Meet the Mellons: Andrew Mellon’s “Great Shattering” of a Nation (Part II)
The Mellons’ decades long manipulation of American politics big fail: Andrew Mellon triggered the Great Crash and Depression. Same policies that Trump and Musk, push, for them, today. (Part II)
In last week’s installment of Meet the Mellons, Part I, we discovered how, even into the 2024 Trump election, the Mellon family’s hand, from the shadows, continued to mold America in the Social Darwinist image of fantastic wealth as a “fittest” of the species. The rest of us? Struggle, and die.
Look at what the Mellons spent on Trump, in 2024. Far more than the very visible Elon Musk…
Yet so few Americans even know that the Mellon family have had their silent hand in every major regressive act in US history before, and after, the Great Depression.
Why is this “ancient” history important to what is going on today? We’re being dragged slowly backward, into it, as you’ll see, in 2025.
In Part I, you met the family founder, Thomas Mellon (BNY Mellon) whose adoption of the mythic Social Darwinist socioeconomic theory shaped the view that both the family, and most of the wealthy elites of the Gilded Age, the “Robber Barons” held about America prosperity: A dark, dog-eat-dog, ruthless survival of the economically fittest.
Thomas Mellon set the tone that would define both the Antebellum (post-Civil War) white power structure.
While the money never really “trickled down” to the middle-class and the poor, his ruthless yardstick for capitalistic success, became a mantra for a new wave of European immigrants.
Wealth found, through any means, made one a “winner,” and improved social status to “respectability,” no matter from what means, in the old country, one came.
The classic American immigrant story, purified, and weaponized.
Mellon Control of American Life Begins
It was Thomas’ children, and their descendants, who really built the mechanics of the Mellon family’s dark political, and philanthropic terraforming of the United States, that remains with us today.
Andrew W. Mellon (1855–1937)
Andrew Mellon, Thomas’ youngest son, served the family as both inspiration, of an America in their father’s mold, and a powerful cautionary tale, that would move them out of the public’s view, forever.
The true builder of the family’s vast fortune, Andrew Mellon was, as well. the architect of the same plutocratic policies that Republicans are trying to enact, in 2025, that shattered America, in 1929. The “trickle down” economics that led to the Great Depression, and, when they’ve been floated, the various economic meltdowns post Reagan, both Bushes, and Trump.
Many of his policies, and his unethical practices in government, will be familiar to you. They’re making a comeback, because the people who suffered at the hands of the Robber Barons are long gone, as their children. The active generations have no real experience of the full devastation and harm of plutocratic policy.
Until Trump, round two.
Financial Power
Andrew used Mellon Bank as a quiet control mechanism. He was really one of the first venture capitalists. He lent to startups, with high potential, then assumed control of them, via preferred stock, board seats, or convertible debt instruments. This, and the market panic of 1907, are how Mellon acquired controlling interest in companies like Alcoa (aluminum), Gulf Oil, Union Steel, and Pittsburgh Coal. 1
Carborundum, Westinghouse, Koppers, and various railroads also came under Mellon influence, in much the same way.
His investments were instrumental in shaping the industrial landscape of the United States, during this period. Mellon's approach to business emphasized efficiency and ruthless consolidation, at the expense of smaller competitors and the welfare of labor.2
He became the most powerful of the“Robber Barons,” through ruthless tactics, using the power of his banking interests to undercut competitors. He enabled his wealthy allies to do the same.
The Inferiority of the Working Poor
Andrew’s upbringing, in Social Darwinism, gave him a very low opinion of workers. They were: inferiors; just so many cogs, in his economic machine. It’s a theme that Mellon amplified, that we see revisited in Republican politics over, and over, and over again.
Mellon companies were notorious for poor:
worker safety;
sanitation;
pay;
hours.
It was this kind of abusive excess that led to both the Great Depression, and the New Deal. Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) called Andrew Mellon “The mastermind among the malefactors of great wealth.”
Wage Slavery
Wage slavery was a common tactic of Mellon industrial enterprises, such as the Pittsburgh Coal Company. They established company towns. Workers’, and their families’, lives were supervised by company private police, who were unrestricted in how they meted out “justice.”
Nearly every aspect of daily life was under corporate control. Housing was provided by the company, often at inflated rents. Workers were required to live in these accommodations. They usually paid in “scrip,” company money, to insure that they wouldn’t be able to spend it drinking in the nearby towns, or quit and move away.
This setup ensured that a good portion of employee wages returned directly to the employer, reducing cost of the coal mined, and reinforcing economic dependence.
Richard Mellon, Andrew's brother, testified before the U.S. Senate Interstate Commerce Committee in 1928.
"You could not run a coal company without machine guns," Richard Mellon testified, about the use of armed force to manage labor disputes.3
By the 1920s, Mellon was one of America’s wealthiest, and most powerful men, in the United States.4
Political Power
To understand how many of Trump’s more illegal, and unethical moves are straight out of the Andrew Mellon playbook, let’s put them into perspective of a largely forgotten part of America’s political history, that needs to be remembered.
Political Puppetry: Warren Harding vs. Donald Trump
Donald J. Trump is the second, cruder, more corrupt coming of President Warren G. Harding.
Harding was not a particularly smart, or able man, but he was one thing that Andrew Mellon found quite useful: He was controllable.
Like Elon Musk, Mellon wanted to get his hands into more direct control of government.
“Mellon needed a change, and the Grand Old Party needed the cash,” quipped one of his enemies. Mellon Bank lent $1.5M (23.67M in 2025) to Harding’s campaign, in 1920.5
It was a perfect solution, for Mellon. After two administrations of dreaded progressives like Teddy Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson, Harding would do as he was told.
Harding, like Trump, carried both the House and the Senate. Harding, like Trump, was a total puppet.
“I am a man of limited talents from a small town,” Harding said. “I don't seem to grasp that I am president... I am not fit for the office and should never have been here."6
Harding appointed Andrew Mellon as Treasury Secretary. His rationale? Mellon was SO rich that he couldn’t be bought.
Mellon had become bored with being a mere tycoon. As one of his enemies put it, “Mellon needed a change, and the Grand Old Party needed the cash.”
The Acme of Corruption
Andrew Mellon would stay, in office, as Treasury Secretary from 1921, to 1932, under three presidents: Harding; Coolidge; and Hoover. He remains the longest-serving Treasury Secretary in U.S. History. 7
He also remained the head of some of America’s biggest corporations, while serving in office. Like Trump, today, he had no “blind trust.” He used that combined power, in a way that no one, including Trump, has done, before, or since.
Andrew Mellon not only exemplified the openly corrupt melding of wealth and politics. As a major financier of Republican candidates, during the Gilded Age, and Progressive Era, he was a key Republican power broker; an “influential donor to the Republican Party.” 8 His contributions effectively “bought” him influence. He used that influence to:
Enrich himself, and his friends
Punish, or outright stop, aspiring capitalist social climbers
Keep the “working poor” poor enough to make cheap goods, and consume enough to be over their heads, in debt, to him, or people like him, for their whole lives.
As Treasury Secretary, he shaped federal tax policy, to favor business growth, and the wealthy:
Eliminating gift taxes;
Halving estate tax rates;
Slashing income taxes on the most wealthy.9
Sound familiar?
Fascism As Stability
Mellon’s policies, and hatred of the New Deal, have been the drumbeat of Republican politics through every administration. The Bolshevik revolution, that brought about “communism” in Russia, was a profound event in his later life. ]
He remained silent on the rise of European fascism, despite its increasing brutality. The family business empire, especially through Gulf Oil, did not divest from Europe during the 1930s. Like many American industrialists, the Mellons likely saw fascist regimes as stable markets, and bulwarks against Bolshevism (Communism), that he feared might engulf his own empire, if the poor, whom he had oppressed for so long, rose up in the same way.
Mellon’s influence on American politics was so baldfaced, that journalist William Allen White quipped the 1920s might be called “the reign of Coolidge and Mellon.” 10
Andrew Mellon Culturally Defined Both Legal, and Illegal Power for Generations
Andrew Mellon was perhaps THE major figure in embedding amoral capitalism into American life:
Wealth justifies the means.
The Social Darwinist ultra wealthy maintained their superiority was grounded in their immense wealth. Andrew Mellon, who became the most visible maker of policy, as Treasury Secretary, made it all about the money, have, and have-not, in his time.
The Promise (and Lie) of America’s Liberal Democracy
The Statue of Liberty.
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
The nobility of the Emma Lazarus poem wasn’t a recipe for a great nation. It was more of a cookbook.
Poor immigrants were allowed in, in great numbers, because they were a necessary evil. They were the hands to be exploited, until they could work no more.
Arriving immigrants absorbed this “acme” of achieving immense wealth, both as a goal, even for their children’s future. The dim hope of a better life was their survival mechanism.
The Hard-Bitten, Hard Fought Reality of Industrial America
Some found it sometimes through hard, honest work, if they stayed in their communities (ghettos). Some found it through crime, to bypass the barriers at the banks, and in real estate, to attain the wealth and status that was all that mattered.
Avenues to wealth reflected the same internalized metrics:
Success at all costs;
Proof of worth through accumulation.
Failure to do that, physical frailty, or poor mental health, led to state slavery (poor houses), institutionalization (mental hospitals), or incarceration.
As is true today, with our fractured America, the people with the most money in America set the bars for both success, and cultural acceptance.
Millionaire to Middle to Mafioso - Greed fits all
Mellon was THE voice of Gilded Age capitalism. He set the bar for both government, and societal dog-eat-dog monopolistic aggression that permanently infected every tier of American capitalism.
For the Super Rich - The Reality
For the wealthy, key tenets of his time at Treasury, are yarns that remain part of Republican fiscal dogma, to this day:
Minimal government intervention,
Tax reductions for the wealthy,
The belief that prosperity would "trickle down" to the lower classes.
These policies economically polarized the economy, and squeezed the nascient “middle class,” made up mostly of small businesspeople.
For the Middle Class - The American Dream, with Limits
The same influx of immigrants, seeking better economic opportunities, that Mellon, and his friends, siphoned into wage slavery, also arrived as aspiring millionaires, “the American Dream.”
Some tried to follow the prevailing Algerist "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" ideology, that encouraged immigrants to believe that hard work, and determination, alone, would lead to success. The truth was that, other than in red-lined (ghettoed) neighborhoods, systemic barriers, discrimination, limited access to financial resources, and cultural obstacles intentionally limited upward mobility for most immigrants.
This is the system that the Mellons would like to return to American life, in 2025.
For the Poor - Survival & Crime
For immigrants marginalized by upper-class society, Italians, Jews, Hispanics, African-Americans, organized crime emerged, as an alternative avenue, to achieve the wealth that was the only real sign of respect in Andrew Mellon’s America.
Mafia figures, like Al Capone, or Meyer Lansky, capitalized on the limited legitimate opportunities available to them. They built criminal empires, on the vices that “proper” society either tolerated in that mirrored the hierarchical and profit-driven structures of legitimate businesses in the Mellon model.. These organizations often adopted the same symbols of success—such as luxury goods and philanthropic endeavors—that were celebrated in the broader capitalist culture. In this context, the "bootstraps" narrative was co-opted to justify illicit means of achieving the American Dream.
This approach aligned with Social Darwinist principles, which posited that societal progress resulted from the survival of the fittest individuals in a competitive environment. Mellon's philosophy suggested that success was a result of individual effort and merit, thereby reinforcing the notion that those who failed to prosper did so due to personal shortcomings.
What’s the difference between a Gilded Age Millionaire and the organized crime of rich grifters, like Trump, that still exists, today?
Self-Serving Philanthropy
Wherever Andrew Mellon “gave” to the public, it wasn’t patrician generosity. It was a system of elite self-preservation, masking itself in virtue.
Rather than addressing, or healing, the causes of poverty, it preserved social hierarchies, legitimized great wealth, and allowed elites to choose the terms of their generosity, often to their own long-term tax and wealth advantage.
Investing in America’s Scientific and Industrial Reputation
Europeans did a fair share of looking down their noses at the “provincial” Americas.
In 1913, Andrew and his brother co-founded the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research, to drive scientific innovation. The Institute later became part of Carnegie Mellon University.11
‘The Mellon Plan’ Familiar in both 20th and the 21st century’s “20’s”
If we ignore history, we are doomed to repeat it. Trump echoes Andrew Mellon’s conservative fiscal policies, which included sweeping tax cuts for top earners (the “Mellon plan”) and debt reduction12.
These reckless policies, enacted via the Revenue Acts of 1921, 1924, and 1926, slashed the top income tax rate from 73% to 24% by 1929.13 This vast off-loading of the 1%’s tax burden was one of the financial horsemen of the apocalypse that let to the Great Depression.
Andrew Mellon’s reputation was shattered by the 1929 Wall Street Crash, and the onset of the Great Depression. Amid impeachment calls, it led to his resignation, as Treasury Secretary, in 1932.14
Arts as Influence
Andrew developed the open hand/closed fist policies that shaped the family dynasty. Give generously lavish public works, while robbing the poor, busting unions, keeping minorities in their place, and exploiting immigrant labor.
An avid art collector, he donated $10M ($219M, in 2025 Dollars), of his priceless art collection, and funds, in 1937, to build, and stock, the National Gallery of Art, in Washington, D.C. 15 The museum enhanced U.S. cultural diplomacy, primarily with Europe. Contributing great public buildings to cities, especially the capital, made the patrician plutocrats seem larger than life.
Like many Republicans who have followed, Andrew Mellon believed that such “charitable” policies were pro-growth. Critics accused him, though, of merely entrenching the plutocracy.
A plutocracy is the more correct way to refer to the control of government by the wealthiest. It is a form of oligarchy, which is the more fashionable modern term, for such control, as it is a reference often made about Russia’s richest robbers.
Plutocrat Poster Boy Gets His Day of Infamy
Andrew Mellon’s disastrous fiscal policies, and institutionalization of greed, literally brought the Mellon family name down.
After Wall Street’s Great Crash, in October, 1929, Mellon made statements like “liquidate labor, liquidate stocks…” They were seen as heartless. Public anger turned on the Mellons.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR)’s “New Deal” was a direct reaction to Mellonist policies. FDR used Mellon as a symbol of excess. Newspapers ran editorials blasting the Mellon empire, as a case study in concentrated, unaccountable wealth.
The public scandal toppled both Andrew’s public career, and his place atop the Mellon family.
It set the stage for the next chapter in the Mellon family’s attempt to retake America from the liberals by remaking the nation back in the Mellonist worldview.
Richard B. Mellon (1858–1933)
Richard Beatty Mellon, Andrew’s younger brother, was a close business partner in building the Mellon industrial empire.
Together, the brothers controlled Mellon Bank. They held major stakes in Gulf Oil, Alcoa, and numerous other companies.16
Richard stayed out of elected office. He was a behind-the-scenes force, though, in finance and, by extension, politics. He was known to quietly support Republican causes in Pennsylvania. Although not as publicly prominent as Andrew, his wealth, and the family’s power, passed to children, would have a devastating impact on American political life in the 20th century:
Richard (R.K.) King Mellon
Sarah Mellon Scaife
Richard B. Mellon died in 1933, at the height of the Great Depression. He would not live to see what his heirs did to bring the family’s control of America, to reality, a century later.
COMING UP…
In our next installment of “Meet the Mellons,” America’s Worst Family rises from ashes, from shepherding the ruinous roaring 20’s collapse of the stock market, to rebuild both the family name, and set off on their quest to recover the dominant economic, and political, power that they had enjoyed. The R.K.’s Rise of the Resistance, is our next story…
Footnotes
en.wikipedia.org; Federal Reserve History, “Andrew W. Mellon” (Board of Governors profile)federalreservehistory.orgfederalreservehistory.org.
https://lcmrschooldistrict.com/eakins/Documents/gilded_age_notes_1865_to_1900.pdf
https://www.workers.org/2009/us/mellons_0820/
Federal Reserve History, “Andrew W. Mellon” (Board of Governors profile)federalreservehistory.orgfederalreservehistory.org.
https://prospect.org/culture/books/the-rise-and-fall-of-andrew-mellon/
https://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/arid-30995945.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Mellon#:~:text=In%201921%2C%20newly%20elected%20president,Act%20of%201926%20that%20the
“Andrew Mellon – Wikipedia”en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
ibid., patrioticmillionaires.org