General Electric
After returning to General Electric again, he left to become head of the new Office of Defense Mobilization in December, 1950, which took control of the U.S. economy, rationing raw materials to the civilian economy, a position so powerful that the press began calling him the "co-president". After being accused of backing big business, he resigned in March, 1952 after a bitter dispute with his own Wage Stabilization Board after it recommended wage increases for union steel workers without his knowledge, and he intervened to back the steel companies' demand for price increases to offset them, only to see Truman back the board. He then returned to General Electric briefly before becoming chairman of the board of W.R. Grace & Co. until his retirement in 1956, when he became president of the People-to-People Foundation, a non-partisan program promoting international friendship and understanding.
He was nicknamed "Electric Charlie" so as not to be confused with Charles E. Wilson, Secretary of Defense and Chairman of General Motors, who was nicknamed "Engine Charlie". (This nicknaming meme included at least one other contemporary American industrialist, Charles E. Sorensen, who was "Cast-Iron Charlie".)
John G. Forrest, writing in the New York Times, said "Charles Wilson is a big man by any standard, physical, moral, or mental."
Electric Charlie and his wife adopted Margaret from an orphanage when she was 18 years old. Margaret married Hugh Pierce and had a son: Charles Edward Wilson Pierce.
Charles Wilson died in Westchester County in 1972 and is interred in a private mausoleum in Kensico Cemetery.
Read more about this topic: Charles E. Wilson
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