Death of Mills

When Andrew Mellon resigned as Secretary of the Treasury in 1932 to become Ambassador to Great Britain, he was followed in Herbert Hoover's Cabinet by his able assistant, Ogden Livingston Mills. This week, Andrew Mellon was followed by his junior again. Not quite six weeks after "the greatest Secretary of the Treasury since Alexander Hamilton" died of old age in Southampton, L. I, Ogden Mills, 53, died of heart failure in Manhattan.

Son of a New York banker, grandson of Darius Mills who made a fortune in the California gold rush of 1849, Ogden Mills graduated from Harvard at 19, studied and practiced law before going into politics, and became like his fellow Harvardian, Franklin Roosevelt, a member of the New York State Senate. After the World War, in which he was a captain in the A.E.F., Ogden Mills went to Congress as a Representative, served three terms, won the reputation of being the House's best informed specialist on taxation and finance. In 1926, he ran for Governor of New York only to find that a financial reputation was no good match for Al Smith's popularity.

That Andrew Mellon stayed on as Secretary of the Treasury under Herbert Hoover after supporting Calvin Coolidge in the 1928 Republican Convention, was partly because by that time he had become practically a U. S. institution. Closer to and better liked by the President, Ogden Mills really ran the Treasury for two years before his superior resigned. Since 1933, Ogden Mills has been trying to help put the Republican Party together again, running his private finances which included directorships in Cerro de Pasco Copper Corp., Chase National Bank, Mergenthaler Linotype Co., National Biscuit Co. and Seaboard Oil Co. A liberal in matters of economics, he was too much of an Old Guard Republican in political reputation to carry much weight in 1936. After a summer of cruising on his yacht Avalon and two weeks of slight illness that had caused his doctors no alarm, Financier Mills went quietly to his final accounting.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.