Godfrey Lowell Cabot
Encyclopedia
Godfrey Lowell Cabot was an American industrialist and philanthropist, who founded the Cabot Corporation
.
(b. 1848), among the first American impressionist artists
, Samuel Cabot IV (b. 1850), chemist and founder of Valspar
's Cabot Stains, and Dr. Arthur Tracy Cabot (b. 1852), a progressive surgeon.
Cabot attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology
for a year, before graduating from Harvard University
with a S.B. in Chemistry
, in 1882. He was a famous aviation pioneer and World War I
U.S. Navy pilot. He also founded the Aero Club of New England.
, in 1882. It became an industrial empire which included carbon black
plants and tens of thousands of acres of land rich in gas, oil, and other minerals; 1000 miles (1,609.3 km) of pipeline; seven corporations with worldwide operations; three facilities for converting natural gas
into gasoline; and a number of research laboratories.
By 1890, Cabot Corporation
, had become America's fourth largest producer of carbon black, which was used in products, such as inks, shoe polish
es, and paints. But with the subsequent advent and popularity of cars, carbon black became in much greater demand as six pounds of it was required in the production of a single tire, and Cabot's incomes soared.
, thermal electricity, and in the construction of experimental solar houses. He also established the Godfrey L. Cabot Award for the advancement of aviation, Harvard's Maria Moors Cabot Foundation for Botanical Research, the annual Maria Moors Cabot prize
awarded by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
, as well as an endowed professorship at the institution. In 1973, Harvard's Godfrey Lowell Cabot Science Library was named in his honor.
Cabot also devoted his resources to the suppression of vice and corruption in Boston. He joined the Watch and Ward Society
. Under his direction of the organization in the 1920s and 1930s, it used economic, social, and legal pressures and even harassment techniques to block the sale and distribution of books which they disapproved of for moral reasons. Among the writers to which they objected were Conrad Aiken
, Sherwood Anderson
, John Dos Passos
, Theodore Dreiser
, William Faulkner
, Ernest Hemingway
, Aldous Huxley
, James Joyce
, Sinclair Lewis
, Bertrand Russell
, Upton Sinclair
, and H. G. Wells
.
Cabot was associated with Calvin Coolidge
from Coolidge's Boston days. There is also an audio recording of a discussion between Cabot and Dwight D. Eisenhower
on the influence of public opinion on government policy, communism
, the Soviet Union
, aviation
, and V-2 rocket
s in 1950, kept by the Miller Center of Public Affairs
.
(b. 1897), a businessman and philanthropist in his own right, John Moors Cabot
(b. 1901), U.S. Ambassador to Sweden
, Colombia
, Brazil
, and Poland
during the Eisenhower and Kennedy administration, and Eleanor Cabot of the Eleanor Cabot Bradley Estate
.
Cabot Corporation
Cabot Corporation is a specialty chemicals and performance materials company. It operates in four segments: the Carbon Black Business, the Metal Oxides Business, the Supermetals Business, and the Specialty Fluids Business. Cabot's headquarters is located in Boston, Massachusetts...
.
Early life
Cabot born in Boston, Massachusetts. His father was Dr. Samuel Cabot III, an eminent surgeon, and his mother was Hannah Lowell Jackson Cabot. He had seven siblings: three being, Lilla CabotLilla Cabot Perry
Lilla Cabot Perry was an American artist who worked in the Impressionist style, rendering portraits and landscapes in the free form manner of her mentor, Claude Monet. Perry was an early advocate of the French Impressionist style and contributed to its reception in the United States...
(b. 1848), among the first American impressionist artists
American Impressionism
Impressionism, a style of painting characterized by loose brushwork and vivid colors, was practiced widely among American artists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.-An emerging artistic style from Paris:...
, Samuel Cabot IV (b. 1850), chemist and founder of Valspar
Valspar
The Valspar Corporation is an international manufacturer of paint and coatings based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is the fifth largest paint and coating corporation in the world. The 200+ year old Valspar was founded in 1806 as a paint dealership in Boston, Massachusetts...
's Cabot Stains, and Dr. Arthur Tracy Cabot (b. 1852), a progressive surgeon.
Cabot attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
for a year, before graduating from Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
with a S.B. in Chemistry
Chemistry
Chemistry is the science of matter, especially its chemical reactions, but also its composition, structure and properties. Chemistry is concerned with atoms and their interactions with other atoms, and particularly with the properties of chemical bonds....
, in 1882. He was a famous aviation pioneer and World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
U.S. Navy pilot. He also founded the Aero Club of New England.
Career
Cabot founded Godfrey L. Cabot, Inc. and its successor, Cabot CorporationCabot Corporation
Cabot Corporation is a specialty chemicals and performance materials company. It operates in four segments: the Carbon Black Business, the Metal Oxides Business, the Supermetals Business, and the Specialty Fluids Business. Cabot's headquarters is located in Boston, Massachusetts...
, in 1882. It became an industrial empire which included carbon black
Soot
Soot is a general term that refers to impure carbon particles resulting from the incomplete combustion of a hydrocarbon. It is more properly restricted to the product of the gas-phase combustion process but is commonly extended to include the residual pyrolyzed fuel particles such as cenospheres,...
plants and tens of thousands of acres of land rich in gas, oil, and other minerals; 1000 miles (1,609.3 km) of pipeline; seven corporations with worldwide operations; three facilities for converting natural gas
Natural gas
Natural gas is a naturally occurring gas mixture consisting primarily of methane, typically with 0–20% higher hydrocarbons . It is found associated with other hydrocarbon fuel, in coal beds, as methane clathrates, and is an important fuel source and a major feedstock for fertilizers.Most natural...
into gasoline; and a number of research laboratories.
By 1890, Cabot Corporation
Cabot Corporation
Cabot Corporation is a specialty chemicals and performance materials company. It operates in four segments: the Carbon Black Business, the Metal Oxides Business, the Supermetals Business, and the Specialty Fluids Business. Cabot's headquarters is located in Boston, Massachusetts...
, had become America's fourth largest producer of carbon black, which was used in products, such as inks, shoe polish
Shoe polish
Shoe polish , usually a waxy paste or a cream, is a consumer product used to polish, shine, waterproof, and restore the appearance of leather shoes or boots, thereby extending the footwear's life...
es, and paints. But with the subsequent advent and popularity of cars, carbon black became in much greater demand as six pounds of it was required in the production of a single tire, and Cabot's incomes soared.
Philanthropic work
Cabot was also a significant benefactor of MIT, primarily in solar research, resulting in important discoveries in photochemistryPhotochemistry
Photochemistry, a sub-discipline of chemistry, is the study of chemical reactions that proceed with the absorption of light by atoms or molecules.. Everyday examples include photosynthesis, the degradation of plastics and the formation of vitamin D with sunlight.-Principles:Light is a type of...
, thermal electricity, and in the construction of experimental solar houses. He also established the Godfrey L. Cabot Award for the advancement of aviation, Harvard's Maria Moors Cabot Foundation for Botanical Research, the annual Maria Moors Cabot prize
Maria Moors Cabot prize
The Maria Moors Cabot Prizes are the oldest international awards in the field of journalism. They pick what the Trustees of Columbia University see as journalistic contributions to inter-American understanding.-Award:...
awarded by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism is one of Columbia's graduate and professional schools. It offers three degree programs: Master of Science in journalism , Master of Arts in journalism and a Ph.D. in communications...
, as well as an endowed professorship at the institution. In 1973, Harvard's Godfrey Lowell Cabot Science Library was named in his honor.
Cabot also devoted his resources to the suppression of vice and corruption in Boston. He joined the Watch and Ward Society
Watch and Ward Society
The New England Watch and Ward Society was a Boston, Massachusetts organization involved in the censorship of books and the performing arts from the late 19th century to the middle of the 20th century. After the 1920s, its emphasis changed to combating the spread of gambling...
. Under his direction of the organization in the 1920s and 1930s, it used economic, social, and legal pressures and even harassment techniques to block the sale and distribution of books which they disapproved of for moral reasons. Among the writers to which they objected were Conrad Aiken
Conrad Aiken
Conrad Potter Aiken was an American novelist and poet, whose work includes poetry, short stories, novels, a play and an autobiography.-Early years:...
, Sherwood Anderson
Sherwood Anderson
Sherwood Anderson was an American novelist and short story writer. His most enduring work is the short story sequence Winesburg, Ohio. Writers he has influenced include Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, J. D. Salinger, and Amos Oz.-Early life:Anderson was born in Clyde, Ohio,...
, John Dos Passos
John Dos Passos
John Roderigo Dos Passos was an American novelist and artist.-Early life:Born in Chicago, Illinois, Dos Passos was the illegitimate son of John Randolph Dos Passos , a distinguished lawyer of Madeiran Portuguese descent, and Lucy Addison Sprigg Madison of Petersburg, Virginia. The elder Dos Passos...
, Theodore Dreiser
Theodore Dreiser
Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser was an American novelist and journalist of the naturalist school. His novels often featured main characters who succeeded at their objectives despite a lack of a firm moral code, and literary situations that more closely resemble studies of nature than tales of...
, William Faulkner
William Faulkner
William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...
, Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
, Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
, James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
, Sinclair Lewis
Sinclair Lewis
Harry Sinclair Lewis was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of...
, Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...
, Upton Sinclair
Upton Sinclair
Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. , was an American author who wrote close to one hundred books in many genres. He achieved popularity in the first half of the twentieth century, acquiring particular fame for his classic muckraking novel, The Jungle . It exposed conditions in the U.S...
, and H. G. Wells
H. G. Wells
Herbert George Wells was an English author, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing text books and rules for war games...
.
Cabot was associated with Calvin Coolidge
Calvin Coolidge
John Calvin Coolidge, Jr. was the 30th President of the United States . A Republican lawyer from Vermont, Coolidge worked his way up the ladder of Massachusetts state politics, eventually becoming governor of that state...
from Coolidge's Boston days. There is also an audio recording of a discussion between Cabot and Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States, from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army...
on the influence of public opinion on government policy, communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
, the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, aviation
Aviation
Aviation is the design, development, production, operation, and use of aircraft, especially heavier-than-air aircraft. Aviation is derived from avis, the Latin word for bird.-History:...
, and V-2 rocket
V-2 rocket
The V-2 rocket , technical name Aggregat-4 , was a ballistic missile that was developed at the beginning of the Second World War in Germany, specifically targeted at London and later Antwerp. The liquid-propellant rocket was the world's first long-range combat-ballistic missile and first known...
s in 1950, kept by the Miller Center of Public Affairs
Miller Center of Public Affairs
The Miller Center of Public Affairs is a non-partisan research institute that is part of the University of Virginia.Founded in 1975, the Miller Center is a leading public policy institution that serves as a national meeting place where engaged citizens, scholars, students, media representatives and...
.
Personal life
In 1890, Cabot married Maria B. Moors. They had three children: Thomas Dudley CabotThomas Dudley Cabot
Thomas Dudley Cabot was an American businessman and philanthropist. He also became U.S. Department of State's Director of Office of International Security Affairs.-Early life:...
(b. 1897), a businessman and philanthropist in his own right, John Moors Cabot
John Moors Cabot
John Moors Cabot was an American diplomat and U.S. Ambassador to four nations during the Eisenhower and Kennedy administration. He also served as Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs.-Early life:...
(b. 1901), U.S. Ambassador to Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
, Colombia
Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...
, Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
, and Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
during the Eisenhower and Kennedy administration, and Eleanor Cabot of the Eleanor Cabot Bradley Estate
Eleanor Cabot Bradley Estate
The Eleanor Cabot Bradley Estate is a nonprofit country house and garden ground museum in Canton, Massachusetts. It is operated by The Trustees of Reservations. The grounds are open every day, sunrise to sunset, without charge.-History:...
.
Further reading
- Leon Harris, Only to God: The Extraordinary Life of Godfrey Lowell Cabot (1967).
- Webster Bull, My Father, My Brother: A History of Godfrey L. Cabot Inc. (1986).