William Gibbs McAdoo

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William Gibbs McAdoo, Jr.

46th United States Secretary of the Treasury
In office March 6, 1913 – December 15, 1918
Preceded by	Franklin MacVeagh
Succeeded by	Carter Glass

Born	October 31, 1863 Marietta, Georgia, USA
Died	February 1, 1941 USA
Political party	Democratic
Spouse	Sarah Houston Fleming Eleanor Randolph Wilson Doris Isabel Cross
Profession	Politician, Lawyer
Religion	Episcopalian

William Gibbs McAdoo, Jr. (October 31, 1863 – February 1, 1941) was a U.S. Senator, United States Secretary of the Treasury and director of the United States Railroad Administration (USRA). By virtue of his position as Secretary of the Treasury in August 1914 he also served as the first Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.

McAdoo was born in Marietta, Georgia, and moved to Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1877, when his father, William Gibbs McAdoo, Sr., became a professor at the University of Tennessee. His mother was Mary Faith Floyd. He was admitted to the bar in Tennessee and then moved to New York, where he met Francis R. Pemberton, son of the Confederate General John Pemberton. They formed a firm, Pemberton and McAdoo, to sell investment securities.

At the turn of the century, McAdoo took on the leadership of a project to build a railway tunnel under the Hudson River to connect Manhattan with New Jersey. A tunnel had been partly constructed during the 1880s by Dewitt Clinton Haskin. With McAdoo as President of the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad Company, two passenger tubes were completed and opened in 1908. The popular McAdoo told the press that his motto was "Let the Public be Pleased." The tunnels are now operated as part of the PATH (Port Authority Trans-Hudson) system.

He married his first wife, Sarah Houston Fleming, on November 18, 1855. They had seven children: Harriet, Francis, Julia, Nona, William III, Robert, and Sarah. Sarah Fleming McAdoo died in February, 1912.

McAdoo was lured away from business after he worked for the Wilson presidential campaign in 1912. President Woodrow Wilson asked him to serve as Secretary of the Treasury from 1913 to 1918. He married Wilson's daughter Eleanor Randolph Wilson at the White House on May 7, 1914.

They had two daughters, Ellen Wilson McAdoo (1915-1946) and Mary Faith McAdoo (1920-1987). Ellen married twice, had a son by each marriage, and eventually committed suicide. Her parents took custody of her eldest son after her death. Mary Faith married three times but had no children.

McAdoo offered to resign when he married the President’s daughter but Wilson urged him to complete his work of turning the Federal Reserve System into an operational central bank. The legislation establishing the System had been passed by Congress in December 1913.

McAdoo confronted a major financial crisis at the outbreak of World War I. During the last week of July, 1914, British and French investors began to liquidate their American securities and transfer gold to Europe. McAdoo kept the U.S. on the Gold Standard by closing the New York Stock Exchange for an unprecedented four months to prevent Europeans from selling American securities and exchanging the proceeds for gold. He prevented a replay of the bank suspensions that plagued America during the Panic of 1907 by invoking the emergency currency provisions of the Aldrich Vreeland Act. His actions helped turn America into a world financial power.

After the United States entered World War I in April 1917, the United States Railroad Administration was formed to run America’s transportation system during the war. McAdoo was appointed Director General of Railroads, a position he held until November 1918 when the armistice was declared, ending World War I.

After leaving the Wilson Cabinet, he ran twice for the Democratic nomination for President, losing to James M. Cox in 1920, and to John W. Davis in 1924, even though in both years he led on the first ballot. He served as Senator for California from 1933–1938. He and Eleanor were divorced in 1934. The next year, he married Doris Isabel Cross.

McAdoo was a "Dry" with respect to Prohibition, and was the favored candidate of the Ku Klux Klan in 1924 when the other front-runner appeared to be the Catholic Al Smith of New York. McAdoo took a payment of $25,000 from oil executive Edward Doheny in connection with the Teapot Dome scandal, but returned it once he discovered Doheny's links with Secretary of the Interior Albert Bacon Fall.

McAdoo's former home in Chattanooga's Fort Wood neighborhood has been restored and is now a private residence.

[edit] References

Wikisource has original works written by or about:

William Gibbs McAdoo

Broesamle, John J., William Gibbs McAdoo: A Passion for Change, 1863-1917, National University Publications, Kennikat Press, Port Washington, N.Y., 1973

McAdoo, William G., Crowded Years, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1931

Silber, William L., When Washington Shut Down Wall Street: The Great Financial Crisis of 1914 and the Origins of America's Monetary Supremacy, Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J., 2007

Preceded by Franklin MacVeagh	United States Secretary of the Treasury March 6, 1913 – December 15, 1918	Succeeded by Carter Glass
Preceded by Samuel M. Shortridge	United States Senators from California 1933 – 1938	Succeeded by Thomas M. Storke