
Andrew William Mellon (24 March 1855 – 26 August 1937) was US Secretary of the Treasury from 9 March 1921 to 12 February 1932, succeeding David F. Houston and preceding Ogden L. Mills. Mellon, who once had a personal wealth of $400,000,000 ($5,500,581,395 in 2015), is the namesake of Carnegie-Mellon University alongside fellow industrialist Andrew Carnegie.
Biography[]
Andrew William Mellon was born on 24 March 1855 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of a Scots-Irish banker from County Tyrone, Ireland and a Pennsylvania-born mother. Mellon left the University of Pittsburgh before graduating, and he turned his father's lumber and coal business into a profitable enterprise. He helped organize savings and trust banks, and he backed the growth of aluminum and coal companies, leading to him having a personal wealth of $400,000,000 by 1930. In 1921, Mellon was appointed Treasury Secretary by President Warren G. Harding, and he was a member of the conservative wing of the Republican Party, opposing government spending; he became a vocal opponent of Prohibition, as the government spent $28,000,000 a year policing alcohol. Mellon introduced policies that decreased the public debt, but reduced revenue and increased spending would lead to the Great Depression. In 1932, he financed a march of 25,000 jobless Pennsylvania men to demand jobs, leading to President Herbert Hoover and the anti-communist government impeaching Mellon. From 1932 to 1933, he briefly served as ambassador to the United Kingdom, and he died in 1937 at the age of 82.