Charles G. Dawes

From 1909 to 1951, Charles G. Dawes lived in this house at 225 Greenwood St. in Evanston, Illinois, which was built in 1894 by Robert Sheppard. The house is a National Historic Landmark.

Dawes was born in Marietta, Ohio, in Washington County, son of Civil War General Rufus Dawes and his wife Mary Beman Gates.[1] Rufus had commanded the 6th Wisconsin Regiment of the Iron Brigade from 1863 to 1864 during the American Civil War. His uncle Ephraim C. Dawes was a major who served under Ulysses S. Grant at the Shiloh and Siege of Vicksburg, and was severely wounded at the Battle of Dallas, Georgia, in May 1864.[2]

Dawes's brothers were Rufus C. Dawes, Beman Gates Dawes, and Henry May Dawes, all prominent businessmen or politicians. He had two sisters, Mary Frances Dawes Beach, and Betsey Gates Dawes Hoyt.[3]

Dawes was a descendant of Edward Doty, a passenger on the Mayflower, and William Dawes who rode with Paul Revere to warn American colonists of the advancing British army at the outbreak of the American Revolution.

Dawes married Caro Blymyer on January 24, 1889.[4] They had a son, Rufus Fearing (1890–1912), and a daughter, Carolyn. They later adopted two children, Dana and Virginia.[5]

He graduated from Marietta College in 1884[6] and Cincinnati Law School in 1886.[7] His fraternity was Delta Upsilon.[8]

Dawes was admitted to the bar in Nebraska, and he practiced in Lincoln, Nebraska, from 1887 to 1894.[6][9] When Lieutenant John Pershing, the future army general, was military instructor at the University of Nebraska he and Dawes met and formed a lifelong friendship.[10] Pershing also received a law degree at Nebraska and proposed leaving the army to go into private practice with Dawes, who cautioned him against giving up the regular army pay for the uncertainty of legal remuneration.[11] Dawes also met Democratic Congressman William Jennings Bryan. The two became friends despite their disagreement over free silver policies.[12]

Dawes relocated from Lincoln to Chicago during the Panic of 1893.[12] In 1894, Dawes acquired interests several Midwestern gas plants. He became the president of both the La Crosse Gas Light Company in La Crosse, Wisconsin, and the Northwestern Gas Light and Coke Company in Evanston, Illinois.[5]

Dawes was a self-taught pianist, flutist and composer. His composition Melody in A Major became a well-known piano and violin piece in 1912.[13] Marie Edwards made a popular arrangement of the work in 1921.[14] Also, in 1921, it was arranged for a small orchestra by Adolf G. Hoffmann.[15] Melody in A Major was played at many official functions that Dawes attended.[16]

In 1951, Carl Sigman added lyrics to Melody in A Major, transforming it into the song "It's All in the Game".[16] Tommy Edwards's recording of "It's All in the Game" was a number-one hit on the American Billboard record chart for six weeks in 1958.[17] Edwards's version of the song became number one on the United Kingdom chart that year.[18]

Since then, it has become a pop standard. Numerous artists have recorded versions, including Cliff Richard, the Four Tops, Isaac Hayes, Jackie DeShannon, Van Morrison, Nat "King" Cole, Brook Benton, Elton John, Mel Carter, Donny and Marie Osmond, Barry Manilow, Merle Haggard, and Keith Jarrett.

Dawes is the only vice president to be credited with a number-one pop hit.[16] Dawes and Sonny Bono are the only people credited with a number-one pop hit who were also members of the United States Senate or House of Representatives.[19] Dawes and Bob Dylan (as a writer) are the only persons credited with a number-one pop hit to have also won a Nobel Prize.[lower-alpha 1]

Dawes was a brother of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia.[20]

Dawes's prominent positions in business caught the attention of Republican party leaders. They asked Dawes to manage the Illinois portion of William McKinley's bid for the Presidency of the United States in 1896.[21] Following McKinley's election, Dawes was named Comptroller of the Currency, United States Department of the Treasury. Serving in that position from 1898 to 1901, he collected more than $25 million from banks that had failed during the Panic of 1893 and changed banking practices to try to prevent another panic.

In October 1901, Dawes left the Department of the Treasury to pursue a U.S. Senate seat from Illinois. He thought that, with the help of the McKinley Administration, he could win it. McKinley was assassinated and his successor, President Theodore Roosevelt, preferred Dawes's opponent.[22] In 1902, following this unsuccessful attempt at legislative office, Dawes declared that he was done with politics. He organized the Central Trust Company of Illinois, where he served as its president until 1921.[5]

On September 5, 1912, Dawes's 21-year-old son Rufus drowned in Geneva Lake,[23] while on summer break from Princeton University. In his memory, Dawes created homeless shelters in both Chicago and Boston[24] and financed the construction of a dormitory at his son's alma mater, the Lawrenceville School in Lawrenceville, New Jersey.[25]

Dawes in uniform, 1918

Dawes helped support the first Anglo-French Loan to the Entente powers of $500 million. Dawes's support was important because the House of Morgan needed public support from a non-Morgan banker. The Morgan banker Thomas W. Lamont said that Dawes's support would "make a position for him in the banking world such as he otherwise could never hope to make".[26] (Loans were seen as possibly violating neutrality, and Wilson was still resisting permitting loans.)

During WWI, Dawes was commissioned as a major on June 11, 1917, in the 17th Engineers. He was subsequently promoted to lieutenant colonel (July 17, 1917), and colonel (January 16, 1918). In October 1918, he was promoted to brigadier general.[27] From August 1917 to August 1919, Dawes served in France during WWI as chairman of the general purchasing board for the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF). His proposal to Gen. Pershing was adopted informed the Military Board of Allied Supply, on which he served as the American delegate in 1918. When the war ended in November, he became a member of the Liquidation Commission of the United States War Department. He was decorated with the Distinguished Service Medal[28] and the French Croix de Guerre in recognition of his service. He returned to the US aboard the SS Leviathan in August 1919.[29] Dawes published a memoir of his World War I service, A Journal of the Great War, 1921.

In February 1921, the U.S. Senate held hearings on war expenditures. During heated testimony, Dawes burst out, "Hell and Maria, we weren't trying to keep a set of books over there, we were trying to win a war!"[30] He was later known as "Hell and Maria Dawes" (although he always insisted the expression was "Helen Maria", an exclamation he claimed was common in Nebraska).[31] Dawes resigned from the Army in 1919[5] and became a member of the American Legion.

He supported Frank Lowden at the 1920 Republican National Convention, but the presidential nomination went to Warren G. Harding.[12] When the Bureau of the Budget was created, he was appointed in 1921 by President Harding as its first director. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover appointed him to the Allied Reparations Commission in 1923. Dawes chaired the group that devised the solution to the European crisis: through the Dawes Plan, American banks loaned large sums of money to Germany. The loans helped Germany's industrial production to recover and the government to make reparation payments to France and Belgium as required by the Versailles Treaty. France and Belgium in turn agreed to withdraw the troops that had been occupying the Ruhr since January 1923. In 1929 the Reparations Commission under Owen Young replaced the plan with the more permanent Young Plan, which reduced the total amount of reparations and called for the removal of occupying forces from the Rhineland.[32][33] For his work on the Dawes Plan and the resulting reduction of tensions between France and Germany, Dawes shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1925.[5][34]

Dawes (right) and Calvin Coolidge

I should hate to think that the Senate was as tired of me at the beginning of my service as I am of the Senate at the end.

— Charles G. Dawes[35]

At the 1924 Republican National Convention, President Calvin Coolidge was selected almost without opposition to be the Republican presidential nominee.[36] The vice-presidential nominee was more contested. Illinois Governor Frank Lowden was nominated, but declined. Coolidge's next choice was Idaho Senator William Borah, who also declined the nomination. The Republican National Chairman, William Butler, wanted to nominate then-Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover, but he was insufficiently popular. Eventually, the delegates chose Dawes. Coolidge quickly accepted the delegates' choice and felt that Dawes would be loyal to him and make a strong addition to his campaign.[36]

Dawes traveled throughout the country during the campaign, giving speeches to bolster the Republican ticket. On August 22, Dawes would appear at a rally located in Augusta, Maine on the behalf of Republican candidate for Governor Ralph Owen Brewster, who was accused by his opponent William Robinson Pattangall of being backed by the Ku Klux Klan and having sympathies for them. Dawes, who was challenged by Pattangall to talk on the issue, gave a speech attacking the Klan and it's religious and racial prejudice rhetoric (Dawes was however careful on how he talked about race).[37] He frequently attacked Progressive nominee Robert M. La Follette as a dangerous radical who sympathized with the Bolsheviks.[12] The Coolidge-Dawes ticket was elected on November 4, 1924, with more popular votes than the candidates of the Democratic and Progressive parties combined.[38] The inauguration was held on March 4, 1925.[39]

Dawes mausoleum at Rosehill Cemetery

Dawes served for nearly two decades as chairman of the board of City National from 1932 until his death.[45] He died on April 23, 1951, at his Evanston home from coronary thrombosis at the age of 85.[46] He is interred in Rosehill Cemetery, Chicago.[47]

Dawes belonged to several lineage societies and veterans' organizations. These included the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, Sons of the American Revolution, General Society of Colonial Wars, American Legion, and Forty and Eight.[48] Dawes was also a member of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts from 1925 until his death in 1951[49]

• In 1925, Dawes was a co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on WWI reparations.[50]

A Chicago public school located at 3810 W 81st Place is named in his honor, as are an Evanston public school at 440 Dodge Avenue and Evanston's Dawes Park at 1700 Sheridan Road.

According to Annette Dunlap, Dawes was:

a self-made man who valued hard work and thriftiness tempered with Christian generosity. He spent his life promoting solid Republican values of small government with restrained budgets. Franklin Roosevelt’s philosophy of big government spending was anathema to him.[51]

In 1944, he bequeathed his lakeshore home in Evanston to Northwestern University for the Evanston Historical Society (later renamed the Evanston History Center). Dawes lived in the house until his death. The Dawes family continued to occupy it until the death of Mrs. Dawes in 1957. Since then, the Evanston History Center operates out of the house and manages it as a museum. Designated a National Historic Landmark, the Charles G. Dawes House is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

• Dawes, C. G. (1894). The Banking System of the United States and Its Relation to the Money and the Business of the Country. Chicago: Rand McNally.
• ———— "The Sherman Anti-Trust Law: Why It has Failed and Why It Should Be Amended". The North American Review 183.597 (1906): 189–194.
• ———— (1915). Essays and Speeches. New York: Houghton.
• ———— (1921). Journal of the Great War. 2 vols. New York: Houghton. online copy vol 1; also online copy v2
• ———— (1923). The First Year of the Budget of the United States. New York: Harper. online copy
• ———— (1935). Notes as Vice President, 1928–1929. Boston: Little, Brown. online copy
• ———— (1937). How Long Prosperity? New York: Marquis.
• ———— (1939). Journal as Ambassador to Great Britain. New York: Macmillan. online copy
• ———— (1939). A Journal of Reparations. New York: Macmillan. online copy
• ———— (1950). A Journal of the McKinley Years. Bascom N. Timmons (Ed.). La Grange, IL: Tower.

• List of covers of Time magazine (1920s) – December 14, 1925
• List of members of the American Legion

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Charles Dawes.

• Charles G. Dawes on Nobelprize.org
• "Charles G. Dawes Archive" Archived July 30, 2020, at the Wayback Machine Finding aid for the Charles G. Dawes archival collection
• Evanston History Center, headquartered in the lakefront Dawes house
• United States Congress. "Charles G. Dawes (id: D000147)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.. Retrieved 2009-05-14
• Notes As Vice President 1928–1929 by Charles G. Dawes
• Portrait Of An American by Charles G. Dawes
• Newspaper clippings about Charles G. Dawes in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW
• Image of Vice President Charles Dawes during a visit to Los Angeles, 1925. Los Angeles Times Photographic Archive (Collection 1429). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.