Oscar S. Straus

Oscar Solomon Straus (December 23, 1850 – May 3, 1926) was an American politician and diplomat. He served as United States Secretary of Commerce and Labor under President Theodore Roosevelt from 1906 to 1909. He was the first Jewish United States Cabinet Secretary.

Straus also served in four presidential administrations as America's representative to the Ottoman Empire and ran for Governor of New York in 1912 as the candidate of then-former president Theodore Roosevelt's Progressive "Bull Moose" Party, in tandem with Roosevelt's own unsuccessful run for a nonconsecutive third term as president that same year.

Early life and education

Oscar Straus was born to a German Jewish family in Otterberg in the former Palatinate, then ruled by the Kingdom of Bavaria (now part of present-day Germany), the third child of Lazarus Straus (1809–1898) and his second wife, Sara (1823–1876). His siblings were Hermine Straus Kohns (1846–1922), Isidor Straus (1845–1912), and Nathan Straus (1848–1931). The family moved to the U.S. state of Georgia in 1854. The Straus family owned slaves and conducted business with other slave owners, taking several formerly enslaved people to the North with the family following the defeat of the Confederacy.

At the close of the Civil War he moved to New York City where he graduated from Columbia College in 1871 and Columbia Law School in 1873. He practiced law until 1881, and then became a merchant, retaining his interest in literature.

Minister to the Ottoman Empire

He first served as United States Minister to the Ottoman Empire from 1887 to 1889 and again from 1898 to 1899. Upon his arrival to Constantinople, he was said to have been given a "cordial welcome".