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Leon Fraser Edit Profile

banker

Leo W. Fraser, Jr. was an American lawyer, businessman, and politician.

Background

He was born in Boston, Massachussets, the only child of John Fraser, a Scottish immigrant, and Mary (Lovat) Fraser, who was partly of French-Canadian descent.

His mother died at his birth; his father turned the child over to a fellow Scot, Ronald E. Bonar, and then disappeared; according to report, he later went to the Klondike. Bonar and his wife, Susan (Dayton) Bonar, adopted the child.

Although Fraser did not use his foster father's name, he seemed to hold his foster parents in deep affection. Bonar, who had a hat manufacturing plant in New York City, spent much time on the family farm in North Granville, New York, which Fraser always looked upon as his home.

Education

He attended the village school, did farm chores, and became deeply attached to rural life.

After preparing at Trinity, an Episcopal school in New York City, Fraser attended Columbia College, where he took a particular interest in such extracurricular activities as the literary magazine (of which he was editor-in-chief), the undergraduate newspaper, and the varsity debating team (of which he was captain).

He was graduated in 1910.

He received an A. M. degree in June 1912, with a major in The next five years he spent enrolled, often simultaneously, in various Columbia faculties: in the School of Law; in the newly founded School of Journalism, from which he received a B. Litt. degree in June 1913; and in the Graduate Faculties. He received an A. M. degree in June 1912, with a major in English and a minor in law, and a Ph. D. degree in June 1915, with a major in politics and minors in law and international law, presenting as his dissertation a study of "English Opinion of the American Constitution and Government (1783 - 1798). " Although he did not graduate from the law school, he was admitted to the New York bar in 1913.

Career

While a graduate student at Columbia, Fraser also served on the editorial staff of the New York World (1913 - 14) and spoke on street corners for various political candidates.

In 1915 he joined the Columbia faculty as a lecturer (later instructor) in public law, but his academic career came to an abrupt end.

In April 1916, while Fraser (at the suggestion of Dean Frederick P. Keppel [Supp. 3] of Columbia) was giving speeches for the American Association for International Conciliation, a peace society headed by Columbia's president, Nicholas Murray Butler, he was reported by the newspapers as having said that anyone who went to the Plattsburgh military training camp was a "benighted fool. "

Fraser was called before a committee of the Columbia trustees, and though he denied making such a statement or holding such an opinion, the trustees next year recommended against his reappointment.

The episode, a bitter blow to Fraser, was of great importance in shaping his future attitudes and career. He had meanwhile enlisted in the army, in which he rose from private to major and served in the Judge Advocate General's Department of the A. E. F. in France.

Upon his return, in 1920, he served briefly in the Bureau of War Risk Insurance in Washington and, the next year, as executive officer and acting director of the federal Veterans' Bureau. He then joined the Paris staff of Coudert Brothers, an international law firm which specialized in counseling American banking and industrial companies on European loans and investments.

Leaving Coudert Brothers, Fraser served from 1924 to 1927 as general counsel for the Dawes plan and as Paris representative of the office of the Agent General for Reparation Payments. Three years (1927 - 30) followed as the New York correspondent of the Boston legal firm of Ropes, Gray, Boyden and Perkins.

In 1930 he returned to Paris at the invitation of Owen D. Young to serve as his legal and economic expert in connection with the drafting of the Young Plan and the charter of the Bank for International Settlements. When the B. I. S. was organized in 1930, Fraser was made director and alternate of the president, Gates W. McGarrah [Supp. 2]; he was president from 1933 to 1935.

During these years Fraser promoted central bank cooperation, helped develop the standstill agreements with Germany, and participated in the granting of emergency credits to the Reichsbank and to central banks in Hungary, Austria, Yugoslavia, Danzig, and the United Kingdom.

His ability at the B. I. S. to reconcile divergent points of view, to obtain the harmonious cooperation of directors representing many nationalities, and to enlist the loyalty of the staff greatly advanced the cause of international monetary cooperation. Upon his return to the United States, Fraser joined the First National Bank of New York, at first as vice-president (1935 - 36) and then (from Jan. 1, 1937) as president.

One of his associates has questioned whether this was the ideal position for Fraser, who was forced to devote himself to day-to-day pressing administrative concerns (though he did so with great effectiveness) rather than with broad international economic and political problems.

He nonetheless emerged as a spokesman for the banking community, and in 1941 was elected for a three-year term as a director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

In April 1945, at fifty-five, Fraser returned to his boyhood home of North Granville and took his own life.

Although it came as a distinct surprise to his associates, this was not an impulsive act. In a farewell letter he explained that he had long suffered from a steadily increasing depression. Friends have commented on the loneliness of Fraser's life: his orphaned boyhood, his desolation at the death of his wife in 1942, his lack of close friends despite a highly gregarious nature. In an editorial comment the New York Times remarked that Fraser had never lost the wide-ranging curiosity he had shown as a reporter.

His associates recalled his great capacity to absorb facts, to understand the inner workings of the financial system, and to form astute judgments, as well as his independence of thought, his flexibility of mind, and his refusal to accept the importance of business as overriding, or to be awed by wealth, power, or authority. After Episcopal services, he was buried in the Granville (N. Y. ) Cemetery.

Achievements

  • Leon Fraser has been listed as a noteworthy banker. by Marquis Who's Who.

Connections

On October 21, 1922, in France, he married Margaret M. Maury of Washington, D. C. They had no children of their own but adopted an infant son, James Leon Fraser, in 1931.

Father:
John Fraser

mother Mary (Lovat) Fraser

Wife:
Margaret M. Maury

son (adopted) James Leon Fraser