Charles G. Dawes

He died in 1951 at the age of 85.

He was born in Washington County as the son of Rufus Dawes and Mary Beman Gates Dawes. His father was a Civil war officer and he descended from a family of notable personalities.

He went to Marietta College from where he graduated in 1884. He decided to study law and enrolled at the Cincinnati Law School. He completed his studies in 1886.

He was admitted to the bar and he moved to Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1887. There he practiced law till 1894. He was blessed with an acute business sense and made a name for himself as an intelligent and persuasive lawyer and businessman.

He was a very ambitious person who along with his law practice also managed a meat packing company, acted as director of a bank, and was an investor in stocks.

He became very wealthy and in 1894 he purchased control of a number of artificial gas plants in La Crosse, Wisconsin and Chicago, and became the president of the La Crosse Gas Light Company and the Northwestern Gas Light and Coke Company.

Along with managing his business career, he was also active in politics. Republican party leaders, impressed with his business skills asked him to manage a portion of William McKinley’s bid for the Presidency of the United States in 1896.

He was made the Comptroller of the Currency in the United States Department of the Treasury in 1898 after McKinley’s election success. In this position he collected over $25 million from the banks that had failed during the Panic of 1893. He also revolutionized certain banking policies.

He is best known for his Dawes Plan, which was a plan to collect war reparations debt from Germany following the World War I. This plan helped to put an end to the Allied occupation and resolved a serious international crisis.