Young, Owen D.

(1874-1962)

   A graduate of Boston Law School and a corporation lawyer, Owen Young joined General Electric (GE) as general counsel and vice president in 1913. He settled strikes in several GE plants during World War I, and in 1919 he served on the Second Industrial Conference. In 1921, he chaired the Subcommittee on Business Cycles and Unemployment of President Warren Harding’s Unemployment Conference. From 1925 to 1928, Young chaired the International Chamber of Commerce.

   In 1919, GE joined with Westinghouse, American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T), and Western Electric to form a company to prevent the British Marconi Company from monopolizing long-distance radio communication. The result was the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), which with Young as chairman until 1929, pooled U.S. radio technology and equipment. Young entered into agreements with foreign companies dividing the world into radio zones to facilitate communication. Under his leadership, RCA became the largest radio company in the world. In 1926, Young also helped to establish the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) and in 1928 the movie chain Radio-Keith-Orpheum (RKO).

   In 1922, Young became chair of the board of GE with Gerard Swope as president. The two men were associated with the introduction of programs of “welfare capitalism,” which did much to influence labor relations during the 1920s.

   Young was a representative to the Reparations Conference in 1924 and was instrumental in securing the acceptance of the Dawes Plan, and in 1929 he chaired the meetings where the Young Plan was agreed upon as a way to scale down German reparations payments. President Herbert Hoover appointed Young to the President’s Committee on Recent Economic Changes in 1929 and as chair of the Committee on Mobilization of Relief Resources of the President’s Unemployment Relief Commission in 1931. He chaired the American Youth Commission from 1936 to 1942 and was a member of the New York Regional Committee of the War Manpower Commission in 1942. Having retired from GE in 1939, Young returned as acting chair to supervise the manufacture of war orders in 1942. He finally retired in 1944 but after the war served on President Harry S. Truman’s Advisory Committee on Foreign Aid in 1947, helping pave the way for the Marshall Plan. Young also chaired the New York Commission on the Need for a State University in 1946. He retired to concentrate on dairy farming.