ANDREW MELLON DEAD

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22183, 28 August 1937, Page 4

ANDREW MELLON DEAD

U.S. FINANCIER AND STATESMAN WAR DEBT CONTROVERSIES (TOTTED I'EKSS ASSOCIATIOH —COPYRIGHT.) (Received August 27, 7.5 p.m.) NEW YORK, August 26. After suffering declining health during the last summer, Mr Andrew W. Mellon, the former Secretary to the United States Treasury, died today from bronchial pneumonia and uraemia. He was 82 years of age. Andrew W. Mellon, the American financier and statesman, was born at Pittsburg in 1855. After graduating from the university there he entered the banking house of Thos. Mellon and Sons, in which he later became a partner. The business developed into three strong institutions—the Mellon National Bank, the Union Trust Company, and the Union Savings Bank, all of Pittsburg. In the eighties he became interested in the development of the coal, coke, and iron industries of Western Pennsylvania and was associated in various enterprises with Henry C. Frick. He founded the town I of Donora where he established big steel works. He also built the first independent pipe-line through Pennsylvania to compete with the Standard Oil Company. He and his brother were ' the chief shareholders in the AluJ minium Company of America, the capital of which is £22,000,000. Until he was appointed Secretary of the Treasury in 1921 by President Harding he had never been a party man, and he had no experience when he took office at the age of 62. His post put him in the forefront of the series of controverises about the wardebts of Europe to America, for he continued to hold it under President Coolidge. While countering the demands for larger payments from the debtor Powers, he strongly opposed every suggestion that such debts should be cancelled. To one advocate of that policy he replied: "I have profound sympathy for the countries suffering from the after-results of the Great War which we in America have to a large extent escaped, but I feel that th* recognition of their external obligations by the European nations and the undertaking bravely to meet them within their capacity will do far more for permanent world prosperity than outright cancellation by the United States."

In January, 1926, the Department of Justice investigated a charge against Mellon that his Aluminium Company had violated the anti-trust laws by attempting to suppress competition. He resigned his directorship on taking office, but it was maintained that his family still controlled the board. The finding was that there was no case. Another attack was launched against Mr Mellon in March, 1928, by Senator Couzens, a Republican, who alleged that he been guilty 6f questionable practices, including association with the expenditure of more than £60,000 in G. Pepper's candidature for the Senate, and responsibility for the deplorable conditions in the Pennsylvania mines. Couzens also asserted that a Mellon company had sought to hamper the Senate investigation into the oil scandals. The inquiry committee rebuked Mellon for his tardiness in collecting taxes due from a certain oil company.

In 1928, failing to induce Coolidge to stand again for the Presidency Mellon concurred in the nomination of Hoover, who retained him at thp Treasury for a third term in spite of his advanced age. In May, 1926, Mellon's daughter Ailsa -vas married at Washington to David Bruce, a young diplomat, the son of Senator Bruce, of Maryland It was the most brilliant American wedding since that of "Princess" Alice Roosevelt 20 years before. Mellon, who Vr as ,J^ e A°^ rth richest m an m the United States, with a fortune estimated at £200,000,000, was said to have aiven the bnde a cheque for £2,000 00o!