Philip Dunham Reed (November 16, 1899 - March 10, 1989) was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He received an undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin in 1921, and an LL. B. at Fordham University Law School in 1924. He worked briefly as a patent attorney, 1921 to 1922, for Pennie, Davis, Marvin and Edwards in New York City, while attending evening law school at Fordham University. He was admitted to the New York State Bar Association in 1925. After graduation from law school, Reed began work at Van Heusen Company as a patent counselor. He prepared their collar patent case for attorney Charles Neaves.

Reed's career at General Electric began in the New York law department in 1927. In 1928 Reed was transferred to the incandescent lamp division, becoming general counsel for that department beginning in 1934. Reed was appointed assistant to president Gerard Swope on the day after his thirty-eighth birthday, November 16, 1937, and became chairman of the board in 1939 at age 40. He held that position 18 years, from 1940 to 1942, and after World War II, from 1945 to 1959. Reed also held chairmanship of International General Electric from 1945 until its merger with the parent company in 1952. From 1958 until his retirement in 1959 he served as chairman of the Finance Committee and of the General Electric Pension Trust. During Reed's tenure as chairman, General Electric sales grew from $396 million in 1939 to $4.3 billion in 1957; company jobs during that period increased from 79,000 to more than a quarter million. During that time, General Electric invested over a billion dollars in facilities expansion. Reed was primarily concerned with customer and government relations and became a spokesman for the future of the electrical industry.

Reed's expertise in law and business led to a “dollar-a-year” appointment during World War II as Senior Consultant to the Director of Priorities, Office of Production Management in January 1942. He then served as Deputy Director, Materials Division of the War Production Board, from July to December, 1942. Other General Electric executives employed during this period of economic conversion were Charles E. Wilson, President, who became Production Vice Chairman of the War Production Board beginning in 1942, and Owen D. Young, retired Chairman of the Board. Reed was re-assigned to assist Averell Harriman as the Deputy Chief of the U.S. Mission for Economic Affairs in London in 1943, becoming chief of that mission with the rank of minister in October 1943, serving until January 1945.

After leaving the U. S. Mission for Economic Affairs, Reed served as legal consultant to the U.S. delegation to the 1945 United Nations Conference on International Organization in San Francisco; this led to Reed's long affiliation with the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC). He was a member of the ICC from 1945-1975; he served as president from 1949 to 1951. Reed headed the U.S. Mission on Anglo-American Council of Productivity, a Marshall Plan agency, established in 1948. Reed was vice chairman of the Business Advisory Council of the Department of Commerce (became the Business Council in 1961) from 1951 to 1952. He was also active in the Committee for Economic Development where he served as a trustee and a member of the Research & Policy Committee from 1946 to 1975.

Reed served as a director of the Council on Foreign Relations from 1946 to 1969; he also served as a member of the Advisory Commission on Information, the U.S. Information Agency, from 1948 to 1961.

Reed joined fourteen other businessmen in helping to persuade General Dwight D. Eisenhower to run for president in 1952. During Eisenhower's presidency, Reed acted as an informal advisor and envoy. The two men maintained a political and social relationship until Eisenhower's death.

Upon his retirement from GE in 1959, Reed became a director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He served from 1959 to 1965, and was Chairman of the Board from 1960 to 1965. During these years, Reed also served on the Board of Directors of American Express; Bankers Trust Company; Bigelow-Sanford, Inc.; Cowles Communication; Kraftco Corporation; Otis Elevator; Metropolitan Life Insurance; Scott Paper; Tiffany & Co.; and U. S. Financial, Inc.

Reed was active in a wide variety of educational and cultural institutions. He was a director of the Metropolitan Opera Association from 1945 to 1953, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Ford Foundation Fund for the Advancement of Education from 1951 to 1953, and in 1960 was a member of the Committee on the University and World Affairs. He served as chairman of the Executive Committee of the International Executive Service Corps from 1966 to 1974. Reed worked with the International Executive Service Corps for over twenty years. The organization was similar to the Peace Corps in its mission to bring U.S. expertise to developing countries, but it targeted retired business and industry executives for these positions.

Reed acted as an Eisenhower Exchange Fellowships trustee from 1953 to 1975, serving as Vice Chairman from 1955 to 1975, and Chairman of the Finance Committee from 1956 to 1958. Reed also served as a Trustee of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation from 1960 to 1965, and as a Trustee of the Winston Churchill Foundation of the United States from 1970 to 1975.

Reed and his wife, Mabel, lived in Rye, New York, and Antigua, West Indies. Reed kept an office in New York City until his death.

Series I. World War II Appointments

Reed's papers from the War Production Board pertain in large part to the 1941-1942 Congressional investigation into the “dollar-a-year” program. There are statements by Reed, WPB director Donald Nelson, and Robert Guthrie, head of the Textile Division whose public criticism of the “dollar-a-year” men prompted an investigation. Included are the working papers that Reed used to prepare for his testimony, a record of the proceedings, newsclippings, and copies of the statements and Congressional committee reports, as well as related correspondence between Reed and his attorney Henry H. (Joe) Fowler.

Mission for Economic Affairs (MEA) papers include correspondence with British members of Parliament and United States business leaders relating to Anglo-American trade policy. Also included are MEA policy manuals and correspondence relating to General Electric's economic relations with the Soviet Union. Reed's letters to his wife (in Series V) describe the operation of the Mission to Economic Affairs and provide a vivid description of life in wartime London.

Following his resignation as head of the MEA, Reed continued in public service, acting as consultant to the U. S. Delegation, San Francisco Conference on World Organization in 1945. Reed's statements before Congressional committees, and correspondence with Edward Stettinius, Averell Harriman, and Dean Acheson, among others--all contained in Series I--reflect Reed's position on post-war U.S. economic commitments to the European countries, as well as the Soviet Union and Eastern Block countries.

Series II. Board of Directors' Files

This series contains directors' and executive committee minutes, correspondence, annual reports, and legal documents from the company boards on which Reed served. Records from American Express, Bankers' Trust, and Otis Elevator provide a good deal of information on corporate reorganizations, stock trans-actions, long-term strategic planning, and legal problems which affected board members.

Series III. Public Policy Organizations

This series contains records relating to Reed's activities with the Business Advisory Council, International Chamber of Commerce, Committee for Economic Development, and the Council on Foreign Relations. Reed's correspondence concerning the Business Advisory Council, which became the Business Council in 1961, begins in 1955. In July 1958, Secretary of Commerce Sinclair Weeks requested the Business Advisory Committee for the Department of Commerce to set up a Business Advisory Subcommittee on World Economic Practices to act as an advisory council to the Department of Commerce. Reed served on both committees, and their policies and operations are documented in these files.

Reed was a delegate to the United Nations Conference in San Francisco. Correspondence includes letters to Paul G. Hoffman and Edward Stettinius concerning the U. S. delegation to the San Francisco conference. There is one folder on the conference and several relating to organizational and fund-raising matters. Several articles written by Reed on international political and economic issues are also contained in this series.

Reed's papers and correspondence document his work with the Committee for Economic Development and Council on Foreign Relations. They describe the role that these two organizations played in shaping the post-war relationship between business and the state, and the impact that this had on economic and foreign policy. Because of Reed's early involvement with the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), his correspondence documents much of the history of that organization. The papers include correspondence, itineraries, schedules, programs, and personal notes. Many conference programs contain speeches by Reed, especially during his tenure as President of the ICC.

Beginning in the 1950s, Reed became an advisor to the U.S. Information Agency. His correspondence with Meyer Kestenbaum, chairman of the General Business Committee of the U.S. Advisory Commission on Information (USACI), concerns funding and the Committee's relationship with the State Department.

Reed joined the United States Advisory Committee (USAC) in 1948 and, through that organization, became a member of the USIA Executive Committee. He served in the USAC from 1948 to 1961. These files contain correspondence with USIA officers, as well as USIA reports to Congress, and, in a report to the Senate Appropriations Committee, a survey of U.S. information operations in Western Europe.

In December 1959, President Eisenhower directed Mansfield Sprague, then president of the American Machine and Foundry Company, to organize a commission to review the findings and recommendations of the Commission on International Information Activities. The Commission, on which Reed served, evaluated foreign information programs from 1948 to 1960, such as Radio Free Europe. The Commission terminated its activities in May 1960. Papers include news clips on the Commission and on its final report, correspondence from Lewis Douglas (with whom Reed served on the USACI) regarding Radio Free Europe, and reference to a USIA poll on international perceptions of the U.S. following the Sputnik launch. There is some correspondence regarding Reed's reaction to, and suggestions for, the final report.

Finally, Series III contains correspondence documenting Reed's service on the bipartisan U.S. Committee on Information, established by President Harry Truman in 1948.

Series IV. General Correspondence

This series includes letters from political and business associates. Of particular note is Reed's extensive correspondence with Eisenhower, beginning in 1951 and continuing with some regularity until Eisenhower's death in 1969. The correspondence reflects their personal friendship and important political association. (See Series V. Scrapbooks for more Eisenhower correspondence.) Reed wrote personal congratulations to all Eisenhower appointees, which are filed in this series with other political correspondence. Also included in this series are letters between Reed and Dean Acheson, Averell Harriman, Jacob Javits, and Archibald MacLeish.

There are also papers on several trips Reed made as General Electric CEO in Series IV. In 1958, he traveled to the Soviet Union with other electrical industry representatives, visiting plants during a two-week period. This file includes Reed's personal notes, as well as correspondence relating to the trip.

Series V. Personal Papers and Speeches

This series contains speeches, radio and television broadcasts from the 1940s and 1950s, and copies of published articles. The topics addressed by Reed include American and international industry, General Electric policy, and patriotic themes. Many speeches are filed with tear sheets, drafts and notes. Five cubic feet of office correspondence, both professional and personal, are also included in this series, as well as Reed's office date books from 1942 to 1972. Finally in this series are Reed's personal letters to his wife during the time he spent in London with the Harriman Mission, or Mission for Economic Affairs, 1942 to 1944. These letters provide insight into Reed's family life, details on wartime London, British and American economic policy, and the internal workings of the MEA.

The collection also contains one and one-half cubic feet of miscellaneous correspondence, largely unprocessed, regarding Reed's membership in the Mill Reef Club, Antigua, West Indies; one cubic foot of miscellaneous personal correspondence; one cubic foot of miscellaneous business correspondence; and one cubic foot of miscellaneous correspondence regarding the Philip D. Reed Foundation.

Photographs of Reed and many business associates are in the Hagley Museum and Library Pictorial Collections Department.

Copyright restrictions may apply.

Records subject to 25-year time seal.

Gift of Philip Reed, Jr. and Kathryn Reed Smith

May 1991

Processed by Cheryl Miller