Background
Davies was born in Watertown, Wisconsin to Welsh-born parents Edward and Rachel (Paynter) Davies.
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Davies was born in Watertown, Wisconsin to Welsh-born parents Edward and Rachel (Paynter) Davies.
Davies was valedictorian at Watertown High School, and in 1894 enrolled at the University of Wisconsin, where he played football, was a student instructor in gymnastics, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He received the A. B. cum laude in 1898 and the LL. B. from the university's law school in 1901.
Davies was admitted to the Wisconsin bar in 1901. Returning to Watertown, Davies was a state prosecutor for Jefferson County from 1902 to 1906.
In 1906 Davies moved to Madison, where he became prominent both as a trial lawyer and in the state Democratic party. In 1910 he was appointed secretary of the Wisconsin branch of the Democratic National Committee. In 1912 he worked for the presidential nomination of Woodrow Wilson throughout the state and in Chicago as chief of the Democratic party's western headquarters.
As one of "Wilson's Young Men, " a small group that included Franklin D. Roosevelt, Davies was appointed commissioner of corporations in 1913. While head of that weak investigative bureau, he helped draft the Federal Trade Commission Bill but was displeased with the final version. Although an opponent of monopolies, Davies was a lifelong believer in the fundamental soundness of capitalism and was wary of unnecessary government intervention. His relatively conservative approach became manifest when he served as the first chairman of the Federal Trade Commission (1915 - 1916), a position from which he was ousted by more activist commissioners.
After serving briefly on the War Industries Board, Davies resigned in 1918 to run in a special senatorial election in Wisconsin. He lost by fewer than 5, 000 votes to Republican Irvine L. Lenroot. It is probable that he lost because of the emotional La Follette issue--when both candidates were asked how they would vote on a pending senatorial inquiry on La Follette's statements about American involvement in World War I, Lenroot was noncommittal, while Davies publicly castigated the respected senator.
After accompanying Wilson to the Versailles peace conference, Davies resigned from government service in 1920 to establish a private law practice in Washington. His firm, which specialized in antitrust and international law, soon became one of the most prominent in the capital. In the celebrated Ford Stock Valuation Tax Case of 1927-1928, Davies was reputed to have earned $2 million, one of the largest fees in history, for winning a $30 million tax refund from the United States Board of Tax Appeals for a group of former Ford stockholders. In addition, during the 1920's and early 1930's he was counsel to governments and businesses in Mexico, Peru, the Netherlands, Greece, and the Dominican Republic.
A vice-chairman of the Democratic National Committee during Roosevelt's second presidential campaign, Davies was offered the post of ambassador to the Soviet Union, which he agreed to take on only a short-term basis late in 1936. Charming, poised, and worldly, Davies was without pretensions and lax in the niceties of diplomatic etiquette. He was resented by such professionals as George F. Kennan and Loy Henderson, who served under him and generally disagreed with his evaluation of the Soviet system. In addition to negotiating the renewal of a trade agreement, Davies prepared detailed reports on the Soviet economy.
After an extensive tour of the country, he discovered industrial strength and vitality where others saw only an inefficient and repressive society. Davies was one of the few members of the western diplomatic corps to witness the Soviet purge trials. He was one of even fewer westerners to believe that such eminent old Bolsheviks as Radek, Bukharin, and Zinoviev were guilty of conspiring with supporters of the exiled Leon Trotsky and with agents of Germany and Japan.
Although a concealed microphone was discovered in his embassy study, he maintained the opinion that the Russians were potential friends. Thus, he advocated collective security and American support for a London-Paris-Moscow alliance to challenge the Berlin-Tokyo-Rome axis. Such views made him somewhat suspect in Washington, but popular in Moscow. Thus, before leaving Moscow in June 1938 to assume the post of ambassador to Belgium and minister to Luxembourg, his devotion to the cause of Soviet-American amity was acknowledged by an unprecedented private farewell audience with Josef Stalin. After returning to the United States in the spring of 1940, following the fall of Belgium, Davies continued to serve Roosevelt, most notably as chairman of the President's War Relief Control Board.
When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, he was one of the few presidential advisers to express confidence in the staying power of the Red Army. With the president's blessing, Davies published his frank and chatty memoirs, Mission to Moscow, late in 1941. A best-seller, this extremely favorable account of the Soviet Union during the purges was made into a major movie (1943). That year Davies met with Stalin to lay the groundwork for the Teheran Conference.
In May 1945 he was President Harry S. Truman's special emissary to Winston Churchill and two months later was one of the inner circle of presidential advisers at the Potsdam Conference.
Although he was sent by Truman to Latin America in 1951 to work on proposed Organization of American States treaties concerning nationalization, Davies spent most of his last years in private law practice.
He died in Washington, D. C. His ashes were placed next to those of Woodrow Wilson in the National Cathedral. The controversial and colorful Davies was an unusual American businessman-diplomat. He was a millionaire who supported presidents Wilson and Roosevelt in their attempts to regulate American capitalism. Although other businessmen also believed that the salvation of the American system depended on the establishment of a welfare state, few agreed with him about both the desirability and the possibility of Soviet-American cooperation in world affairs. For those who believe that American misconceptions of Russian policies at the end of World War II contributed significantly to the creation of the Cold War, Davies stands as a statesman of singular vision.
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Throughout the war he was an indefatigable and, to some degree, controversial propagandist for Soviet-American friendship.
On September 10, 1902, Davies married Emlen Knight, the daughter of a wealthy lumberman. They had three daughters.
Davies made headlines in September 1935 when he divorced his wife and three months later married Marjorie Merriweather Post Hutton, heiress to the General Foods fortune, known as "Lady Bountiful of Hell's Kitchen" for her charity work. They were divorced in 1955.