Cyrus Stephen Eaton Sr. (December 27, 1883 – May 9, 1979) was a Canadian-American investment banker, businessman and philanthropist, with a career that spanned 70 years. "Rationalism Versus Rockefeller", and "A Capitalist Looks at Labour" being some of the best known.

Life and career

Eaton was born on December 27, 1883, on a farm near the village of Pugwash in Cumberland County, Nova Scotia, Canada.

Eaton left Nova Scotia in 1899 to attend Woodstock College, a Baptist-affiliated prep school in Woodstock, Ontario. Later he enrolled at McMaster University, a Baptist university, then located in Toronto, where he studied philosophy and finance, intending to enter the Baptist ministry.

thumb|Cyrus Eaton in Leipzig, Germany (June 1960)

After graduating from McMaster he moved to Cleveland and went to work for the East Ohio Gas Company. This was one of many businesses associated with John D. Rockefeller. After working with East Ohio Gas and Rockefeller for two years, he established his own business in 1907, developing gas utilities which at the time were relatively underdeveloped and unconsolidated in Canada. He managed to secure natural-gas franchises in Manitoba, Canada, representing a group of New York investors. The syndicate was unable to complete its financing and went defunct. However, the Manitoba government was sufficiently impressed to allow Eaton to retain the franchises. Eaton formed a new holding company, the Canada Gas & Electric Corp, later consolidated into the Continental Gas & Electric Corp. in 1913.

After spending several years travelling, Eaton settled in Cleveland in 1913 and became active in many businesses. Eaton joined the Otis & Co. banking firm in 1916. In 1926 he established the investment vehicle Continental Shares, Inc., a closed end trust. In 1927 he formed Republic Steel, the 3rd-largest U.S. steel company. His business had a complex structure which some felt to be too highly leveraged. His 1929 wealth was an estimated $100 million, most of which was lost in the Great Depression.

Eaton rebuilt his fortune in the 1940s and 1950s, becoming a director (1943), then board chairman (1954), of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway, and also board chairman of the West Kentucky Coal Co. (1953).

Eaton married twice.

First, in 1907, Margaret House (1887–1956); then Anne Kinder Jones (1922–1992) in 1957. He had seven children: Margaret Grace, Mary Adelle, Elizabeth Ann, Anna Bishop, Cyrus S. Jr., Augusta Farlee, and MacPherson.

Tower International

To effect the trading of sheet metal from Eaton's Republic Steel in Cleveland for chrome ore primarily from the Kazakh SSR in the Soviet Union in 1954 during the United States' McCarthyism era, Eaton's son Cyrus Eaton Jr., established the Canadian firm Tower International in Montreal because direct trade between the US and the Soviet Union was unthinkable. In July 1972, Armand Hammer's financial wizard Dorman Commons, who was the chief financial officer at Occidental Petroleum in Los Angeles, estimated that the Moscow International Trade Center project would cost $100 million and would be a complete flop if détente failed. On July 31, 1972, Commons voiced his thoughts with Hammer after which Hammer fired Commons effective August 1, 1972. During détente in July 1972, Armand Hammer negotiated a 20-year agreement with Brezhnev of the Soviet Union that was signed by Hammer in April 1973 in which the Hammer controlled firms Occidental Petroleum and Tower International would export to the Soviet Union, and later Russia, phosphate, which Occidental mined in northern Florida, in return for the Soviet Union, and later Russia, exporting to Hammer's firms natural gas that would be converted into ammonia, potash, and urea. This fertilizer deal was to continue until Hammer's 100th birthday in 1998. JaxPort at the Port of Jacksonville in Jacksonville, Florida, was the United States port through which this trade occurred.

Philanthropy

thumb|left|[[Thinkers' Lodge, Pugwash, Nova Scotia, Canada; site of the first Pugwash conference in 1957]]

In 1920, Eaton founded the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. He had his ashes buried in Blandford, Nova Scotia.

Legacy

  • Cyrus Eaton Elementary School, Pugwash, Nova Scotia
  • Lee Eaton Elementary School, Northfield Village, Ohio (The primary school on Ledge Rd. sits on twelve acres of land donated by Mr. Cyrus Eaton in memory of his first born daughter Margret G. Eaton also known as Lee by the family.)
  • Eaton Estate, a housing development in Northfield Village, Ohio, which is built on the site of his former home Acadia Farm.

He is the subject of Carol Moore-Ede's 1977 documentary film The Prophet from Pugwash.

Notes

References

Works cited

Further reading

  • Gleiser, Marcus, The World of Cyrus Eaton Kent State University Press, 2010; a biography, first published in 1966.
  • Cover of Time magazine February 24, 1930.
  • "Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter E". American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 7 April 2011
  • Cyrus Eaton interviewed by Mike Wallace on The Mike Wallace Interview.