page_720 < previous page page_720 next page > Page 720 Mellon, Andrew (18551937), financier and secretary of the treasury (19211932). Mellon played leading roles in shaping American industrial development and the federal financial policies of the 1920s. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Mellon left college before graduating to start a lumber business. In 1874 he entered his father's bank, T. Mellon and Sons, and in 1902 became president of its successor, the Mellon National Bank. As a financier, he showed exceptional ability to select, back, and acquire shares in promising business ventures, with the result that the Mellon interests came to include such major enterprises as the Aluminum Company of America, the Gulf Oil Corporation, and the Pittsburgh Coal Company. Regarded by some as America's greatest venture capitalist, he accumulated one of its largest fortunes and was actively involved in directing numerous corporations. Mellon, a staunch conservative, entered politics through connections with such Pennsylvania Republican leaders as Boies Penrose and Philander C. Knox; through their influence he was appointed secretary of the treasury by Warren G. Harding in 1921. He brought business methods to government and succeeded, with the aid of an able group of subordinates, in implementing a conservative program of fiscal reforms. His chief legacies were liquidation of the war period's progressive tax structure, establishment of federal budgeting machinery, and a one-third reduction in the national debt. In addition, he chaired a commission responsible for war debt settlements and left the country a better designed and more convenient paper currency, much smaller in size. To the public at large he became, in spite of his frail appearance and retiring manner, a financial wizard whose accomplishments made him the greatest secretary of the treasury since Alexander Hamilton. In 1929, Mellon's theory of prosperity through upper-bracket tax cuts, as set forth in Taxation: The People's Business (1924), seemed vindicated. But the Great Depression undermined his prestige and made him the subject of political attacks. In 1932 Herbert Hoover appointed him ambassador to Great Britain, a post from which he resigned after Franklin D. Roosevelt's election. Subsequently, he was charged with income tax evasion but was eventually cleared. In 1937 he donated his art collection to the nation along with money to build the National Gallery of Art. Also benefiting from his philanthropies were the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research and the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. Of Mellon's life and work two widely divergent views still exist, one seeing him as a business genius who built great industries and great institutions of education, research, governance, and cultural enrichment, the other regarding him as a ruthless wielder of private power and formulator of public policies that widened economic disparity and helped produce the Great Depression. The latter view long dominated historical writing but has been moderated by recent revisionism and by Mellon's reemergence as a prophet and hero in conservative circles. Burton Hersh, The Mellon Family (1978); Harvey O'Connor, Mellon's Millions (1933). ELLIS W. HAWLEY See also Conservatism; Harding, Warren G.; Philanthropy. Melville, Herman (18191891), author. Although Melville has been regarded throughout most of the twentieth century as one of America's most powerful literary artists, particularly for his masterpiece Moby-Dick, he was largely unrecognized in his lifetime. Born into a once-prominent family, Melville enlisted as a sailor on the whaler Acushnet in 1841. His experiences supplied him with raw materials for the sea narratives he later wrote. After four years at sea, Melville settled in New York and became associated with a group of editors and journalists seeking to foster a "home" literature. With the backing of editor Evert Duyckinck, Melville published his semiautobiographical sea adventure Typee in 1846, followed in 1847 by its sequel Omoo. His critical reception was as favorable as it  < previous page page_720 next page >