Andrew Mellon

From dKosopedia

Andrew W. Mellon (March 24, 1855 - August 27, 1937) was a banker, industrialist, philanthropist, and Secretary of the Treasury from March 4, 1921 until February 12, 1932.

He was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of successful banker and Judge Thomas Mellon and Sara Negley Mellon. He was educated at the Western University of Pennsylvania (now the University of Pittsburgh), graduating in 1873.

Mellon started a successful lumber business at the age of 17. He joined his father's banking firm, T. Mellon & Sons, two years later and had the ownership of the bank transferred to him in 1882 at the age of 27. In 1889, he helped organize Union Trust Company and Union Savings Bank of Pittsburgh. He also branched out from banking into industrial activities, and built a great personal fortune from oil, steel, shipbuilding, and construction.

In 1900, he married Nora McMullen in Hertford, England, and had two children.

In 1913 along with his brother, Richard Mellon, he established a memorial to his father, the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research.

Andrew Mellon was a major addition to the Cabinet being put together by President Warren G. Harding in 1921 to face the post-war problems. Along with Mellon being appointed Secretary of the Treasury.

Mellon was irritated by the unbusinesslike manner in which the Federal government's budget was maintained, with expenses due now and in the future rising rapidly, and with income or revenues not keeping pace with those expense increases, to say nothing of the lack of planning to put something away for a rainy day.

Mellon firmly believed taxes should be reduced no matter what.

Mellon also believed that the government should give tax breaks to large corporations so that money could "trickle down" to the general public in manifestations such as extra jobs. President Hoover adopted this policy during the Great Depression.

Andrew Mellon

See Also