Law and business Returning to Wilkes-Barre, he went to work in his father's law office there in 1889 at the age of 23 and passed the bar in
Pennsylvania in 1890. He returned to Boston in 1891 and passed the bar in Massachusetts the following year. Until 1899, Palmer's chief work in the firm of Storey, Thorndike and Palmer had been to check the legality of bonds and then to handle the legal business of the Boston Fruit Company, the company of
Andrew W. Preston, a Boston banana importer. In 1899, he created the
United Fruit Company by a merger of Preston's firm and the banana import business of
Minor Cooper Keith. He became a director and a permanent member of the executive committee, while his law partners were listed as executives. Their first move was to buy outright or buy an interest in fourteen competitors, establishing a monopoly on the
Costa Rican banana import business and controlling eighty percent of the entire business in the United States. For all business purposes, Palmer was United Fruit. When the first
anti-trust suit was brought against United Fruit in 1909, charging that it had created a monopoly and was using its financial interests in the competition (in this case the Bluefields Steamship Company) to suppress their business, Palmer, as secretary, was named along with Preston and Keith, the president and vice president. Palmer was a counsel for the
Sinclair Oil Corporation during the
Teapot Dome scandal.
Public service During
World War I, Palmer took a brief break from his legal career. In December 1917, he went to
Washington, D.C. and joined the
Office of Alien Property Custodian, which was charged with the investigation of attempts by German nationals to conceal their extensive property of all sorts in the United States, and with the confiscation and disposition of this property. Where he did both investigations and dispositions, mainly by sale, for which legal expertise was required. All members of the APC served without pay. He also was appointed as counsel to the
United States House Committee on the Judiciary. In 1918, he was also appointed to an advisory committee supporting the
Federal Reserve Board of Governors, also serving without pay; he was its lawyer. After the War, Palmer continued serving his country after being appointed by President Wilson to the delegation to the
Paris Peace Conference. Wilson chose Palmer because of his experience with the Alien Property Custodian. In Palmer's own words: "At the end of the War, President Wilson required someone familiar with the operations of the Alien Property Custodian to attend the peace conferences in Paris. He selected me. I had no official title, but was assigned as the representative of the United States to several sub-committees whose duty was to prepare the provisions of the treatise of economic character. Our sphere covered restoration of business relations, adjustment of private contracts, property rights and interests, and similar considerations". The elements negotiated by Palmer and his fellow economic delegates made it into the separate
U.S.–German Peace Treaty in 1921. ==Personal life==