(This Pilgrimage Address Was Delivered During The 1947 Nat...)
This Pilgrimage Address Was Delivered During The 1947 National Pilgrimage Of The Newcomen Society Of England, Celebrating The Centenary Of The Monon And Held At French Lick, Indiana, On August 6-7, 1947.
Paul Gray Hoffman was an American automobile company executive, statesman and businessman. He served as the first administrator of the Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA) and of the United Nations Development Programme, and was involved in the implementation of the Marshall Plan.
Background
Paul Gray Hoffman was born on April 26, 1891 in Western Springs, Illinois, United States. He was the son of George Delos Hoffman, an inventor and businessman, and Eleanor Lott. He moved with his family to Pasadena, California, in 1911, and worked closely with his entrepreneurial father in the manufacture of brass plumbing and heating parts.
Education
Hoffman was educated in the public schools in suburban Western Springs, Illinois, and left the University of Chicago after an unsuccessful freshman year.
Career
Hoffman began selling Studebaker automobiles in Los Angeles and quickly became a star salesman. By 1915, he was sales manager for Los Angeles and Orange counties, and two years later for all southern California. After stateside service as an army lieutenant, Hoffman declined a promotion to New York and persuaded Studebaker to sell him the distributorship for southern California. He studied the market carefully, pioneered radio advertising, and played a significant part in developing the Los Angeles street plan of 1924. Hoffman soon became a millionaire, a major investor in radio station KNX, and a promising Republican candidate for mayor of Los Angeles.
In 1925, Hoffman accepted Albert Erskine's urgent invitation to move to South Bend, Indiana, as the Studebaker Corporation's vice-president for sales. His responsibilities were advertising, dealer relations, and systematic training for salesmen. He also showed an early interest in traffic and safety studies and persuaded Erskine to finance a research bureau at Harvard.
After Erskine's reckless policies took Studebaker into receivership in 1933, Hoffman and Harold S. Vance were named by the court to rescue the company. Vance looked after manufacturing while Hoffman handled finance, sales, and publicity. To the surprise of many bankers and industrialists, they returned Studebaker to profitability, and when it emerged from receivership in 1935, Hoffman was named president. While Studebaker prospered with wartime defense contracts, Hoffman foresaw a postwar automotive boom and positioned the firm with new models in advance of its Big Three competitors. When he left in 1948, Studebaker appeared to be the most successful of the smaller automakers, although critics later blamed Hoffman and Vance for expensive concessions to the United Auto Workers. Like many businessmen, Hoffman resented New Deal regulations, and spoke often for free enterprise.
In 1942, he was a founder and then chairman of the Committee for Economic Development. After the war Hoffman showed increasing interest in foreign policy and became a leading business supporter of foreign aid. He was surprised, however, when President Truman asked him in 1948 to become the chief administrator for the Marshall Plan as director of the Economic Cooperation Administration. At the age of fifty-seven, Hoffman entered a new career of public service. Hoffman had long enjoyed friendly relations with important journalists, and the Marshall Plan received highly favorable coverage. When he resigned in 1950 the Marshall Plan was a clear success in Europe, although Hoffman was disappointed by its limited efforts in Asia.
The Ford Foundation had just emerged from control by the Ford family when Hoffman became its president in 1951. Recruited by Henry Ford II, Hoffman was soon disappointed by the refusal of the foundation trustees to allow him the discretion he believed he had been promised. Hoffman advocated socially active programs rather than research, and controversy soon arose. His vigorous advocacy of civil liberties and his public denunciation of Senator Joseph McCarthy soon made the foundation a target of vicious criticism and congressional investigation.
Hoffman also played a prominent role in denying the 1952 Republican nomination to Senator Robert Taft and in promoting the candidacy of General Dwight Eisenhower and the cause of Republican moderation.
Early in 1953, the foundation trustees forced Hoffman to resign, both because they disagreed with his administrative style and decisions and because they resented his well-publicized political activity. Hoffman immediately accepted the chairmanship of the Studebaker Corporation, only to discover that the company was in desperate production, sales, and labor difficulties. After negotiating a merger with Packard as well as a bitterly contested labor contract, Hoffman yielded control to a new management team that soon rejected his ideas. During this same period, he served as chairman of the controversial Fund for the Republic, a civil-liberties organization financed by the Ford Foundation.
Upon leaving Studebaker in 1956, Hoffman sought a political appointment and President Eisenhower named him to the American delegation to the United Nations. Hoffman threw himself into UN activity, particularly the cause of economic development. After leaving the United Nations delegation, he became chairman of the American Committee on United Europe and spoke widely in favor of a generous international development program. He traveled extensively, visiting development projects and begging governments for contributions of $250 million per year for the Special Fund, known after 1966 as the UN Development Program.
Late in 1958, Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold named Hoffman director of the UN Special Fund to aid poor and underdeveloped nations. A vigorous sixty-seven-year-old, Hoffman undertook a demanding full-time position and retired only at the age of eighty. He wrote several books, including Marketing Used Cars (1929), Peace Can Be Won (1951), and World Without Want (1962). He died in New York City.
Hoffman viewed foreign aid as the nation's best hope of encouraging democracy and capitalism abroad, and opposed efforts to link aid to military assistance.
He held a strongly capitalist view of economic development, and in later years was sometimes vigorously criticized.
Personality
Hoffman was a skilled administrator and excelled in relations with difficult people, whether members of Congress or European officials.
He was chiefly an administrator and advocate for aid, and relied on his staff for technical advice. Hoffman was always a salesman at heart, whether selling automobiles or international development.
His private life was quiet, although from his early thirties he was wealthy enough to engage in any hobby or sport he wished.
Connections
Hoffman married Dorothy Brown on December 18, 1915; they had seven children. Dorothy died in 1961, and on July 19, 1962, Hoffman married Anna Rosenberg, a labor and public relations consultant he had known for twenty years.