Book excerpt: This book offers a unique portrait of Edward J. Phelan (1888-1967), an Irishman who dedicated his life to social justice and whose views and actions guided the work of the ILO for decades. Phelan played a pivotal role in the birth of the ILO and steered and nurtured its further development from the time he joined the Office as the first international civil servant in 1919 until his retirement in 1948, having served as its fourth Director (and first Director-General). Edward Phelan and the ILO is one of the first outcomes of the ILO's "Century Project", looking forward to its centenary in 2019. The project aims to strengthen the ILO's knowledge of its own past in a variety of ways: history not only helps to explain how and why past and present policies originated and evolved; knowledge of the rich heritage of the ILO also equips the Organization better to meet its present responsibilities and future challenges.