by Kai Bird
My parents, Eugene and Jerine Bird, gave me the passion for history that got me started on this project. From them I learned to love books. And from them I learned the persistence that made it possible for me to write another man’s life. Shelly Bird kept my Kaypro computer running long after it should have been retired. My other sisters, Nancy and Christina, put up with my endless stories about McCloy and his world.
This book is dedicated to Susan Goldmark, who took time out from her own career to read the first draft and the last. She has been my best critic, a steadfast partner, and my closest friend. I have relied on her good judgment, sharp intelligence, and patience for almost two decades. All biography is part obsession, and she gave me the perspective, humor, and love to sustain the work. No wife could have done more.
We hope you enjoyed reading this Simon & Schuster eBook.
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NOTES
BOOK ONE
ONE: A PHILADELPHIA YOUTH: 1895–1912
1. E. Digby Baltzell, Philadelphia Gentlemen: The Making of a National Upper Class (Glencoe, 111.: The Free Press, 1958).
2. Semi-Centennial Celebration: The Penn Mutual Life Insurance Co. (privately printed, Penn Mutual Life Insurance Co., Philadelphia), p. 131.
3. McCloy interview, June 23, 1983.
4. McCloy interview, Sept. 14, 1984.
5. George Wharton Pepper, Philadelphia Lawyer: An Autobiography (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1944), p. 341.
6. Pepper, Philadelphia Lawyer, p. 342.
7. McCloy interview, June 23, 1983.
8. Penn Mutual Life Insurance Co., minutes of meeting, 1901.
9. Russell F. Weigley, Philadelphia (New York: W. W. Norton, 1982), pp. 498-99.
10. McCloy interview, Sept. 14, 1984.
11. Katherine Bingham, The Philadelphians, p. 61.
12. McCloy interviews, June 23, 1983, and Sept. 5, 1984.
13. Bingham, Philadelphians, p. 55.
14. McCloy interview, Sept. 14, 1984.
15. McCloy speech, Pennsylvania Club, 1948.
16. Weigley, Philadelphia, pp. 519, 534.
17. McCloy interview, June 23, 1983.
18. Stephen Birmingham, Our Crowd (New York: Futura Books, 1967), p. 208.
19. Pepper, Philadelphia Lawyer, p. 318.
20. McCloy interview, June 23, 1983.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid.
23. Swetland letter to Amzi Hoffman, Oct. 8, 1912; Amzi Hoffman interview, Dec. 6, 1982, Amzi Hoffman Papers.
24. Peddie Chronicle, vol. 40, pp. 327-28.
25. Ibid.
26. The Old Gold and Blue, 1911, p. 72.
27. Peddie Chronicle, Winter 1961, p. 3.
28. Amzi Hoffman interview, Dec. 6, 1982.
29. Ibid.
30. McCloy interview, May 26, 1983.
31. McCloy speech, published in Peddie Chronicle, vol. 90 (May 1955), p. 4; McCloy interview, June 23, 1983.
32. Amzi Hoffman to “Herb,” Jan. 7, 1957, Amzi Hoffman Papers; Guy Preston to McCloy, 11/29/42, box PA 1, folder 70, JJM.
33. Peddie Chronicle, vol. 90 (May 1955), p. 4.
34. Crawford H. Droege letter to author, Aug. 9, 1982.
35. McCloy interview, June 23, 1983.
36. Peddie Institute Bulletin, May 1912, p. 41.
37. Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas, The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986), p. 68.
38. Amzi Hoffman interview, Dec. 6, 1982; McCloy interview, Sept. 14, 1984.
39. Peddie Chronicle, vol. 40, p. 329.
40. Ibid., Jan.-Feb. 1909, p. 71.
41. Swetland to Hoffman, July 19, 1919, Amzi Hoffman Papers.
42. Peddie Chronicle, vol. 90, no. 3, p. 5.
43. C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (New York: Oxford University Press, 1957).
44. Peddie Chronicle, vol. 90, no. 3, p. 9; Crawford H. Droege letter to author, Aug. 9, 1982.
TWO: AMHERST YEARS: 1912–16
1. Essays on Amherst’s History (Amherst, Mass.: The Vista Trust, 1978), p. 194.
2. Alexander Meiklejohn, “The Theory of the Liberal College,” in Meiklejohn, Freedom and the College (New York: Century, 1923), pp. 155-56.
3. Julius Seelye Bixler, “Alexander Meiklejohn: The Making of the Amherst Mind,” New England Quarterly, June 1974, pp. 182-83.
4. J. S. Bixler letter to author, Aug. 4, 1982.
5. John J. McCloy, “Champion of Freedom in Higher Education,” Amherst Student, Jan. 21, 1965, p. 5.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Bixler, “Making of the Amherst Mind,” p. 184.
9. Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas, The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made, p. 68.
10. J. S. Bixler letter to the author, Aug. 4, 1982.
11. Bixler, “Making of the Amherst Mind,” p. 191; Robert Paul Browder and Thomas G. Smith, Independent: A Biography of Lewis W. Douglas (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986), p. 21.
12. Browder and Smith, Independent, pp. 19-20.
13. Claude Moore Fuess, Amherst: The Story of a New England College (Boston: Little, Brown, 1935), p. 349; Craig P. Cochrane, phone interview, Sept. 12, 1982.
14. Isaacson and Thomas, Wise Men, p. 69; Fuess, Amherst, pp. 348-49.
15. McCloy letter to the author, Sept. 5, 1984.
16. John Garry Clifford, The Citizen Soldiers: The Plattsburg Training Camp Movement, 1913–1920 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1972), p. 52.
17. Isaacson and Thomas, Wise Men, p. 70.
18. List of students, Plattsburg Barracks Training Camp, 1915, Records of U.S. Army, Continental Commands, 1821–1920, RG 393, box 13, NA.
19. Ralph Barton Perry, The Plattsburg Movement (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1921), p. 37.
20. Ibid., p. 13.
21. Clifford, Citizen Soldiers, p. 73.
22. John S. McCloy, “Why Not the Camp?,” Amherst Monthly, Nov. 1915, p. 178.
23. Clifford, Citizen Soldiers, p. 64.
24. Ibid., p. 65.
25. Ibid., p. 67.
26. Ibid., p. 63.
27. McCloy letter to author, Sept. 5, 1984.
28. Clifford, Citizen Soldiers, p. 79.
29. Perry, Plattsburg Movement, p. 43.
30. Clifford, Citizen Soldiers, p. 83
31. George Wharton Pepper, Philadelphia Lawyer: An Autobiography, p. 111.
32. Clifford, Citizen Soldiers, pp. 83–85.
33. “The Plattsburg Idea,” New Republic, vol. 4 (Oct. 9, 1915), pp. 247–49.
34. Anna May McCloy letter to War Department, October 10, 1915, RG 94, box 7982, AGO Doc. No. 2331877, NA.
35. McCloy, “Why Not the Camp?,” pp. 176–80.
36. Ibid.
37. McCloy interview, June 23,1983. McCloy apparently never considered any career other than law. Although a large number of Amherst men went into law, an equal number pursued careers in finance. During these years, for instance, Amherst graduates Dwight W. Morrow, ’95; Mortimer L. Schiff, ’96; Charles E. Mitchell, ’99; and Charles D. Norton, ’93, were partners or presidents of Wall Street’s four major financial institutions: J. P. Morgan & Co., Kuhn, Loeb & Co., National City Bank, and the First National Bank. See Albert W. Atwood’s “Amherst Men in Finance,” Amherst Graduates’ Quarterly, vol. VIII, no. 2 (Feb. 1919), p. 40.
38. Amherst College Campaign Reporter, May 1983; Scott Buchanan, So Reason Can Rule: Reflections on Law and Politics (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1982), p. 15.
39. Isaacson and Thomas, Wise Men, p. 70; John S. McCloy and Lewis W. Douglas descriptive cards, Records of U.S. Army, Continental Commands 1821–1920, RG 393, boxes 13, 15, NA.
40. Clifford, Citizen Soldiers, p. 167.
41. Ibid., p. 123
.
42. Ibid., p. 169.
THREE: HARVARD LAW SCHOOL AND THE WAR YEARS: 1916–21
1. Dr. Harlan B. Phillips, Felix Frankfurter Reminisces: An Intimate Portrait as Recorded in Talks with Dr. Harlan B. Phillips (New York: Reynal, 1960), p. 19.
2. McCloy’s class of 335 first-year students was decidedly Ivy League, but there was also considerable diversity: fully 41 percent came from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Brown, and Dartmouth; 71 percent had their homes outside of New England; and there was a high percentage of Jews, though very few blacks. By 1922, the year after McCloy graduated, Jews represented 22 percent of Harvard’s undergraduate population, a statistic that prompted President Lowell to impose a quota on Jewish admissions. (See Richard Norton Smith, Harvard Century [New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986], pp. 87–89; Ronald Steel, Walter Lippmann and the American Century, [Boston: Atlantic/Little, Brown, 1980], pp. 193–95; Harvard Law Review, Dec. 1916, p. 160.)
3. Phillips, Felix Frankfurter Reminisces, pp. 26–27.
4. McCloy interview, June 23, 1983.
5. Charles A. Wolfe letter to the author, Aug. 1, 1983. Wolfe wrote that McCloy shared a room with an Amherst classmate whose name he could not remember. Robinson is the only one of McCloy’s classmates to enter Harvard that year. Wolfe later spent fifty-one years with the prestigious Philadelphia law firm founded by Justice Owen J. Roberts.
6. Phillips, Felix Frankfurter Reminisces, p. 29.
7. McCloy interview, June 23, 1983; Lee C. Bradley, Jr., letter to the author, Aug. 17, 1983.
8. Wallace C. Chandler letter to the author, June 6, 1983.
9. “Notes,” Harvard Law Review, Nov. 1916.
10. McCloy interview, June 23, 1983.
11. Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas, The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made, p. 93.
12. Michael E. Parrish, Felix Frankfurter and His Times (New York: Free Press, 1982), p. 72.
13. Phillips, Felix Frankfurter Reminisces, p. 81.
14. Ibid. p. 21.
15. McCloy interview, June 23, 1983.
16. Edgar J. Schoen letter to the author, Aug. 4, 1983.
17. Otto C. Stegemann letter to the author, Sept. 3,1983. “Bull” Warren was, in fact, the prototype for “Professor Kingsfield” in the popular novel and film The Paper Chase. (See New York Times [hereafter NYT], April 30, 1984.)
18. Isaacson and Thomas, Wise Men, p. 71.
19. Phillips, Felix Frankfurter Reminisces, p. 18.
20. Edgar J. Schoen letter to the author, June 9, 1983.
21. Parrish, Felix Frankfurter, p. 79.
22. R. N. Smith, Harvard Century, p. 77; “Harvard War Activities: A Report of the Harvard University Board of Overseers Committee on Military Science and Tactics,” Harvard University, 1917.
23. Postcard from Lieutenant Colonel Wolf to McCloy, found in McCloy scrapbook, “Memorabilia Regarding John J. McCloy kept by Mrs. John J. McCloy, Sr.,” JJM.
24. McCloy to Anna McCloy, 6/27/17, JJM.
25. McCloy to Anna McCloy, n.d. (c. spring 1918), JJM.
26. McCloy to Anna McCloy, March 26, 1918, JJM.
27. Isaacson and Thomas, Wise Men, p. 70; McCloy interview, March 19, 1986.
28. Isaacson and Thomas, Wise Men, p. 70.
29. Guy Preston to McCloy, 4/3/42, box PA 1, folder 70, JJM.
30. Frederick S. Meade, ed., Harvard’s Military Record in the World War (Boston: Harvard Alumni Association, 1921), p. 606.
31. McCloy letter to the author, Sept. 5, 1984.
32. McCloy interview, June 23, 1983.
33. Isaacson and Thomas, Wise Men, p. 71.
34. Harvard Law Review, Feb. 1920, p. 515.
35. Smith, Harvard Century, p. 79.
36. Parrish, Felix Frankfurter, p. 119.
37. “Persecution and Americanism,” Harvard Advocate, Jan. 29, 1920, p. 166.
38. Archibald MacLeish, “The Liberalism of Herbert Hoover,” Harvard Advocate Supplement, April 1, 1920, pp. 6–7.
39. Peter Collier and David Horowitz, The Rockefellers: An American Dynasty (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1976), p. 94.
40. McCloy letter to the author, Sept. 5, 1984.
41. Parrish, Felix Frankfurter, p. 58.
42. Lewis J. Paper, Brandeis: An Intimate Biography of One of America’s Truly Great Supreme Court Justices (Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel, 1983), pp. 92–93.
43. Phillips, Felix Frankfurter Reminisces, p. 81.
FOUR: WALL STREET: 1921–30
1. McCloy interview, June 23, 1983.
2. Geoffrey Perrett, America in the Twenties (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982), p. 321.
3. McCloy interview, Sept. 5, 1984.
4. Richard N. Crockett, The Lighter Side of the Practice of Law by a Wall Street Law Firm from 1929 to 1979 (privately printed, 1979), p. 4; notes from Keith Kane Papers, miscellaneous folders, CWT.
5. McCloy interview, June 23,1983; Henry W. Taft, Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft (privately printed, 1938), p.11.
6. Crockett, Lighter Side, pp. viii-ix.
7. McCloy interview, June 23, 1983; Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas, The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made, p. 121.
8. Benjamin Buttenwieser interview, July 15, 1982.
9. Keith Kane Papers, CWT.
10. Wiseman to Strauss, 3/28/23, Strauss Papers, HH.
11. Robert T. Swaine, The Cravath Firm and Its Predecessors, 1819–1948, vol. II (privately printed, 1948), p. 4.
12. Francis Plimpton interview, June 23, 1982.
13. J. D. Robb letter to author, Nov. 25, 1983.
14. Milton Mackaye, “Public Man,” New Yorker, Nov. 1, 1931, p. 21.
15. Priscilla Mary Roberts, “The American ‘Eastern Establishment’ and World War I: The Emergence of a Foreign Policy Tradition,” unpublished thesis, King’s College, Cambridge University, 1982, p. 40.
16. Swaine, The Cravath Firm, p. 256.
17. Ibid., pp. 257–58.
18. Paul Hoffman, Lions in the Street: The Inside Story of the Great Wall Street Law Firms (New York: Saturday Review Press, 1973), p. 8.
19. McCloy interview, March 19, 1986.
20. Ibid.
21. James F. Simon, Independent Journey: The Life of William O. Douglas (New York: Harper & Row, 1980), p. 81.
22. McCloy interview, March 19, 1986.
23. Isaacson and Thomas, Wise Men, p. 119.
24. Simon, Independent Journey, p. 84.
25. U.S. Senate, Committee on Interstate Commerce, Investigation of Railroads, Holding Companies and Affiliated Companies: Hearings Before a Subcommittee, pt. 15, Nov. 10, 12, 17, 18, 1937, pp. 7015–20.
26. Max Lowenthal, The Investor Pays (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1933), pp. 6–12,
27. Ibid., p. 306.
28. Swaine, The Cravath Firm, p. 425.
29. Benjamin Buttenwieser interview, July 15, 1982.
30. Lowenthal, Investor Pays, p. 355.
31. Ibid., p. 352.
32. Ibid., p. 355.
33. Simon, Independent Journey, p. 89.
34. Ibid.
35. Swaine, The Cravath Firm, p. 430.
36. Simon, Independent Journey, p. 86.
37. Swaine, The Cravath Firm, p. 442.
38. Thomas W. Lamont, Henry P. Davison: The Record of a Useful Life (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1933), p. 241; Isaacson and Thomas, Wise Men, p. 78.
39. Isaacson and Thomas, Wise Men, p. 91; Robert Paul Browder and Thomas G. Smith, Independent: A Biography of Lewis W. Douglas, p. 53.
40. McCloy interview, March 19, 1986.
41. Isaacson and Thomas, Wise Men, p. 121.
42. Swaine, The Cravath Firm, pp. 440–41.
43. McCloy interview, May 26, 1983; Swaine, The Cravath Firm, p. 507.
44. Swaine, The Cravath Firm, p. 441.
45. Roberts, “American ‘Eastern Establishment,’ ” pp. 481–83.
46. Gabriel Kolko, Main Currents in Modem American History (New York: Pantheon, 1976), p. 208.
> 47. Roberts, “American ‘Eastern Establishment,’ ” p. 444.
48. Isaacson and Thomas, Wise Men, p. 122; McCloy interview, May 26, 1983.
49. Roberts, “American ‘Eastern Establishment,’ ” pp. 544–50.
50. Ibid., p. 332.
51. U.S. Senate, Committee on Banking and Currency, Stock Exchange Practices: Hearings, pt. 3, 1933, p. 965.
52. Ibid., p. 964.
53. Ibid., pp. 1011, 1032.
54. John J. McCloy, oral-history interview by Robert Cubbedge, 12/2/70, p. 1, HH; press release, Office of Eastern Treasurer, Republican National Committee, 10/16/28, C&T—Camp, Lit. Press Releases—Elihu Root, HH.
55. Roberts, “American ‘Eastern Establishment,’ ” p. 556.
56. John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash: 1929 (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1954), p. 77.
57. Perrett, Twenties, pp. 321–24.
58. Swaine, The Cravath Firm, p. 449.
59. Benjamin Buttenwieser interview, April 29, 1982.
60. U.S. Senate, Committee on Interstate Commerce, Investigation of Railroads, Holding Companies, and Affiliated Companies: Hearings Before a Subcommittee, 75th Cong., Jan. 4, 1938, p. 8376; U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Investment Trusts and Investment Companies, pt. three, 1940, p. 936; Galbraith, pp. 152–54.
61. Isaacson and Thomas, Wise Men, p. 121.
62. Elizabeth Luce Moore interview, Oct. 21, 1983.
63. Perrett, Twenties, p. 324.
64. J. D. Robb letter to the author, Nov. 25, 1983.
65. Elizabeth Luce Moore interview, Oct. 21, 1983.
66. Swaine, The Cravath Firm, p. 449.
67. McCloy interview, March 19, 1986.
68. NYT, Nov. 12, 1961.
69. Benjamin Buttenwieser interview, July 15, 1982.
70. Mrs. Frederick Warburg interview, April 10, 1984.
71. Judge Charles Wyzanski letter to the author, Nov. 23, 1982.
72. McCloy letter to the author, Sept. 5, 1984; McCloy interview, March 19, 1986.