World Peace Foundation Records

Edwin Ginn was the primary force behind the World Peace Foundation's establishment. Born in 1838, he became an eminent Boston publisher through his firm, Ginn & Co., and a philanthropist. Ginn began publication of an international library of pamphlets and books in 1902, under the editorial leadership of Edwin D. Mead (using the imprint of The International School of Peace). Ginn believed that the world spent too many millions on war, and almost nothing on peace, and tried to establish a one million dollar fund for this latter cause. He announced on September 23, 1909 that he would himself contribute $50,000 yearly to the fund. His primary interest was in disseminating information that would inculcate the methods of reason in the settlement of differences between nations and condemn the use of force. He tried to enlist women's groups as an untapped source for peace, and felt that businessmen, if properly appealed to, could and would put an end to war. Ginn founded The International School of Peace as an organization on July 12, 1910; it's name was changed to the World Peace Foundation on December 22, 1910. The WPF's headquarters was at 29A Beacon Street in Boston, moving to 40 Mt. Vernon Street in February 1913. Its original 70-member Advisory Council included such notables as Jane Addams, Booker T. Washington, and Nicholas Murray Butler. The President of its Board of Trustees for many years was George Blakeslee. WPF directors included S.Shepard Jones, Leland Goodrich, and Raymond Dennett. WPF staff included Margaret Bates, Josephine Bukow, Anna Struges Duryea, Denys P. Myers, and Anna Eckstein as its Geneva Representative.

Following the death of Edwin Ginn in 1914 and World War I, during which the WPF supported the use of force, this organization increasingly became involved in international relations and decreasingly a force in the more narrowly defined peace movement. Its Board of Trustees included presidents and professors from prestigious colleges and universities. It was considered by many to be conservative and prosperous. During the 1920s, the WPF hoped to be the official agent in the United States for the sale of League of Nations publications, as well as for the International Labor Organization and the Permanent Court of International Justice. The WPF's primary focus was the dissemination to libraries of literature promoting world order. It worked closely with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to hold conferences about documentary and research problems in the field of international relations. In 1947, the WPF began publication of a quarterly journal International Organization, the bulk of which consisted of factual summaries of the work of 35 international organizations. It also published a yearly volume entitled Documents on American Foreign Relations. In 1951, again in cooperation with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, it held the Canadian-American Conference, hoping to overcome diverging points of view between the American and Canadian governments about policies in the Far East.