Chester B. Bowles
Chester Bliss Bowles (April 5, 1901 – May 25, 1986) was an American diplomat and ambassador, governor of Connecticut, congressman and co-founder of a major advertising agency, Benton & Bowles, now part of Publicis Groupe. Bowles is best known for his influence on American foreign policy during Cold War years, when he argued that economic assistance to the Third World was the best means to fight communism, and even more important, to create a more peaceable world order. During World War II, he held high office in Washington as director of the Office of Price Administration, and control of setting consumer prices. Just after the war, he was the chief of the Office of Economic Stabilization, but had great difficulty controlling inflation. Moving into state politics, he served a term as governor of Connecticut from 1949 to 1951. He promoted liberal programs in education and housing, but was defeated for reelection by conservative backlash.
For the biologist and statistician, see Chester Ittner Bliss.
Chester B. Bowles
Office abolished
May 25, 1986 (aged 85)
Essex, Connecticut, U.S.
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Julia Fisk(m. 1925; div. 1933)
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Dorothy Stebbins(m. 1934)
5, including Sam
As ambassador to India, he established a good relationship with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, an emerging leader of the nonalignment movement. Bowles promoted rapid economic industrialization in India, and repeatedly called on Washington to help finance it. However, Washington was angered by India's neutrality, and limited funding to literacy and health programs. During the Eisenhower years, 1953–1960, Bowles organized liberal Democratic opposition, and served as a foreign policy advisor to Adlai Stevenson and John F. Kennedy. His reward was Under Secretary of State (1961), which enabled him to staff American embassies with liberal intellectuals and activists. However his liberalism proved too strong for Kennedy, who demoted him to a nominal job as roving ambassador to the Third World in 1961. Kennedy named him as ambassador to India again, 1963–1969, where he helped improve agricultural productivity and fight local famines.[1]
Education and early career[edit]
Chester Bowles was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, to Charles Allen Bowles and Nellie Seaver (Harris). Theirs was an old Yankee family. His grandfather Samuel Bowles was a leading Republican spokesman as editor of the Springfield Republican. His father made a middle-class living as a salesmen for the wood pulp industry. Chester's parents were arch-conservative Republicans who hated and feared big government. However, Chester's political views were shaped more by his aunt Ruth Standish Baldwin, who was a socialist, pacifist, friend of Norman Thomas, and leader in the early civil rights movements for Blacks. She inspired him to read deeply in politics, civil rights, and international affairs. Chester attended elite private schools – The Choate School (now Choate Rosemary Hall) in Wallingford, Connecticut, graduating in 1919. He matriculated at the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale University, earning a Bachelor of Science degree in 1924. Decades later he recalled the Yale years "as a period of overwork, confusion and missed opportunities....It was unfashionable in or out of college to think much about anything."[2]
After working after graduation as a reporter for the newspaper in Springfield, Massachusetts owned by his family, Bowles took a minor position with the United States consulate in Shanghai, but soon returned to the U.S. because of his father's illness.[3]
Career during World War II[edit]
Initially, Bowles was opposed to the United States getting involved in World War II and joined an opposition group, the America First Committee. When the United States entered World War II in December 1941, he was rejected for health reasons when he tried to join the Navy.
Bowles then took a job as the state of Connecticut's rationing administrator in 1942. He becoming state director of price administration later that year, and then general manager. He was appointed by President Roosevelt in 1943 as administrator of the Office of Price Administration and served in that position until 1946. He played the major role in rationing consumer goods and setting prices in an effort to hold down inflation and guarantee that poor families were not outbid for the necessities of life. He served as a member of the War Production Board and the Petroleum Board for War.[8]
Political commitment[edit]
Chester Bowles was well known for his oft-repeated phrase, that he always had "a feeling for the people's side." He said that his grandfather and great-grandfather also used that phrase in their careers in journalism as newspaper owners.[5] Bowles showed expertise in stagecraft, public relations and promotion, both during his career in advertising, and throughout his work as a diplomat, elected official and appointed official. For many years he was a successful author and lecturer, giving him platforms to promote his beliefs and views of politics, policy and the quest for peace. Early on, while a student at Yale College, his goal was to join the United States foreign service to become a career diplomat. Even while a business executive in the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s, he fostered a keen, growing interest in domestic issues, international issues, and a wide array of other political issues of the day. With the election of Franklin Roosevelt to the presidency in 1932, Bowles saw in the New Deal policies many ideas and concepts that he liked and would promote for decades.[5]
Because of the strength and wealth of the United States, Bowles believed that it was essential for America to further develop vigorous, sizable foreign aid programs to a large number of countries. Bowles was a long-time advocate for peace. Because of that deep-rooted sense that peace was vital to survival and happiness of the world's population, Bowles was opposed to the Vietnam War and to the involvement of the United States in Southeast Asia. European reconstruction was vital, he believed, after the massive devastation of World War II. That devastation was due in no small measure to the bombing and other military activities conducted by the US and its Allies over the years of conflict in Europe, in his view. Bowles understood that the Nazi regime of Germany—and others in Axis alliance—needed to be defeated. Yet that meant destruction of buildings, infrastructure, deaths of civilians. Shortly after the war, Bowles saw the hampered abilities of the countries to produce food, clothe their people, provide education, sanitation and health care. Jobs were scarce and opportunities were limited for most people. Yet he was convinced that after the war the United States had a moral obligation to assist with the re-building of affected countries and with meeting the humanitarian needs of the affected people.[13]
Civil rights was of paramount importance to Chester Bowles. As a white liberal from the Northeast, he used various tools to foment change that encouraged independence, freedom and equality for African-Americans and other minorities, supporting changes in the laws advocating for enlightened judicial decisions affecting civil rights. He wrote articles and books that promoted civil rights and agitation for change and improvement, including in a book entitled "What Negroes Can Learn from Gandhi" published in 1958. He advanced these rights by supporting various government programs and private philanthropic initiatives.[14]
Personal life[edit]
Bowles married twice and had children by both marriages. His first wife was Julia Fisk. They married in 1925 and divorced in 1933. The marriage produced two children, a son, Chester Jr., and a daughter, Barbara. Chester Bowles Jr. was an architect in San Francisco.
In 1934, the year after his divorce, Bowles married Dorothy Stebbens. They had three children together: two daughters, Cynthia and Sally, and a son, Samuel.[15] Samuel Bowles is a well-known economist, while Sally Bowles (1938-2011) continued her father's tradition of public service, which lifelong dedication she attributed to her years as a school-girl studying in a public school in India, where she and her siblings were the only non-Indian students.[16]
A public housing project in northwest Hartford, Connecticut, Bowles Park, is named in Bowles's honor. Connecticut Route 9 between Old Saybrook and Cromwell is also designated as the Chester Bowles Highway.
Death[edit]
Bowles died at the age of 85, on May 25, 1986, in Essex, Connecticut. He had had Parkinson's disease for 22 years (diagnosed when he was Ambassador to India). He also had a cerebrovascular accident (a stroke) the week prior to his death.[5] His grave is in the River View Cemetery in Essex.