Dawes received the B.A. (1884) and M.A. (1887) from Marietta College and an LL.B. (1886) from the Cincinnati Law School. In 1887 he entered law practice in Lincoln, Neb., where he became prominent in the fight against discriminatory railway freight rates and in business, particularly banking. He married Caro Blymyer of Cincinnati in 1889; they had two children, and later adopted two more.

In Lincoln, Dawes met John J. Pershing and William Jennings Bryan, who became two of his closest friends. His discussions with Bryan and his keen interest in banking led him to write The Banking System of the United States and Its Relation to the Money and Business of the Country (1894). This book foreshadowed his lifelong political and economic position, one that combined conservative and progressive elements as he argued for financial stability based on adherence to the gold standard and to such governmental actions as the guarantee of bank deposits.

During the panic of 1893, Dawes was plunged deeply into debt. This prompted him to find new fields of endeavor, and he entered the utility business, acquiring control of gas and light companies in La Crosse, Wis., and Evanston, Ill. In 1895 he moved to Chicago, where he could properly oversee his new enterprises. These proved so profitable that he was soon able to pay off his debts and to expand his operations. His three brothers, Beman G. Dawes, Henry M. Dawes, and Rufus C. Dawes, eventually joined him in business.

Through his Ohio contacts, Dawes became friendly with William McKinley. He played an important part in McKinley's nomination and election as president, and he was rewarded in 1897 with an appointment as comptroller of the currency. In 1901 he resigned so that he could, the next year, run against Albert J. Hopkins, the Illinois machine candidate for the Republican nomination for United States senator. Dawes was defeated, and until 1917 he devoted his efforts chiefly to business. He became president of the new Central Trust Company of Illinois in 1902, and the bank's immediate success catapulted him into the nation's leading financial circles, where he remained for the rest of his life. His position was based largely on his commanding personality and his superior use of business knowledge. He was soon prominent in charitable and civic-improvement work in the Chicago area, and he became an essayist and a popular speaker on various subjects. He found time to play the piano and the flute, on which he was self-taught, and to compose his well-known "Melody in A Major." He also dabbled in Republican politics, particularly in seeking legislation to provide greater banking stability.

After America's entry into World War I, Dawes was commissioned a major of engineers. In September 1917, General Pershing assigned him to head the General Purchasing Board of the American Expeditionary Force. Dawes rendered outstanding service in that role and in the creation and operation of the Military Board of Allied Supply, aided considerably by his unconventional bluntness and wit. He remained in Europe as a brigadier general to serve on the AEF's Advisory Settlement Board and the United States Liquidation Commission until August 1919.

In 1921 President Harding appointed Dawes director of the new Bureau of the Budget. During his year in that position Dawes reduced federal expenditures by more than one third. In 1923, with the collapse of the German economy, he joined the Committee of Experts of the Allied Reparations Commission. The Committee, of which he was chosen chairman, presented a five-year program that enabled Germany to restore and stabilize its economy and to pay reasonable reparations to its erstwhile enemies. For this, the "Dawes plan," he shared the 1925 Nobel Peace Prize with Sir J. Austen Chamberlain.

When in June 1924 former Illinois governor Frank O. Lowden declined the Republican nomination for vice-president, the delegates selected Dawes, his political ally, to run with Calvin Coolidge. Dawes lived up to his nickname of "Hell 'n Maria" during his campaign, striking out at the Ku Klux Klan and especially at the "extreme radicalism" of the Progressive presidential candidate, Robert M. La Follette. Upon his inauguration as vice-president in 1925, Dawes shocked the Senate by demanding, although unsuccessfully, effective limitations on filibustering. He participated more in the Senate's work than had his predecessors, and he had some success in facilitating legislative action and in influencing senators in favor of the Kellogg Peace Pact, cruiser appropriations, banking reforms, and farm relief legislation.

After leaving the vice-presidency in March 1929, Dawes headed a commission to put the finances of the Dominican Republic in order. He served as ambassador to Great Britain from June 1929 to January 1932, and he played an important part in the London naval armaments limitations conference of 1930 and in attempts to settle the Sino-Japanese crisis of 1931.

In January 1932, President Hoover appointed Dawes to direct the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) in lending federal funds to bolster the nation's depressed economy. He resigned that position in June 1932 to head the board of Chicago's failing Central Republic Bank and Trust Company, the institution with which his bank had earlier merged. Other bankers and RFC directors, fearing a general banking collapse, persuaded him to seek a large government loan for the bank. Although Dawes drew extensive public criticism for accepting the loan, banking in Chicago was considerably stabilized as a result of his decision. The bank, reorganized as the City National Bank and Trust Company, remained open and subsequently paid its debt in full to the RFC.

Dawes was active in business and philanthropy to the end of his life. He never again held public office, although he occasionally spoke out on public issues, particularly business matters, national defense, and, in 1941, the need to avoid war. Dawes died at home in Evanston, Ill.

text by Donald R. McCoy, Dictionary of American Biography, Supplement 5: 1951-1955. American Council of Learned Societies, 1977.

Sources

Primary documentation is in a variety of record groups in the National Archives and in the Dawes Papers in the library of Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill. The Evanston Historical Society has a collection of pertinent printed materials. Dawes's published diaries include A Journal of the Great War (1921); The First Year of the Budget of the United States (1923); Notes as Vice President, 19281929 (1935); A Journal of Reparations (1939); Journal as Ambassador to Great Britain (1939); and A Journal of the McKinley Years (1950). See also his Essays and Speeches (1915) and How Long Prosperity? (1937). Laudatory but reasonably accurate journalistic biographies are Paul R. Leach, That Man Dawes (1930); and, more complete, Bascom N. Timmons, Portrait of an American: Charles G. Dawes (1953).