Mellon's Treasury fame collapsed with the 1929 crash
Andrew Mellon (1855–1937) rose from his father's Pittsburgh bank, T. Mellon & Sons, into industrial and political power. Warren Harding named him Treasury secretary in 1921; he served through Coolidge into Hoover until 1932. After the Wall Street crash his reputation cratered with the Depression.
His Ulster Scots grandparents left County Tyrone for Pennsylvania in 1818, and his father Thomas became a lawyer, land speculator and judge who distrusted schools so much that he built one for his own children, which Andrew attended from age five. Thomas opened T. Mellon & Sons in 1869. Andrew left Western University of Pennsylvania without a degree, joined the bank full-time in 1873 just as that year's panic struck, and helped restore deposits by late 1874. He had power of attorney by 1876 and full ownership by 1882, though the bank still had only seven employees in 1895.
In 1876 his father introduced him to Henry Clay Frick, who became a close friend and partner at poker nights with George Westinghouse and others. Both men belonged to the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, whose dam gave way in 1889 and caused the Johnstown Flood, killing 2,000 people; Mellon gave $1,000 to relief and said nothing publicly. That same year he lent $25,000 to the Pittsburgh Reduction Company, an aluminium start-up renamed Alcoa in 1907 and among the family's most lucrative bets. The Mellons' oil companies shipped a tenth of American oil exports by 1894 before selling to Standard Oil in 1895, and their coal firms produced 11 percent of the nation's coal. Gulf Oil, Carborundum, Koppers and Old Overholt whiskey were also in his portfolio.
At the Treasury he argued that lower top tax rates would raise more revenue while keeping a progressive income tax; the Revenue Act of 1926 completed his plan, and the national debt fell sharply. Journalist William Allen White said Mellon so dominated Coolidge's White House that it could be called his reign.
After the crash he opposed direct government intervention. Facing impeachment proceedings in Congress, he was moved by Hoover to be ambassador to Britain, and from 1933 the government pursued him for tax fraud, a case his estate settled for large sums. Shortly before dying in 1937 he helped found the National Gallery of Art, and his giving later shaped Carnegie Mellon University and the National Portrait Gallery.
Source: Andrew Mellon
