Andrew Mellon

Andrew William Mellon (1855 to 1937) was an American banker, businessman, industrialist, philanthropist, art collector and politician who served as United States Secretary of the Treasury from 1921 to 1932. The son of the Mellon family patriarch Thomas Mellon, he began work in the early 1870s at his father's Pittsburgh bank, T. Mellon & Sons, which he renamed Mellon National Bank, and in 1889 he established the Union Trust Company in Pittsburgh. By the end of 1913 Mellon National Bank held more deposits than any other bank in Pittsburgh. He owned or helped finance large companies, among them Alcoa, Gulf Oil, Westinghouse Electric, Koppers and the Carborundum Company. As Treasury secretary under Harding, Coolidge and Hoover he argued that cutting tax rates on top earners would raise revenue, and the Revenue Act of 1926 fully realized the Mellon plan.