Charles Gates Dawes, Nobel Peace Prize Winner and
Vice President of the United States
Charles Gates Dawes (August 27, 1865-April 23, 1951) pursued two careers during his lifetime, one in business and finance, the other in public service. He was at the height of his fame in both in 1926 when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 1925. He was the vice-president of the United States; he had achieved worldwide recognition for his report on German reparations in 1924; he had a secure reputation as a financier. By ancestry he was destined for a life of such duality. His father was a noted Civil War officer and his ancestor William Dawes had ridden with Paul Revere on April 18, 1775.
In 1887, Dawes began seven years of work as a businessman with interests in real estate, meat packing and banking. Eventually, he and his brothers controlled twenty-eight gas and electric plants in ten states. In 1902, he founded the Central Trust Company of Illinois, often referred to as the “Dawes Bank” and spent virtually full time in its management until 1917. He had been appointed comptroller of the federal currency in 1898 by President William McKinley but dropped out of politics after McKinley’s assassination.
In 1917 Dawes received his commission as a major in the army and twenty-six months later was discharged as a brigadier general. While on General Pershing's staff he integrated the system of supply procurement and distribution for the entire American Expeditionary Force and later performed an analogous service for the Allies by devising an inter-Allied purchasing board, as well as a unified distribution authority.
An incident occurred related to his wartime service that showed Dawes was a forthright man given to forthright talk. His nickname, “Hell and Maria” Dawes, came from some words uttered before a Congressional committee investigating charges of waste and extravagance in the conduct of World War I. When a member of the committee asked Dawes if it was true that excessive prices were paid for mules in France, he shouted, “Helen Maria, I'd have paid horse prices for sheep if the sheep could have pulled artillery to the front!”
In 1920, appointed to the newly inaugurated position of Director of the Budget, Dawes applied his conceptions of efficiency and unity to the reform of budgetary procedures in the United States government. His most important reform resulted from his insistence that each department of the government prepare a true budget projecting future expenditures and stay within it. It is estimated that this reform and others, notably the unification of purchasing, saved the government about two billion dollars in the first year.
The Nobel Peace Prize
The League of Nations late in 1923 invited Dawes to chair a committee to deal with the question of German reparations. The “Dawes Report” submitted in April, 1924 provided facts on Germany's budget and resources, outlined measures needed to stabilize the currency and suggested a schedule of payments on a sliding scale. For his masterly handling of this crucial international problem, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He donated the money to Johns Hopkins University.
From 1924 to 1932, Dawes devoted his entire attention to public service: vice-president of the United States 1925-29; head of a commission to improve the efficiency of the Dominican Republic government, 1929; U.S. ambassador to Great Britain, 1929-32; delegate to the London Naval Conference, 1930; chairman of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (a major new governmental agency empowered to lend money to banks, railroads, and other businesses in effort to prevent total economic collapse during the depression), 1932.
Dawes was a self-taught pianist and composer and he performed on the flute and piano. In 1912 he composed Melody in A Major and after he performed it for a friend, the friend took it to a music house and it was published. It became a well-known piano and violin piece and was played at many official functions as his signature tune. It was transformed into the pop song It's All In The Game in 1951 when Carl Sigman added lyrics. The song was a number one hit in 1958 for Tommy Edwards, number 38 on Billboard’s All Time Top 100. The tune, often dubbed "Dawes's Melody," followed him into politics after it was first published, and he grew to detest hearing it wherever he appeared. It was a favorite of violinist Fritz Kreisler, who used it as his closing number, and in the 1940s it was picked up by musicians such as Tommy Dorsey.
Nearly all of the material in this document is from the Nobel Prize website, with a small bit from ancestry.com and from the University of Illinois at Chicago Special Collections website.