secretaryofstate

William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925) "For supporting Woodrow Wilson for the presidency in 1912, he was appointed as Secretary of State. However, Wilson only nominally consulted Bryan and made all the major foreign policy decisions. Bryan negotiated twenty eight treaties that promised arbitration of disputes before war broke out between countries and the United States; onto which Germany never signed. In the civil war in Mexico in 1914, he supported American military intervention." Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Jennings_Bryan

Richard Arthur Norton (1958-): Thanks ! We will add information to the source data and reload the description to Flickr.

"President Woodrow Wilson appointed Bainbridge Colby as his third Secretary of State on March 23, 1920. He was confirmed by the Senate and entered into duty the same day. Colby served until the end of the Wilson administration, leaving office on March 4, 1921."
history.state.gov/departmenthistory/people/colby-bainbridge

"Bainbridge Colby (December 22, 1869 – April 11, 1950) was an American lawyer, a political progressive, a co-founder of the United States Progressive Party and Woodrow Wilson's last Secretary of State. Colby was a Republican until he helped co-found the National Progressive Party in 1912; he ran for multiple offices as a member of that party, but always lost."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bainbridge_Colby

See also

Thanks for the information, Art Siegel! We will include some of these details when we update the record.

William Sulzer was the Governor of New York. The only governor from that state to be impeached & removed from office. He kinda looks like Lon Chaney in "The Phantom of the Opera" in this picture: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Sulzer Philander C. Knox was Secretary of State under Teddy Roosevelt: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philander_C._Knox

current usage: phi·lan·der (fĭ-lān'dər) To carry on a sexual affair, especially an extramarital affair, with a woman one cannot or does not intend to marry. Used of a man. To engage in many love affairs, especially with a frivolous or casual attitude. Used of a man. [From philander, lover, from Philander, former literary name for a lover, from Greek philandros, loving or fond of men : phil-, philo-, philo- + anēr, andr-, man; see ner-2 in Indo-European roots.] phi·lan'der·er n.

Thanks captainslack for filling in the identity of these two men. Any idea when the photograph was taken?

The building behind them is the State, War and Navy building -- nowadays called the Executive Office Building, next to the White House. But of course, folks at the LOC know that already . . . .

Captainslack is incorrect about Knox: he was Secretary of State under Taft (1909-1913), not Roosevelt. Sulzer was Governor of New York for only a part of the year 1913, but he was in Congress for several years before that. This picture could have been taken while he was in Washington as a Congress Person.