The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 63, July 1959 - April, 1960 Page: 169
684 p. : ill., maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Book Reviews
Plan in the spring of 1947. As Undersecretary of State for Eco-
nomic Affairs, Clayton developed the outline of the program
General Marshall offered to Europe in his famous speech at Har-
vard in June, 1947. This contribution by Clayton marked the
climax of a distinguished career of public service. Attracted first
to Franklin Roosevelt by his reciprocal tariff policy, Clayton left
his cotton-brokerage firm in 1940 to serve as an adviser on Latin
American economic affairs. During World War II he worked in
the Commerce and State departments, and won recognition as
an expert on international trade policy. Throughout his govern-
ment service, which terminated with his retirement in 1948, Clay-
ton worked for the lowering of trade barriers. In his view, the
Marshall Plan was but one piece of a larger pattern in the devel-
opment of unrestricted trade between the nations of the free
world.
This biography is of great value to the historian. Though
strongly sympathetic to her father, Mrs. Garwood reveals his per-
sonal faults as well as his virtues in tracing his business career.
Beginning as a boy in a cotton-brokerage concern in New York,
Clayton quickly advanced to a highly-responsible position in the
company, and then in 1903 he helped found Anderson, Clayton,
and Company, which became the largest cotton-brokerage firm in
the world. Able and ambitious, Clayton worked intensely to ad-
vance his company, and as Mrs. Garwood suggests, at times un-
leashed his emotions on his family. The personal detail which
the author alone could supply provides an intimate portrait of
Will Clayton.
Clayton's firm first centered in Oklahoma, but in 1916 Clayton
moved the headquarters to Houston in order to be in a central
position between American cotton-producing areas and foreign
markets. From this time forward, except for his years in Wash-
ington, Clayton lived in Texas and it was here that his company
grew to world-wide proportions. Though Mrs. Garwood passes
briefly over Clayton's business career in Texas, she does point out
his great achievement in revising future contracts on the New
York Cotton Exchange to permit delivery in southern ports. This
long-overdue reform won Clayton the praise of the entire South
and especially of his fellow-citizens in Houston. After his retire-169
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 63, July 1959 - April, 1960, periodical, 1960; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101186/m1/207/: accessed March 28, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.