Home › S › Straus (OSCAR SOLOMON an American)

Straus (OSCAR SOLOMON an American)

OSCAR SOLOMON, an American diplomatist; born in Ottenberg, Rhenish Bavaria, Dec. 23, 1850; came to the United States in 1854 and was graduated at Columbia University in 1871. Subsequently he entered mercantile life. In 1887 he was appointed United States minister to Turkey. He was president of the New York Board of Trade and Transportation; a member of several historical and sociological societies, and the author of a number of books dealing with religion and history.

In 1898 he was again appointed ministe1 to Turkey, which office he held till 1900; and on Jan. 14, 1902, President Roosevelt appointed him a permanent member of the Committee of Arbitration at The Hague, to succeed the late ex-president Benjamin Harrison. In 1906 he was appointed Secretary of Commerce and Labor in the Roosevelt cabinet; ambassador to Turkey 1909-1910 and Progressive candidate for governor of New York; arbitrator in the dispute between engineers and managers of Eastern railroads in 1914; chairman of the New York Public Service Commission in 1915; president of the American Jewish Historical Society. Publication: "The United States Doctrine of Citizenship."