Collection context
Summary
- Creator:
- May, Stacy (1896-1980)
- Extent:
- 40.54 Cubic Feet and 28 legal-sized document boxes, 71 letter-sized document boxes, 1 half-legal-sized document box, and 1 oversized box
- Language:
- English .
Background
- Scope and Content:
This collection documents Stacy May's career as an economist and more particularly, as an economic consultant and advisor to the Rockefeller family. It includes personal letters, correspondence, papers, speeches, reports, bound reports, and publications.
- Biographical / Historical:
Stacy May was an economist who helped plan U. S. war production during World War II and who worked as an economic consultant to the Rockefeller family for several decades. He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on April 18, 1896 and attended Amherst College in Massachusetts. Between 1917 and 1919, he served with Motor Ambulance Co. 61 of the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I. After the war, May continued his studies and received his Ph.D. in economics jointly from Brookings Graduate School of Economics and Government (now Brookings Institute), and Washington University. Between 1921 and 1932, May taught economics at Amherst College, Cornell University, and Dartmouth College.
In 1932, he became Assistant Director of Social Sciences at Rockefeller Foundation, where he worked until 1942. Between 1940 and 1944, May was Director of the Bureau of Research and Statistics of the War Production Board and its predecessor agencies. In 1941, he went to Britain as special representative of Henry L. Stimson, U. S. Secretary of War, in an effort to combine and coordinate British and American war production programs.
Following World War II and a brief time as Assistant to the President of McGraw-Hill Publishing Company (1944-1946), May resumed his long association with the Rockefellers in 1947. He worked as an economic advisor to Room 5600 (the Rockefeller Family office), with IBEC – the International Basic Economy Corporation – and as an economic advisor to Nelson Rockefeller during his time as Governor of New York State and during his campaign for the U. S. presidency.
May also served as economic analyst for several government advisory committees and commissions, as well as serving for many years as a Member of the National Planning Association which had been founded in 1934 as a nonprofit, nonpolitical organization devoted to planning by Americans in agriculture, business, labor, and the professions.
Stacy May retired as an economic consultant to the Rockefellers in 1965. He died on November 24, 1980, at 84 years of age.
- Acquisition information:
- The Stacy May papers were donated and transferred to the Rockefeller Archive Center by the American Heritage Center at Univerity of Wyoming (Laramie) in 2008.
- Processing information:
Records were inventoried and minimal processing was done while the collection was under the care of the University of Wyoming, prior to being transferred to RAC. Records were rehoused and a finding aid created by RAC, February 2018.
- Arrangement:
The collection is arranged as received by the Rockefeller Archive Center, in two subgroups.
- Rules or conventions:
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Access
- RESTRICTIONS:
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Open for research. Brittle or damaged items are available at the discretion of RAC.
- LOCATION OF THIS COLLECTION:
- CONTACT:
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