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Straight (Willard Dickerman) Papers
0057
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Title: Willard Dickerman Straight Papers
Creator:
Straight, Willard Dickerman, 1880-1918
Identifier/Call Number: 0057
Contributing Institution:
California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. Special Collections and Archives
Language of Material: English
Physical Description:
0.5 Linear Feet
(1 box)
Date (inclusive): 1857-1925
Abstract: Willard Dickerman Straight (1888-1918) was an American diplomat and financier. The collection contains digital scans of microfiche
rolls of original materials in the Willard Dickerman Straight Papers held at Corenll University.
Advance notice required for access.
Unpublished manuscripts are protected by copyright. Permission to publish, quote, or reproduce must be secured from the repository
and the copyright holder.
[Box/folder# or item name], Willard Dickerman Straight Papers, Collection no. 0057, University Archives, Special Collections
and Archives, University Library, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
The collection was transferred to Special Collections and Archives in 2012 by Professor Emeritus of History John Allphin Moore,
Jr.
Willard Dickerman Straight's extraordinarily full life (1880-1918) took him to various parts of the world. As a young man,
he served as secretary to the US Consulate in Havana, Cuba, later was appointed by Wilson's Secretary of the Treasury William
Gibbs McAdoo to serve as an adviser on Pan-American affairs, and wrote and spoke extensively on the role of American diplomacy,
finance, and trade in Latin America and elsewhere throughout the world. Straight kept a diary which, along with correspondence,
drawings (Straight was an accomplished artist and portraitist), published articles, and other papers, highlights the incisive
observations he accumulated during his experiences.
Straight is best known for his activities in China during the first two decades of the twentieth century, but his involvement
in world affairs extended well beyond China. After graduating from Cornell in 1901 he took a position with the Chinese Maritime
Customs Service in Beijing (then called Peking in the West), was a correspondent for Reuters during the Russo-Japanese War,
and assumed the position of personal secretary to Edwin V. Morgan, Consul General to Korea and later to Cuba. In 1906 President
Theodore Roosevelt (a personal friend) appointed Straight Consul General in Mukden, Manchuria. In 1909, as the new William
Howard Taft administration entered office, he became chief of the State Department's Far Eastern Division. He was only 29
years of age.
Later in 1909, Straight went to work for J. P. Morgan Company and for a consortium of American bankers seeking to engage in
international financial investments in China. In 1911 he married Dorothy Payne Whitney with whom he founded The New Republic
in 1914 and Asia Magazine in 1917. Although an active Republican, Straight impressed high officials in the incoming Wilson
Administration. Treasury Secretary McAdoo appointed him as a senior adviser for his Pan American initiative and, when the
US entered World War I in 1917, appointed him to direct the government insurance program for doughboys fighting in Europe.
As the war drew to a close, Edward M. House, President Wilson's closest adviser, chose Straight to be a senior member of the
group planning the American peace commission's involvement in the peace conference that ended World War I. On December 1,
1918, Straight died in Paris from pneumonia, a complication of the historic flu epidemic of the time.
The collection contains digital scans of microfiche rolls of original materials in the Willard Dickerman Straight Papers held
at Corenll University. The scans are stored on one external hard drive and include correspondence, reports, diaries, writings,
drawings, memoranda, and family papers from 1857–1925.
Willard Dickerman Straight papers, #1260. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.
The finding aid was created by Special Collections and Archives staff in 2012 and the collection number changed from SC2012.02
to 0057 in 2020.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
World War, 1914-1918