HARVEY, GEORGE BRINTON McCLELLAN (1864 1928), American editor and diplomat, was born in Peacham (Vt.) , Feb. 16, 1864. At eighteen he became a reporter on the Springfield (Mass.) Republican, and later on the Chicago News and the New York World. He was insurance commissioner of New Jersey in 189o-91 and managing editor of the New York World, 1891-93. Then for several years he was engaged in the construction and administration of electric railways, and in 1898 organized a syndicate which secured possession of the lines in Havana, Cuba. The following year he purchased the North American Review, which he thereafter edited. During 19oo-15 he was president of the publishing house of Harper & Bros., and during 1902-13 was editor of Harper's Weekly. In 1903 he pur chased the Metropolitan Magazine.
Harvey was said to have been the first to suggest (in 1906) Woodrow Wilson, then president of Princeton, as a presidential possibility. In the campaign of 1912 he gave Wilson strong sup port, but after the latter's nomination an estrangement developed. In 1916 Harvey urged the election of Charles E. Hughes, the Republican candidate for president. He was strongly opposed to the League of Nations on the ground that it involved the yielding of national sovereignty. In 1918 he established the North Amer ican Review's War Weekly, later called Harvey's Weekly, which bitterly denounced the Wilson administration. In 1921 he was appointed ambassador to England by President Harding, a posi tion which he held till Dec. 1923. He was editorial director of the Washington Post in 1924-25. He died at Dublin, N.H., Aug. 20, 1928.