Steelman, John Roy, 1900-....

Government executive.

John Roy Steelman was born in Thornton, Arkansas on June 23, 1900. Upon graduating from high school he joined the U.S. Army and served in World War I, at the very end of the war. After the war, he drifted across the country to gain seasonal employment in a variety of manual jobs, then entered Henderson-Brown College in Arkadelphia, Arkansas. He graduated with a BA from Henderson-Brown College in 1922, and went on to graduate from Vanderbilt University in 1924 with an MA in sociology and a Ph.D. in social ethics and practical sociology in 1925. He studied for one year as a graduate student at Peabody College in Nashville, Tennessee, and studied at Harvard University in 1926. He received a doctorate in sociology and economics from the University of North Carolina in 1928. Dr. Steelman became a professor of sociology and economics at Alabama College, but in 1934 he became a Commissioner of Conciliation for the government, to mediate industrial disputes. In 1937, he was appointed Director of the Conciliation Service, and oversaw the settlement of thousands of labor-management disputes across the country. In 1939, Steelman married Emma Zimmerman, whom he met at a union convention. In 1944, he resigned as Director of the Conciliation Service, and moved to New York for a few months, working as a public relations consultant. Under President Truman in 1945, Steelman became a special assistant to Secretary of Labor Lewis Schwellenbach, and soon became special assistant to the President, in charge of labor matters. On June 14, 1947, he became Director of the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion (and temporarily served as Director of Economic Stabilization.) After this wartime agency was dissolved by the President, Steelman was appointed to the new post of Assistant to the President of the United States, charged with coordinating Federal agency programs and policies. Steelman also served as chairman of the President's Scientific Research Board, chairman of the President's Special Commission on Higher Education, and liaison officer for the Interdepartmental Committee on Scientific Research and Development. In 1950, Steelman helped to avert a nationwide railroad strike, and in 1952 he helped settle a United Steel Workers strike. He left the government in 1953, and went on to serve as director of the Audio-Dynamics Corporation, and a trustee of the Nationwide Investing Foundation. He died in Naples, Florida on July 22, 1999.

Assistant to President Truman, 1946-1953.

Labor administrator.