Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Epigraph
- Introduction
- 1 The Genesis
- 2 The System
- 3 The Island
- 4 The Politician: Nelson W. Aldrich
- 5 The Architect: Paul M. Warburg
- 6 The Lieutenant: Benjamin Strong, Jr
- 7 The Emissary: Henry P. Davison
- 8 The Professor: A. Piatt Andrew
- 9 The Farm Boy: Frank A. Vanderlip
- 10 The Panic, the Pirate and Pujo
- 11 The War
- 12 The Journalist: Bob Ivry
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
8 - The Professor: A. Piatt Andrew
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 August 2023
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Epigraph
- Introduction
- 1 The Genesis
- 2 The System
- 3 The Island
- 4 The Politician: Nelson W. Aldrich
- 5 The Architect: Paul M. Warburg
- 6 The Lieutenant: Benjamin Strong, Jr
- 7 The Emissary: Henry P. Davison
- 8 The Professor: A. Piatt Andrew
- 9 The Farm Boy: Frank A. Vanderlip
- 10 The Panic, the Pirate and Pujo
- 11 The War
- 12 The Journalist: Bob Ivry
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Every elementary school had one. The kid who tattle-taled on all the other kids; the kid who, if the teacher had forgotten, reminded her to assign homework right before the bell rang; the kid who, during recess, somehow managed to strike out in kickball; the kid who was the smartest one in class, and who knew it. That kid was A. Piatt Andrew – friendly when he wanted to be, stuck up (even when he didn’t want to be), and always isolated by his penchant for knowledge. Andrew took great pains to protect his work from whom he considered the smaller minds of the economic and political world. He defended his positions on economic policy and its execution with passion, possessed a keen mind and a love for money and culture. A. Piatt Andrew was all this, and to those bankers, businessmen, and politicians who wanted to exploit his economic expertise, he was a loyal and able asset.
Born 12 February 1873 in La Porte, Indiana, Abram Piatt Andrew was bred to be an economist. His father was a successful banker and he gave his son the privileges of private schooling and a comfortable lifestyle. However, in his early days as a schoolboy, money was not something he was good at managing. As a student at the Academy of Maidenhead in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, staying as a guest in the Pershing household, he wrote home to his mother almost every day. At about 8:30 pm, after prayers, young Andrew would begin correspondence with his mother and write to her all the interesting and pressing matters of his day, and his mother always wrote back.
He enjoyed lacrosse and tennis very much. Most of his leisure time was spent collecting flowers with his best friend, Jimmy Studebaker, who Abram described to his mother as, “very handsome”. He was very interested in botany, and would press flowers and send them to his mother with many of his letters. She would send him flowers from home, and the two of them seemed to have a very rich and loving relationship.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Federal Reserve and its FoundersMoney, Politics and Power, pp. 115 - 136Publisher: Agenda PublishingPrint publication year: 2018