The major media and national leaders are full of acclaim for Secretary of State George Shultz, who died on Saturday, February 6th, at the age of 100. They note that he was one of the only two Americans to ever serve in four presidential cabinet posts. They speak about him as a “pillar of integrity,” “a titan of American academy, business, and diplomacy,” and “perhaps the 20th century’s most consequential secretary of state.”
None of this praise explains why he was more successful in diplomacy and domestic affairs than his predecessors. To answer that, we have to look back to his family background, his experience with unions and management before he entered government, and his Progressive heritage—not in the contemporary, left-wing use of that term, but to the early 20th century movement to promote peace between social classes and among nations.
George Shultz’s maternal grandparents were Presbyterian missionaries who crossed the country to build a church for the Shoshone Indians in eastern Idaho. They perished soon afterward, leaving behind their four-year-old daughter Margaret, who was raised by her aunt and her uncle, George Pratt, an Episcopalian minister for whom Secretary Shultz was named. His father, Birl Shultz, was a Quaker who grew up on a farm in Indiana. A talented athlete, Birl Shultz won a scholarship to DePauw College, where he played varsity football and earned a degree in history. He went on to Columbia University, where he studied with the great Progressive historian Charles Beard and wrote his doctoral thesis on Progressive reform initiatives in New York State. Afterwards he founded the New York Stock Exchange Institute, which taught portfolio management.
The young George Shultz thus inherited missionary zeal, a Progressive mindset, dedication to research, interest in market expertise, and a passion for football—values that resonated throughout his life.
At Princeton University, George Shultz majored in economics and also in public affairs, which he thought of “as the real side of economic life.” He wrote his senior thesis on the Tennessee Valley Authority’s impact on farmers. To prepare, he boarded with a farm family in North Carolina. The family was initially slow to answer his questions, but when they asked for help with government forms, Shultz discovered that the farmers were giving bogus figures to the TVA in order to receive more fertilizer. The future Great Powers negotiator concluded then that “if you are going to get people to talk candidly, they have to trust you, and trust takes time to develop.”