HULL, CORDELL

born Oct. 2, 1871, Overton county, Tenn., U.S. died July 23, 1955, Bethesda, Md. Cordell Hull, 1933. U.S. secretary of state (193344) whose initiation of the reciprocal trade program to lower tariffs set in motion the mechanism for expanded world trade in the second half of the 20th century. In 1945 he received the Nobel Prize for Peace for his part in organizing the United Nations. As a young Tennessee attorney, Hull early identified with the Democratic Party. He served in the U.S. House of Representatives for 22 years (190721, 192331) and in the Senate (193133). Appointed secretary of state by President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the beginning of the New Deal, he called for a reversal of high tariff barriers that had increasingly stultified U.S. foreign trade since the 19th century. He first won presidential support and public acclaim for such proposals at the inter-American Montevideo Conference (December 1933). He next succeeded in getting Congress to pass the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act (March 1934), which set the pattern for tariff reduction on a most-favoured-nation basis and was a forerunner to the international General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), begun in 1948. Throughout the 1930s Hull did much to improve the United States' relations with Latin America by implementing what came to be known as the Good Neighbor Policy. At the Montevideo Pan-American Conference (1933) his self-effacing behaviour and acceptance of the principle of nonintervention in the internal affairs of other nations began to counteract the distrust built up through decades of Yankee imperialism in Latin America. He also attended the Pan-American Conference at Buenos Aires (1936) and a special foreign ministers' conference at Havana (1940). Because of the favourable climate of opinion that he had largely created, Hull successfully sponsored a united front of American republics against Axis aggression during World War II. In East Asia, he rejected a proposed Japanese Monroe Doctrine that would have given that country a free hand in China (1934). When Japan served notice later that year that it would not renew the naval-limitation treaties (due to expire in 1936), Hull announced a policy of maintenance of U.S. interests in the Pacific, continuing friendship with China, and military preparedness. With the outbreak of World War II, Hull and Roosevelt felt that efforts to maintain American neutrality would only encourage aggression by the Axis powers; they therefore decided to aid the Allies. In the crucial negotiations with Japan in the autumn of 1941, Hull stood firm for the rights of China, urging Japan to abandon its military conquests on the mainland. When the United States entered the war, Hull and his State Department colleagues began planning an international postwar peacekeeping body. At the Moscow Conference of Foreign Ministers (1943)despite his frail health and advancing agehe obtained a four-nation pledge to continue wartime cooperation in a postwar world organization aimed at maintaining peace and security. For this work, Roosevelt described Hull as the father of the United Nations, and universal recognition of his key role came with the Nobel Prize. He resigned after the 1944 presidential election and wrote his Memoirs of Cordell Hull (1950). Additional reading Julius W. Pratt, Cordell Hull, 193344, 2 vol. (1964); and Irwin F. Gellman, Secret Affairs: Franklin Roosevelt, Cordell Hull, and Sumner Welles (1995), portray Hull's role as secretary of state. Jonathan G. Utley, Going to War with Japan, 19371941 (1985), provides an overview of Japanese-American relations during this period. Cordell Hull, 1933. By courtesy of the National Archives, Washington, D.C. Hull House one of the first social settlements in North America. It was founded in Chicago in 1889 when Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr rented an abandoned residence at 800 South Halsted Street that had been built by Charles G. Hull in 1856. Twelve large buildings were added from year to year until Hull House covered half a city block and included a nearby playground and a large camp in Wisconsin. While traveling in Europe, Addams visited Toynbee Hall, a pioneer settlement founded by Canon Samuel A. Barnett in London's impoverished East End. Finding there a group of university undergraduate residents sharing companionship and working for social reform, she and Starr decided to establish such a settlement in a comparable district in Chicago. After raising enough funds to rent part of the Hull Mansion, Addams and Starr set out to aid the needy immigrants in the Halsted Street area. Hull House opened as a kindergarten but soon expanded to include a day nursery and an infancy care centre. Eventually its educational facilities provided secondary and college-level extension classes as well as evening classes on civil rights and civic duties. Through increased donations more buildings were purchased, and Hull House became a complex, containing a gymnasium, social and cooperative clubs, shops, housing for children, and playgrounds. Addams, Starr, and other Hull House associates were instrumental in the enactment of state child labour laws and in the establishment of juvenile courts and juvenile protection agencies. In addition, they assisted in the development of local trade union organizations, social welfare programs, and adult education classes. They also contributed to the woman suffrage and the international peace movements. The publication of The Hull-House Maps and Papers (1895); 12 books by Jane Addams, including Twenty Years at Hull-House (1910); and works by such distinguished residents as Alice Hamilton, Florence Kelley, and Julia Lathrop brought widespread attention to the settlement. Eventually, Hull House attracted visitors from all over the world and received international recognition. In January 1961 plans to clear the area for a University of Illinois campus were announced by the city of Chicago. Legal protests by a community group organized to preserve Hull House and the neighbourhood were unsuccessful. In 1963 the trustees of Hull House sold its properties and adopted plans for decentralized operations in other parts of the city. The original Hull mansion and the adjoining dining hall were spared demolition and became museums.