John Barton Payne

John Barton Payne

John Barton Payne (born January 26, 1855 in Pruntytown , Taylor County , ( Virginia ), † January 24, 1935 in Washington, DC ) was an American attorney and from 1920 to 1921 Secretary of the Interior of the United States in the cabinet of the US President Woodrow Wilson . From 1922 to 1935 he served as chairman of the League of Red Cross Societies, today's International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement .

Life

Born in what is now West Virginia , John Barton Payne was admitted to the bar in 1876 and began a political career five years later when he was elected chairman of the Democratic Party in Preston County . In 1883 he moved to Chicago and was elected judge there in 1893. He stepped down five years later and became a senior partner in the law firm Winston, Payne, Strawn and Shaw . As a lawyer he developed into a specialist in the field of railway law. In 1913 he married his wife Jennie Byrd, but she died six years later. With the outbreak of World War I , he went to Washington, where he worked as an advisor to the United States Shipping Board Merchant Fleet Corporation and the railroad administration. As part of this activity, after the entry into the war, he organized the state takeover of the railways in the USA. From 1919 until his appointment to the Wilson cabinet , he was Chairman of the United States Shipping Board . On March 15, 1920, he took over the US Department of the Interior and ran it until March 4, 1921.

In October 1921 he became chairman of the American Red Cross and held this office until his death. In 1922 he also succeeded Henry Pomeroy Davison as chairman of the League of Red Cross Societies founded in 1919. The main focus of his work for the American Red Cross was the recruitment of volunteers and the professionalization of the Red Cross work through the increased employment of full-time employees. In addition, he organized an expansion of the activities of the American Red Cross in international relief missions and in the field of welfare work during the time of the Great Depression . The main focus of his work for the league was the area of ​​medical prevention and youth work for the Red Cross.

With a donation of 50 paintings in 1919 and US $ 100,000 in 1932, he also made it possible to found the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond . He died in 1935 of pneumonia as a result of an appendicitis operation . His successor as chairman of the American Red Cross and the League of Red Cross Societies was Cary Travers Grayson .

literature

• Payne, John Barton. In: The Guide to American Law: Everyone's Legal Encyclopedia. West Publishers, St. Paul 1984, ISBN 0-31-473224-1 , Volume 8, p. 154

Web links

Commons : John Barton Payne  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

• John Barton Payne in the Miller Center of Public Affairs of the University of Virginia (English)
• International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement History - John Barton Payne 1922-35 (English)