The William Benton Page

Benton is credited with originating modern techniques of polling while employed at Lord & Thomas. "After quitting Lord & Thomas, Benton founded Benton & Bowles in partnership with Chester Bowles, became publisher of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and later rose to be Assistant Secretary of State and Senator from Connecticut, amongst much else." Albert Lasker was "the single largest contributor to Benton's campaign when he ran for Senator." (Taken at the Flood. The Story of Albert D. Lasker. By John Gunther. Harper & Brothers, 1960.)

Benton's Congressional bio: "BENTON , William, 1900-1973. Senate Years of Service: 1949-1953. Party: Democrat.... born in Minneapolis... graduated from Yale University in 1921; worked for advertising agencies in New York and Chicago until 1929 and then cofounded his own advertising agency in New York; moved to Norwalk, Conn., in 1932; part-time vice president of the University of Chicago 1937-1945; Assistant Secretary of State, Washington, DC, August 31, 1945, to September 30, 1947, during which time he was active in organizing the United Nations; member and delegate to numerous United Nations and international conferences and commissions; chairman of the board and publisher of Encyclopedia Britannica 1943-1973; trustee of several schools and colleges; appointed to the United States Senate, December 17, 1949, and subsequently elected as a Democrat to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Raymond E. Baldwin to the term ending January 3, 1953... unsuccessful candidate for election for the full term in 1952; United States Ambassador to UNESCO in Paris 1963-1968...."

"Just Plain Bill," by Joseph Epstein. Review of The Lives of William Benton, by Sidney Hyman, New York Review of Books, Oct. 22, 1970. "The life of William Benton, former United States Senator from Connecticut, American Ambassador to UNESCO, and the first man to receive the University of Chicago's William Benton Distinguished Service Medal, has one main point of interest: that in America there still isn't much that money can't buy. Among other things, Benton's money has helped bring him political office as well as the services of politicians as distinguished as Adlai Stevenson and Hubert Humphrey - both of whom (Humphrey currently) have taken ample pay for modest work from the Encyclopedia Britannica Corporation, which Benton owns. It has also paid for the services of intellectuals of every stamp and discipline, as well as educators of the stature of Robert Hutchins, a once impressive man who today languishes in his Santa Barbara Valhalla, in endless dialog with a tape recorder...."

William Benton was a correspondent of Mary Lasker, in 1958, 1960-62, and 1972.

Benton was a founding member of the Committee for Economic Development, which was set by Paul G. Hoffman in 1942, who was its Chairman from 1942 to 1948. Other founding members included Marion B. Folsom, Chairman from 1950 to 1953 and later Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare in the Eisenhower administration; and Eric A. Johnston, a member of the ASCC takeover group. James D. Zellerbach was Chairman from 1955 to 1957, and Donald K. David, Dean of Harvard University, Trustee of the Ford Foudation and Carnegie Institute, was Chairman from 1957 to 1959. "The Research and Policy Committee of the Committee for Economic Development is the select inner-group which actually runs the CED." In 1957, these included Frank Altschul, the Chairman of General American Investors; William Benton, Donald K. David, and Philip L. Graham. J. Irwin Miller, Chairman of the Board of Cummins Engine Co., was a member of the CED's Commission on Money and Credit, set up in 1957. (The Invisible Government, by Dan Smoot, 1962.)

The University of Chicago

("Katharine Graham to be Awarded Benton Medal." News Release, the University of Chicago, June 7, 1996.) "Graham came to Chicago in 1936 after attending Vassar for two years. She received her A.B. from the University in 1938." The Washington Post had been owned by her father, Eugene Meyer, since 1933, and her husband, Philip Graham, whom she married in 1940, became its publisher in 1946. Katharine Graham was variously the president, CEO, publisher and/or chairman of the company since 1963. The Benton Medal was first awarded in 1968 to William Benton, and in 1972 it was given to Paul Hoffman, administrator of the Marshall Plan.

The papers of William Benton at the University of Chicago include "correspondence and reports on development and promotion of Muzak, Encyclopedia Brittanica and the Great Books series, and memoranda and reports on public relations and communications consultant projects for the United Nations Geneva Conference, Voice of America, Committee on Economic Development, and other organizations and institutions." The Advertising and Publicity Collections also include the papers of another former Lord & Thomas employee, Fairfax M. Cone; John Gunther, the author of Albert Lasker's biography; and Walter P. Paepcke, of the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies and the Great Books Foundation. {Fairfax M. Cone was chairman of the board of the Uiversity of Chicago alumni in 1956. (U. of Chicago Board Names 2 As Trustees. Chicago Tribune, Feb. 16, 1964.)

"The Great Ideas"

In 1943, Mortimer Adler, Robert Maynard Hutchins (who was Benton's former classmate at Yale University), and William Benton organized the "Great Books Seminars," a gathering of several dozen prominent Chicago area business leaders that was dubbed "The Fat Man's Great Books Course." It spawned an attempt at popularization; however, "The Great Books of the Western World was a financial disaster until it was sold as Hutchins feared it would be - by door-to-door salesmen touting 'culture' to an insecure American middle class." (The Great Ideas: The University of Chicago and the Ideal of Liberal Education.)

In 1929, Hutchins was a member of the Advisory Committee of Yale's Institute of Human Relations, chaired by William H. Welch, Skull & Bones 1870.

Encyclopedia Britannica

In 1901, Encyclopedia Britannica was acquired by US publisher Horace E. Hooper. From 1920 to 1941 its ownership passed to Sears, Roebuck, then William Cox, and in 1928 back to Sears, Roebuck. In 1941 William Benton acquired it. In 1995, after losing sales to encyclopedias on CD-ROMs, it was sold to Jacob Safra.

"While a trustee at the Committee for Economic Development, Fletcher was asked by William Benton, Publisher of Encyclopedia Britannica, to become the President of Encyclopedia Britannica Films Inc., Chicago, Illinois... In late 1950, William Benton, vice-chairman of the Committee for Economic Development, talked with Paul Hoffman who had become the director of the Ford Foundation, about convincing C. Scott Fletcher to become president of an unnamed fund...."

"In 1958, helped by testimony from Encyclopedia Britannica's Bill Benton, former FCC Chairman Newt Minow, Anna Rosenberg Hoffman, and Adlai Stevenson (who would become chairman of the board of directors of EB Films the following year), the Congress passed Public Law 85-864, the National Defense Education Act (NDEA), authorizing the government to distribute $480 million in matching funds to assist educational institutions in developing curriculum, programs, and learning aids, including film and audio-visual equipment... Elementary and Secondary School Act of 1965 (ASEA): Title II, authorizing $100 million for library resources, and Title III, which allocated $100 million for use in several areas, audio-visual aids and programmed materials among them (Project Discovery, and lobbying by Benton et al. changed focus away from textbooks)..." (Key federal programs leading to increased funds for academic films. Geoff Alexander, Association of Moving Image Archivists Conference, Boston, Nov. 2002.)

Former US Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey Jr. was chairman of the board of consultants of Encyclopedia Britannica Educational Corp. after his unsuccessful presidential campaign. His sister, prominent Washington, DC socialite Frances Humphrey Howard, was a friend of Mary Lasker; and his son was the Minnesota Attorney General who filed the state's lawsuit against the tobacco industry.

In the 1980s, Encyclopedia Britannica produced an anti-smoking hate propaganda film, "The Tobacco Problem: What Do You Think?" (State and Local Programs on Smoking and Health. Office on Smoking and Health, Public Health Service, US DHHS, estimated date 1986.)

Edgar D. Jannotta, senior partner/chairman of William Blair & Company, was a director of Encyclopedia Britannica in 1995. (Director bio, Aon Corp., 1995.)

Newton Minow proselytizes for propaganda to Arab countries: "In the midst of World War II, my old boss, William Benton, then assistant secretary of State and later a senator from Connecticut, came up with the idea of the Voice of America (VOA). One day, he described the VOA, which transmitted by shortwave radio, to RCA Chairman David Sarnoff, the tough-minded and passionate pioneer of American broadcasting. Sarnoff noted how little electronic power and transmitter scope the VOA had, then said, 'Benton, all you've got here is the whisper of America....'" (Mass media can battle mass destruction, by Newton N. Minow. USA Today, March 19, 2002.)

Frank Stanton, the president of CBS from 1946 to 1971, and of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences from 1953-71, was an honorary director and trustee of the William Benton Foundation.

The Voice of America

In 1946, as Assistant Secretary of State in charge of Public Relations of the State Department, Benton picked a committee of advisors on international broadcasting. The members were: Mark Ethbridge, publisher of the Louisville Courier-Journal; Don Francisco, Albert Lasker's former vice president of Lord & Thomas, now with J. Walter Thompson; Gardner Cowles Jr., publisher of the Des Moines Register and Tribune and former director of the Domestic Information Program of the Office of War Information; Roy E. Larson, president of Time, Inc.; Prof. Harold Lasswell of Yale University School of Law, and former Director of War Communications Research, Library of Congress; Sterling Fisher, director of the "NBC United Nations Project;" Rev. Dr. Robert I. Gannon, president of Fordham University; Edward R. Murrow, vice president of CBS; and two consultants: Philip Cohen of Ruthrauff & Ryan Advertising Agency and formerly Radio Director of the U.S. Office of Education; and Victor Hunt, policy coordinator, Office of International Information and Cultural Relations, Department of State. (Benton Picks Aides to Advise on Radio Of 'Voice of America' in 24 Languages. New York Times, May 12, 1946.)

The Aspen Institute

"In 1949 Walter and Elizabeth Paepcke, both members of the 'Fat Man's Great Books Course,' organized a bicentennial celebration of Goethe's birth. Walter Paepcke, University of Chicago Trustee, was president of Container Corporation of America, and Elizabeth was a designer and decorator who helped to showcase the talents of Chicago designers by using their works in Container Corporation of America advertisements." The Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies evolved from this.

Historian Steven P. Strickland was a Vice President of the Aspen Institute in 1984, and was involved in the IOM report on reorganizing the National Institutes of Health.

Douglass Cater

President Johnson's former Special Assistant, S. Douglass Cater, was a director of the Aspen Institute circa 1975. His wife Libby was on the National Advisory Council of the Addiction Research Foundation, founded by Avram Goldstein in 1974 "to discover the physiological causes of Narcotics and Tobacco Addiction" [sic]. Actually, Goldstein's past experience was in narcotics and the facility did not have a nicotine lab. But Goldstein expected the tobacco industry to give him the $400,000 he said he needed to create one, and then to fund his endeavor to portray smoking as the same as heroin addiction. Other members of the National Advisory Council included the President of the Aspen Institute, Joseph Elliott Slater (who was also a Trustee of the Salk Institute circa 1971); Sen. Alan Cranston; two-time Assistant Secretary for Health Philip R. Lee; Art Linkletter; Mrs. Florence Mahoney; Mrs. Nan Tucker McEvoy, an early member of the Peace Corps, former Presidential appointee to UNESCO and heir of the San Francisco Chronicle. Directors included Martin E. Packard, Corporate Vice President of Varian Associates and a former trustee of the San Francisco Foundation (founded by Lasker Foundation director Daniel Koshland Jr.); and Wilbur Watkins, former Executive Administrator of the Palo Alto Medical Clinic, founded by Lee's father.

Cater was a member of the Advisors and Task Force of "Feeling Good," a series of 26 hour-long programs by the Children's Television Workshop, which aired on 250 Public Broadcasting Service TV stations in 1974-75. Joan Ganz Cooney, now a director of Johnson & Johnson, was president of CTW, and Ruby Hearn of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation was director of content development. Other Advisors and Task Force Members included Lester Breslow; Jacob Feldman, then at the Harvard School of Public Health (and numerous others affiliated with HSPH); former Assistant Secretary for Health Philip R. Lee; Charles LeMaistre, Chancellor of of the University of Texas System; Bayless Manning, president of the CFR; Robert Manning, editor of the Atlantic Monthly; Gerard Piel, publisher of Scientific American; future Surgeon General Julius Richmond; Steven Schroeder, former head of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, then Medical Director of the George Washington University Health Plan; Victor Weingarten, director of the President's Committee on Health Education; and Ernst Wynder of the American Health Foundation.

The Benton Foundation

The Benton Foundation was established after William Benton's death in 1973. His son, Charles Benton, is the chairman. Its program, "Sound Partners for Community Health," is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and includes anti-smoking propaganda.

"Benton Foundation: In Search of a Telecom Utopia." By Robert V. Pambianco. The Heartland Institute, Sep-Oct 1997. "The little-known but well-run and well-financed operation is the hub of the effort to secure special telecom treatment for advocacy groups" of the left. "Benton's board and staff have ties to the four corners of the liberal coalition, from labor and feminists to greens and animal rights activists," including Susan Gosloe, "a policy associate, [who] previously worked on anti-tobacco projects at the Advocacy Institute and is also a leading advocate for canine rights."

Connect for Kids launch, news release, March 9, 1999: "Speaking at the news conference were Benton Foundation Chairman Charles Benton and Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation President Sally Bowles, the children of William Benton and Chester Bowles who founded the advertising firm Benton & Bowles in 1921 [sic], predecessors to the client agency DMB&B" [D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles). Connect for Kids is supported by the National Education Association, whose glorious achievement is the mass production of ignorant little fascists whose knee-jerk response to scientific criticism is personal insults and censorship.

"Was Al Gore's Sister A Peace Corps Volunteer?" Someone e-mailed Peace Corps Writers that Nancy Gore and Sally Bowles were actually Peace Corps officials, and that "Sally was actually a charter member of the Peace Corps Staff, arriving for work on March 1, 1961, the day that President Kennedy signed the executive order establishing the agency."

The Benton Foundation created the National Citizens Committee for Broadcasting, and recruited anti-smoker FCC Commissioner Nicholas Johnson (of Fairness Doctrine infamy) while he was in office.

Karen Menichelli and Carolyn Sachs of the Benton Foundation participated in the Advocacy Institute's workshop, "Media Strategies for Smoking Control," for the National Cancer Institute's Smoking, Tobacco, and Cancer Program, in January 1988. Other participants included Alan Blum of DOC; Stanton Glantz; and American Health Foundation Chairman Humphrey Taylor (also of the Louis Harris and Associates polling firm.)

Chester Bowles

"Chester Bowles was born on April 5, 1901 in Springfield, Massachusetts. He graduated from Yale University in 1924 (B.S.) and established the advertising firm of Benton and Bowles, with William Benton, in 1929. Bowles served in the Office of Price Administration in Connecticut and at the federal level. He served as a UNESCO delegate in 1946, as a Special Assistant to the Secretary General of the United Nations (1947-1948), and as international chairman of the U.N. Children's Appeal (1948-1951). Bowles later served as governor of Connecticut (1948-1950), ambassador to India (1951-1953, 1963-1969), and as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives (1959-1960). He also served as a foreign policy advisor to Adlai Stevenson and John F. Kennedy, and held the positions of Under Secretary for Political Affairs and Special Representative and Advisor on Africa, Asia, and Latin American Affairs (1960-1961)...." (Chester Bowles Papers, 1924-1982. Yale Manuscripts and Archives -- Collections -- Chester Bowles.)

De Forest Van Slyck [Skull & Bones 1920] was best man at Chester Bowles' wedding to Dorothy Stebbins. (Dorothy Stebbins Wed. New York Times, Feb. 23, 1934.) Van Slyck was with Lazard Frères, and his wife was the sister of James Gamble Rogers, Scroll & Key 1931, who began his career at Benton & Bowles.

Chester Bowles was a correspondent of Mary Lasker in 1948-49.

Aug. 15, 1960 letter from Eleanor Roosevelt to Mary Lasker on a conversion with Sen. John F. Kennedy, discussing Adlai Stevenson's and Chester Bowles's roles in his presidential election campaign. (Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site.)

Chester Bowles was a director of the Paul Hoffman/Ford Foundation's Fund For the Republic from 1954 to 1958.

Benton and Bowles produced spots and ads for the American Cancer Society's April Crusade in 1976 and 1977.

James S. Adams

American Cancer Society executive and Lazard Freres partner James S. Adams was an executive vice president at Benton & Bowles between 1934 and 1941. He handled the firm's Eastern Airlines and Colgate-Palmolive-Peet accounts.

Richard Celeste

Richard Celeste, former Ohio governor and director of the Health Effects Institute, was executive assistant to Chester Bowles when he was US Ambassador to India.

Clyde W. Hart

The National Opinion Research Center (NORC) was founded in 1941 at the University of Denver by Harry Field, of the Office of War Information. Field was killed in a plane crash in 1946, while traveling to set up similar organizations in other countries, and Clyde W. Hart, "a former University of Iowa sociologist, who had been special administrator to Chester Bowles in the Office of Price Administration and who had worked closely with NORC on several national surveys for OPA during and immediately after the war," took over and moved it to the University of Chicago.

cast 03-30-08