Wilbur John Carr was born on October 31, 1870 near Taylorsville, Ohio, United States; the elder of the two sons of Edward Livingston Carr, whose forebears had lived in Ohio since early in the century, and Catherine (Fender) Carr, of Virginia background. He grew up on his father's farm. He was named John Wilbur, but as a young man reversed his given names out of admiration for Wilbur R. Smith, the president of the Commercial College of the University of Kentucky.
Carr graduated from the University of Kentucky in 1889 and then took commercial training in Oswego, New York. He also attended Georgetown University, from which he received an LL. B. degree in 1894, and Columbian University (later George Washington University), which granted him an LL. M. in 1899.
During 1890 - 92 Carr served as secretary of the Peekskill (N. Y. ) Military Academy and then entered the State Department as a clerk on June 1, 1892, commencing his labors that morning by addressing envelopes.
Carr was transferred to the State Department's Consular Bureau as a clerk in 1897. At the outset he found the work a bore, remarking in his diary that it was "dwarfing to the mind. " He persevered, however, and in 1902 became chief of the bureau, in charge of approximately three hundred consular posts. As early as 1894 he had helped draft a bill for the reform of the diplomatic and consular services, and as bureau chief he was largely instrumental in achieving two notable administrative reforms: the Lodge Act of April 1906, which placed the Consular Service on a regular salaried basis and thus rid it of the abuses connected with the old system whereby consuls kept all or part of their fees; and President Roosevelt's executive order of June 27, 1906, removing the service from politics by placing appointments and promotions on an examination basis. Now presiding over what was almost a new system, Carr worked tirelessly to introduce professional, nonpartisan standards. He was made chief clerk of the State Department in 1907, with responsibility for the Consular Service, of which he was formally made director in 1909. His effort to implement a merit system was a fragile undertaking, fraught with hazards. Particularly trying was the determination of William Jennings Bryan, as Secretary of State, to bring "needy Democrats" into the department. Under Bryan's successor Robert Lansing, however, the harassed Carr regained his authority. Carr was the central figure in the drafting of the Rogers Act of 1924, which combined the consular and diplomatic services. In that year he became head of the newly created Foreign Service with the title of Assistant Secretary of State. All his considerable tact was needed to overcome the bitterness generated within the department by the Rogers Act, particularly among diplomats who opposed being linked with the consular personnel. In the later 1920's, officers of the old Diplomatic Service made a determined effort to relegate former Consular Service personnel to second-class status, but Carr managed to override the challenge. His strength lay in the universal recognition of his selfless dedication to the Foreign Service, many of whose members he knew personally. These same qualities gave weight to his frequent testimony at Congressional hearings on the department's budgetary requests. Continuing in office by special presidential dispensation beyond the statutory retirement age of sixty-five, Carr retained his post until July 1937, when he relinquished it to his successor, George S. Messersmith, and became American minister to Czechoslovakia, a position he occupied until shortly after the Nazi takeover in March 1939. A colleague in Prague in these years, George F. Kennan, later appreciatively recalled Carr's "imperturbable patience, studied softness of speech, and transparent integrity" (Memoirs, p. 89). He was accompanied abroad by his second wife.
Carr died in 1942 at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Md. , while being treated for chronic asthmatic bronchitis.
Carr himself served for forty-five years, from 1892 to 1937. In some respects, Carr did not measure up to what might seem the minimal requirements of the responsible posts which he held. He had almost no experience with the actual making of foreign policy or the business of diplomacy; indeed, he did not go abroad until 1916. Balancing this, however, are his unquestioned personal qualities of industry, honesty, and tact, and an intense commitment to professionalism at a time when the impulses of American politics favored the spoilsmen. A transitional figure in the State Department's administrative development, he helped in important ways to lay the groundwork for the organic Foreign Service Act passed in 1946, four years after his death.
His first wife, Mary Eugenia Crane, whom he had married on November 3, 1897, died in 1911 after a long illness. His second wife was Edith Adele Koon, daughter of a Michigan lawyer, whom he had married on January 20, 1917. There were no children by either marriage.
