Harry Dexter White and the International Monetary Fund

• Author: James M. Boughton
• Position: Historian of the IMF

Harry Dexter White profoundly influenced both the design of the IMF and its development, yet his important work is not widely appreciated today. The fiftieth anniversary of his death offers an opportunity to review his accomplishments and career.

BOTH OF the founding fathers of the Bretton Woods institutions died of heart attacks while at the peak of their intellectual powers and before they could see the IMF and the World Bank grow into the pillars of the postwar economic system: John Maynard Keynes (at left in the above photograph) at age 62 in April 1946, and Harry Dexter White (at right) at age 55 in August 1948. Keynes, of course, was not only the preeminent economist of his day but also a cultural icon, as much a graduate of the Bloomsbury Group as of Cambridge University. The fiftieth anniversary of his passing was commemorated by a host of conferences, articles, and books.

White, in contrast, stayed in the background throughout most of his life, and the danger exists that his achievements will be, to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, "little noted nor long remembered." But, in a more mundane phrase, he certainly had his "fifteen minutes of fame." In November 1953, more than five years after his death, his face was on the cover of Time magazine, his name was on the front pages and in the editorial columns of newspapers around the world, and questions about his 1946 appointment as an Executive Director at the IMF led to an ugly battle in which three U.S. presidents-the then incumbent, Dwight D. Eisenhower; his predecessor, Harry S. Truman; and a future president, Richard M. Nixon-became engaged. Understanding what Harry White stood for and what he had accomplished was impossible in those circumstances. The fiftieth anniversary of his death offers an occasion to reassess his contributions.

Without question, Harry Dexter White was one of the two great intellectual founders of the IMF and the World Bank. As the chief international economist at the U.S. Treasury in 1942-44, he drafted the U.S. blueprint for the IMF that competed with the plan drafted for the British Treasury by Keynes. The final compromise adopted at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire in July 1944 retained much of the flavor of the White Plan: it defined the IMF not as a world central bank but as a promoter of economic growth through international trade and financial stability. When the IMF began operations in 1946, President Harry S. Truman named White as its first U.S. Executive Director. Since no Deputy Managing Director post had yet been created, White served occasionally as Acting Managing Director and generally played a highly influential role during the IMF's first year. His health deteriorated, however, and he resigned in March 1947 and died of heart failure the following year.

Harry White's path to prominence followed a classic script for success in America. Born in Boston, Massachusetts in October 1892, he was the son of Lithuanian immigrants. As a young man, he worked for a time in the family hardware business and then served in the U.S. Army in France during World War I. Not until he was 30 did he begin serious university studies: first at Columbia; then at Stanford, where he received his first degree in economics; and finally at Harvard, where in 1930 he completed a...