Ogden L. Mills

Portrait of Ogden L. Mills in the Treasury

Ogden Livingston Mills, Jr. (born August 23, 1884 in Newport , Rhode Island , † October 11, 1937 in New York City ) was an American businessman and politician ( Republican Party ) who served in the cabinet of US President Herbert Hoover belonged as finance minister .

Family, studies and professional career

Mills came from a wealthy family who owned banks, railways and mines on the Pacific coast . After attending school, he studied law at the Law School of Harvard University , graduating in 1904 with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) and in 1907 with a Juris Doctor (JD). In 1908 he was admitted to the bar in New York .

He was also a director of various large companies such as the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway and the Mergenthaler Linotype Company . Together with his sister Gladys Mills Phipps, who was one year older than him, he also ran a riding stable with English thoroughbred horses . He was the owner of the horse Kantar , which won the most prestigious horse race of its category, the Prix ​​de l'Arc de Triomphe , in 1928 .

Political career

State Senator and Congressman

Mills began his political career in New York in 1911 as Treasurer of the Republican Party in a county . In 1914 he ran unsuccessfully for the United States House of Representatives .

As a representative of the state of New York, he was a delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1912, 1916 and 1920 , which nominated the Republican presidential candidate. He was elected to the New York Senate in 1914 and re-elected in 1916. After the USA entered World War I , he joined the United States Army in 1917 and served as a captain in the American Expeditionary Forces until the end of the war .

Between 1921 and 1927 he was a member of the US House of Representatives as a member of parliament. There he represented the interests of the Republicans of the 17th Congressional electoral district of New York. While he was a member of parliament, he was a member of the influential Committee on Ways and Means .

Treasury Secretary under Hoover and critic of the New Deal by Roosevelt

In 1927, he was President Calvin Coolidge State Secretary at the Ministry of Finance ( Under Secretary of the Treasury appointed). He held this office until 1932.

Signature of Mills on US $ banknotes

After the resignation of Andrew W. Mellon he was appointed Secretary of the Treasury on February 13, 1932 by President Herbert Hoover himself . Also in 1932 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . He held the office of finance minister until the end of the presidency of Hoover on March 4, 1933.

As Treasury Secretary, he was a strong advocate of pegging the dollar to the price of gold , the so-called gold standard . In attempting to balance the budget , however, he was faced with growing unemployment problems and increasing demand for higher government spending to ease the depression .

After retiring as Secretary of the Treasury, he became a major critic of the newly elected Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal in the years that followed . He also published this criticism in the books

• What of Tomorrow. 1935
• The Seventeen Million. 1937

Web links

Commons : Ogden L. Mills  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Ogden L. Mills in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)
• Biography on the US Treasury Department homepage
• Ogden L. Mills in the Miller Center of Public Affairs of the University of Virginia (English)
• Red Year's End. TIME Magazine cover story from July 13, 1931