Republic of Money: Mellon-Scaife

[Hannah Bell]

Richard Mellon Scaife (born July 3, 1932) is an American newspaper publisher and billionaire...Scaife owns and publishes the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.



Scaife is also known for his financial support of conservative and right-wing public policy organizations over the past two decades. He has provided support for conservative and libertarian causes in the U.S., mostly through the private, nonprofit foundations he controls... Scaife also helped fund the Arkansas Project, which ultimately led to the impeachment proceedings of President Bill Clinton.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Mellon_Scaife

Scaife has a lot of money, 200 years worth, inherited from both sides of his family.

Scaife family

The Scaifes are an old Pennsylvania family. Great-great-great grandfather Jeffrey Scaife & his father-in-law founded the family business in 1803 -- an iron & tinworks, the "most important of its kind" as an account of the time had it.

It became WB Scaife & Sons in the next generation, then The Scaife Company, and continued in operation until 1952. The Scaife Company's operations changed as the times did; WB Scaife manufactured steamboat components while his son Marvin manufactured one of the most popular cooking stoves of the Victorian era. And weapons & ordnance.



The Scaife men married highly eligible women, also from old Pennsylvania families; the Verners (brewing, real estate, railroads, iron); the Magees (patriarch James was a founder and original director of the Pennsylvania Railroad); the Frisbees (patriarch Ephraim founded the first boatyard in Pittsburgh).

Alan Magee Scaife, Richard's father, was a trustee of the University of Pittsburgh, a fellow of the Yale Corporation, Chairman of the Scaife Co., and a Vice-president of Mellon & Sons, the banking concern.



http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?imgurl=c438a87edb8602ed&q=alan%20magee%20scaife&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dalan%2Bmagee%2Bscaife%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26biw%3D1003%26bih%3D567%26tbs%3Disch:1

1920 Yale News Board magazine edit staff: front row - Francis Thayer Hobson, managing editor Henry R. Luce, chairman Briton Hadden, C. Stuart Heminway, assignment editor William D. Whitney. Back row P. I Prentice, Calvin Trowbridge, Alan Magee Scaife, Donald Rentert, Louis Sheridan.


He was also in the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA, one of several OSS agents in RM Scaife's extended family.

Alan married into the Mellon family.

Mellon family

The Mellons arrived in Pennsylvania after the Scaifes. Archibald Mellon came to the States in 1816, and his children followed a bit later. But Thomas (b. 1813) became a judge and founded a bank (T. Mellon & Sons) just in time to loan money to Frick & Carnegie for the enterprise that would become Carnegie Steel, & then US Steel.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_BumWKhci_e4/Spx7MUaSDuI/AAAAAAAAAMo/T-WpjOlCuDM/s400/Thomas+Mellon.jpg

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_BumWKhci_e4/SpxyDJeXcrI/AAAAAAAAALY/EA3PtdOEbt4/s400/First+Acquaintance+with+Thomas+Mellon.jpg

The Mellons also married well. Thomas married the daughter of the rich Negley family he'd idolized as as a young immigrant. His son Richard married a daughter of the King glass manufacturing concern. Son Andrew married a McMullen, of the (UK) Guiness brewing family. Son James married a Rachel Larimer, daughter of the founder of Denver, Colorado, and namesake of Larimer Street -- eventually to become the skid row of bars & cheap hotels where Neal Cassady would spend his childhood.




and the descendants of Thomas did well....

Thomas's Son Andrew W Mellon became Secretary of the Treasury. Mellon's tax cuts for the rich helped bring on the Great Depression (top rate from 77% after WW1 down to 24% by 1929).

Mellon is the person who, when the Depression hit, advised Hoover to "liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate farmers, liquidate real estate… it will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up from less competent people."



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_W._Mellon

As a banker in his father's business, he financed the nascent aluminun, silicon carbide, coke & steel industries. He was the third-richest taxpayer in the US in the 20s, after Ford & Rockefeller.

He was a member of the South Fork Hunting club, along with his kinsman Marvin Scaife and other notables. When the club's earthen dam broke, it caused the Johnstown Flood, which killed 2,200 people:



http://profilesintime.blogspot.com/2007/03/marvin-f-scaife.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnstown_Flood


Andrew's daughter Ailsa married David KE Bruce, diplomat, financier, & London station chief in the OSS.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_K_E_Bruce

David KE Bruce was at Princeton with F. Scott Fitzgerald, like Tommy Hitchcock, another Mellon by marriage, & Fitzgerald's model for Tom Buchanan. These were the big shots that small fish Fitzgerald (son of a failed Procter & Gamble exec) was intimidated by, the rich who "were very different from you & I".

“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made…”




Andrew's son Paul was a major in the OSS. He married two heiresses in succession, the second to the Gilette Razor/Listerine/Warner-Lambert pharmaceutical fortunes.




Paul's daughter Catherine was the first wife of Senator John Warner of the Senate Intelligence Committee. His son Tim heads the company that's heir to the Pan Am name. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Systems


Judge Thomas's son James Ross was a coal magnate.

James' son William Larimer Mellon founded Gulf Oil.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Larimer_Mellon


William Larimer Jr was in OSS Secret Intelligence Branches in Spain & Switzerland, then became a doctor & opened the Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Haiti, where he died.




Daughter Margaret married Tommy Hitchcock, whose sons (rumored to have CIA connections) let Tim Leary rent their estate in Millbrook & experiment with LSD. You can read about that in a previous installment here:

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Hannah%20Bell/148

Great-grandson Christopher was Staff Director for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, among other DC positions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Mellon


Judge Thomas's Son Richard Beatty Mellon became President of Alcoa.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_B._Mellon

Richard Beatty's son Richard King Mellon was a financier.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_King_Mellon


Richard Beatty's daughter Sarah Cordelia married OSS officer Alan Magee Scaife.