Holt, Hamilton Personal Papers

Hamilton Holt, journalist, internationalist, educator, was born on August 19, 1872 in Brooklyn, New York. His parents George Chandler Holt, a federal judge, and Mary Louisa Bowen Holt were of colonial American and English ancestry. Holt attended Yale University where his chief academic interests were economics and sociology; he received a Bachelor of Arts degree from there in 1894, and then continued to study these subjects from 1894 to 1897 in postgraduate courses at Columbia University. In the fall of 1894, Holt began to work part-time on The Independent magazine staff. In 1897 he gave up his graduate studies and became managing editor, a position he held until 1913 when he became owner and editor of the publication. Under Holt, Independent was transformed from a religious to a secular magazine of broad political, social, and economic interests. The publication also had its impact on journalistic reform, for its owner experimented with simplified spelling and modern formats, as well as advocating the establishment of an endowed magazine free from the influence of advertisers. In 1921 Holt resigned his position as editor and remained as consulting editor until the magazine merged with The Weekly Review. As early as 1907, Holt was known as a vigorous exponent of international organization, a cause which he championed until his death. He attended the second Hague Peace Conference as a representative of Independent in 1907. In 1911 he served as President of the National Peace Congress. He later helped found the League to Enforce Peace and represented that society at the Paris conference which led to the establishment of the League of Nations. During the fight over United States membership in the League, Holt toured the country as a leading advocate of that organization. In the summer of 1922, he went to Geneva to study the Third Assembly of the League of Nations and its accomplishments. The next summer found him again in Europe where he again saw the League in action and where he studied the Permanent Court of lnternational Justice. In 1927 he attended the Eighth Assembly of theLeagueof Nations. During the 1930s he was in consultation with the State Department over the strategy to bring the United States into the World Court. When the San Francisco Conference on the United Nations assembled in 1945, Holt was on hand as an observer and proponent. In his efforts to promote world peace through international organization, Halt was the founder and leader of many international societies. He helped organize the Italy-America Society, the Netherlands American Foundation, the Friends of Poland, and the League of Nations Non-Partisan Association. Furthermore, he was President of the American-Scandinavian Foundation and the Greek-American Club. At one time, he was executive director of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation and lecturer for the American branch of the lnternational Conciliation and World Peace Foundation, as well as one of the honorary directors of the World Federalists USA. Holt's indefatigable campaign in quest of world peace won him the respect of numerous foreign countries. To show their gmtitude, they showered him with the following decorotions and honors: Commander of the Japanese Order of the Sacred Treasure (1903); Officer of the Greek Order of George 1 (1919); Officer of the French Order of Public Instruction (1920); Officer of the Order of the Crown of Italy (1920); Knight of the French Legion of Honor (1921); Knight of the Swedish \ North Star (1923); Commander in the Serbian Order of Saint Sava (1931); the Danish decoration of Pro Danie (1946). He was also awarded nine honorary degrees from American colleges and universities. A third facet of Holt's career, that of educator, began when he became President of Rollins College in 1925. At Rollins he inaugurated the Conference Plan of Study which, with other experimental programs, attracted widespread attention throughout the 1930s. Under Holt's presidency, Rollins also saw notable changes in its physical plant and in the size of its student body. In 1949, Holt retired as President and died two years later, on April 26, 1951. Besides his three major interests - journalism, internationalism, and education - Holt was active in other areas throughout his life. He served in 1908 as President of the New York State Initiative and Referendum League, was an arbiter on the board of arbitration of the cloak, suit, and skirt trade, in addition to being a member of the National Institute of Social Sciences and the Simplified Spelling Boord. In the political realm, he waged in 1924 an unsuccessful campaign in Connecticut for a position in the United States Senate, and in 1950 he ran for a seat in the legislature of that state. He also played an active role in many presidential elections. Despite the multiplicity of his activities, Holt found time to write two books, Undistinguished Americans (1906) and Commercialism and Journalism (1909), and hundreds of editorials and articles. He also wrote the introduction to William Howard Toft's The United States and Peace (1914).

Note written by Peter E. Robinson