency of Macy's and was succeeded by his brother Percy.
In 1935 he completed negotiations with French Foreign Minister Pierre Laval which ended the double taxation of American companies with branches in France. Plagued by ill health for two or three years, he resigned his post in August 1936, returned home, and died early in October of pneumonia.
Achievements
Politics
An active Democrat and a friend of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Straus labored diligently for Roosevelt's election to the governorship of New York and later for his nomination to the presidency.
Views
Quotations:
"I trust my government. I trust our banks. I do not expect the impossible. I shall do nothing hysterical. If it is normal to carry little cash in my pocket when there is plenty to go round, I shall carry little now. There never was a time when everyone on earth could possess all his cash in his pockets, his socks, his safe-deposit box, or anywhere else. I will not stampede. I will not lose nerve. I will keep my head. "
Membership
Outside his business, he was a deeply interested member of the American Academy of Political and Social Science in Philadelphia and the Foreign Policy Association in New York.
Personality
His well-known tall figure and shy smile were cordially received by the French government, and despite his naturally quiet and somewhat reserved manner he was popular in France. A hard worker all his life, Straus was usually the first to arrive at the office in the morning and the last to leave it at night.
Connections
He had a wife, Irma (Nathan) Straus, whom he had married in New York in 1895. They had three children, Beatrice, Jack Isidor, and Robert Kenneth. His widow died in 1970 at the age of 94.