George Percival Auld Papers

George Percival Auld, naval officer and certified public accountant, was born in Rutland, Vt., January 28, 1881, son of Joseph and Annie Caroline (Howe) Auld. His father was founder, editor, and publisher of the Burlington (Vt.) Daily News. George P. Auld attended public schools in Burlington, and he was graduated B.A. in 1902 at the University of Vermont. He then entered the U.S. Navy as an ensign, subsequently advancing through grades to that of commander, the rank he held at the time of his resignation from the Navy in 1920.

Assigned to the Supply Corps throughout his naval career, Auld was stationed at the Boston (Mass.) Navy Yard for a number of years. During 1915-1917 he was the Navy's chief accounting officer, stationed in Washington, D.C., and while serving in that assignment he developed and installed a system of cost-plus contracting and verification affecting some 100 shipyards, steel mills, and factories that was credited with directly saving many millions of dollars during the period of this country's participation in the First World War.

In 1918-19 he was detailed as aide to William S. Sims (q.v.), then Commander of U.S. Naval Forces in Europe, and in the latter year he also had duty as Assistant Financial Adviser to the United States delegation at the Paris Peace Conference.

Following his resignation from the Navy he served during 1920-24, in a civilian capacity, as accountant general of the Inter-Allied Reparations Commission, with offices in Paris. In September and October, 1924, he served in Paris and Berlin as assistant to Owen D. Young, who was serving at that time as agent general ad interim for reparations payments while the Dawes Plan, which fixed the total amount of reparations to be paid by Germany and the method of payment and thus permitted the taking of steps designed to stabilize the German currency and economy, was being inaugurated.

Returning to the United States later in 1923, Auld became associated with the accounting firm of Haskins and Sells, New York City. He was named a partner in the firm in 1930 and continued on that capacity until his retirement in 1941, following which he served the firm as an adviser until his death. While with the accounting firm he supervised the field work involved in many of its larger auditing assignments and other undertakings. He also served in 1936 as chairman of the accountants committee of the New York State Regents Inquiry.

During the period of World War II he served the U.S. Navy in a civilian capacity, in 1941 establishing a field inspection service to check contract audits and in 1942 serving as chief of the Cost and Audit Branch, Office of Procurement and Materiel, Navy Department, Washington, D.C. In the latter year he also served as a member of the Price Adjustment Board, Washington, D.C.

He was the author of two books, The Dawes Plan and the New Economics (1927) and Rebuilding Trade by Tariff Bargaining (1936), and of numerous papers on economics and international finance that appeared in such journals as The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, The Atlantic Monthly, and Foreign Affairs. Two of these papers, "Reparations and the Policy of Repudiation," which appeared under the pseudonym Alpha in the September, 1923, issue of Foreign Affairs, and "The Reparation Problem Today," which was published in a special supplement of the same journal issued in March, 1924, received widespread attention and were hailed as notable contributions to public understanding of the reparations issue. During 1942-44 he served as a trustee of the University of Vermont.

For his service during the First World War he was awarded the Navy Cross by the U.S. government, and for his work in connection with the inauguration of the Dawes Plan in 1924 he was decorated with the Cross of the French Legion of Honor. An honorary LL.D. degree was conferred upon him by the University of Vermont in 1937.

Auld was a life member of the New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants and a member of the American Institute of Accountants, Phi Beta Kappa, Sigma Phi, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Century Association, and India House of New York City, the St. Botolph Club of Boston, Mass., and the Army and Navy club of Washington D.C. In politics he was an independent. His principal leisure-time activity was reading, especially in the field of history. He was married twice: (1) at Richfield Springs, N.Y., Nov.19,1910, to Madeleine Gray, daughter of William Swift (q.v.), and had a daughter, Elizabeth, who married Robert Hazelett Perry; his first wife died in 1949; (2) in Riverside, Conn., Oct.21, 1950, to Margaret Antoinette, daughter of William Alexander Adair of Elizabeth, N.J., an accountant. George P. Auld died in Stamford, Conn., Sept.8, 1962.