Robert Worth Bingham was an American politician, diplomat and publisher. He served as Mayor of Louisville in 1907.
Background
Robert Bingham was born on November 8, 1871, in Orange County, North Carolina, United States, the fourth of five children of Robert and Delphine Louise (Worth) Bingham and the older of their two sons who survived infancy. His great-grandfather, the Rev. William Bingham, was a graduate of Glasgow University who settled in Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1793 and there started the Bingham School, which was conducted by the family for four generations until it closed in 1930. On his mother's side he was descended from William Worth, who came to Massachusetts in the seventeenth century from Barnstaple, England. Bingham's father, head of the Bingham School from 1873 to 1920, served as captain in the North Carolina infantry throughout the Civil War; during the dark days of Reconstruction in North Carolina he advocated free public education for Negroes, indicating a liberalism which may well have nourished the subsequent enlightened views of his son.
Education
After graduating in 1888 from the family school, which had been moved to Asheville, North Carolina, Bingham attended the University of North Carolina, the University of Virginia Law School, and the University of Louisville, receiving the LL. B. degree from the last-named in 1897.
Career
In 1903 Robert was appointed to fill an unexpired term as county attorney of Jefferson County, Kentucky. Elected to the same position in 1904, he continued in that capacity until 1907, when Governor J. C. W. Beckham appointed him to serve a few months as mayor of Louisville after the courts had disqualified both the regular candidates. In 1911 he was appointed chancellor of the Jefferson County circuit court, but he declined a nomination to succeed himself.
Bingham began his newspaper career in August 1918 when he bought a two-thirds interest in the Louisville Courier-Journal and the Louisville Times. He acquired the remaining shares the next year. The Courier-Journal had been founded in 1868 when Walter Haldeman and Henry Watterson had merged their two papers; the Times, an afternoon paper, dated from 1884. Still under Watterson's direction in 1918, the papers had an outstanding national reputation. They continued their widespread influence under Bingham, but they underwent many changes. If they were more flamboyant under Watterson, they were more steadily devoted to the popular interest under Bingham. Watterson stayed with the Courier-Journal as editor emeritus until 1920, when Bingham's support of the League of Nations made it impossible for him to remain any longer. The papers also began supporting prohibition and woman suffrage; and although Bingham, like Watterson, considered himself an independent Democrat, the occasions on which his papers supported Republicans became increasingly rare.
When, in 1920-1921, the price of Burley tobacco, an important Kentucky crop, dropped ruinously, Bingham led in organizing the Burley Tobacco Growers Cooperative Association. He had been impressed with the cooperative technique in marketing during a trip through California, where he noted the high degree of rural prosperity. The Burley Cooperative, by pooling marketing, successfully stabilized prices. Bingham's interest in agricultural progress made natural his later friendship with Franklin D. Roosevelt, just as his support of the League of Nations was conducive to his close friendship with Col. Edward M. House and Cordell Hull. Bingham and his newspapers supported Roosevelt's successful candidacy for the presidential nomination in 1932.
Roosevelt, who at one point considered making Bingham his Secretary of State, appointed him soon after the election as ambassador to the Court of St. James, a post Bingham held until his death. Bingham's principal mission as ambassador was to arrange for the negotiation of a reciprocal trade agreement between Great Britain and the United States. His persistent stand in favor of a reduction in the American tariff rates and closer economic ties between the two countries won him the good will of the British, and at the time of his death, plans for opening reciprocity negotiations were beginning to take shape. Meanwhile, Bingham's speeches in 1933 favoring international stabilization of the dollar and the pound had drawn criticism from many Congressmen who feared that stabilization would wipe out the gains made through domestic price rises and thus prolong the depression. It was a similar apprehension that led President Roosevelt to repudiate the stabilization negotiations at the London Economic Conference of that year. During this trying period in London, Bingham's friendship with the President and Secretary of State Hull and his understanding of the British people and their institutions proved an invaluable asset at a time when American public opinion was drifting toward isolation.
Bingham participated in many civic activities, serving as trustee of Berea and Centre colleges in Kentucky. He was a director of a number of business enterprises, among them the Louisville & Nashville Railroad and the American Creosoting Company. Bingham died at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore of abdominal Hodgkin's disease and was buried in Louisville.
Achievements
Robert Bingham achieved success as publisher of the Courier-Journal and Louisville Times. Bingham used the paper to push for farm cooperatives, improve education and support of the rural poor, and to challenge the state's Democratic Party bosses. His other important service was as United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom, which position he held from 1933 to 1937. As ambassador, Bingham pushed for stronger ties between the United States and Great Britain and vocally opposed the rise of fascism and Nazism.
Religion
Bingham was a vestryman in the Episcopal Church in Louisville.
Membership
Bingham was president of the Kentucky Children's Home Society, the Society of the Cincinnati, Society of Colonial Wars and the Sons of the American Revolution.
Interests
Bingham's enjoyment of fishing, yachting, and hunting made him an easy favorite among the British leaders; he also enjoyed playing the organ and the cello.
Connections
On May 20, 1896, Bingham married Eleanor E. Miller of Louisville, who bore him three children: Robert Worth, Henrietta Worth, and George Barry. Three years after his first wife's death in an automobile accident in 1913, he married, on November 15, 1916, Mrs. Mary Lily (Kenan) Flagler of New York, widow of the former J. P. Morgan partner Henry M. Flagler. She died just eight months later, leaving Bingham $5, 000, 000. On August 20, 1924, he married Mrs. Aleen (Muldoon) Hilliard.
