Mellon, Andrew William
Mellon resigned (1921) as president of the Mellon National Bank to become U.S. secretary of the treasury and held that cabinet post until 1932 under Presidents Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover. As secretary, Mellon worked for a downward revision of income taxes and surtaxes, and in spite of drastic tax curtailments, he reduced the national debt from $24,298,000,000 in 1920 to $16,185,000,000 in 1930. He later served (1932–33) as U.S. ambassador to Great Britain. His income-tax return for the year of 1931 was the subject of a federal investigation in 1935, but he was exonerated in Dec., 1937, four months after he died. He gave $10 million for the founding (1913) of the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research in Pittsburgh (since 1967 Carnegie Mellon Univ.); in 1937 he donated his art collection to the public, with funds for the erection of a building in Washington in which to house it (see National Gallery of Art). He wrote Taxation: The People's Business (1924).
See biography by D. Cannadine (2006); F. D. Denton, The Mellons of Pittsburgh (1948).
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