He was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of successful banker and Judge Thomas Mellon and Sara Negley Mellon. He was educated at the Western University of Pennsylvania (now the University of Pittsburgh), graduating in 1873.
Mellon demonstrated financial ability early in life by starting a successful lumber business at the age of 17. He joined his father's banking firm, T. Mellon & Sons, two years later and had the ownership of the bank transferred to him in 1882 at the age of 27. In 1889, he helped organize Union Trust Company and Union Savings Bank of Pittsburgh. He also branched out from banking into industrial activities, and built a great personal fortune from oil, steel, shipbuilding, and construction.
In 1900, he married Nora McMullen in Hertford, England, and had two children.
In 1913 along with his brother, Richard Mellon, he established a memorial to his father, the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research.
During the World War I years he participated in many patriotic civilian activities such as the American Red Cross, the National War Council of the Y.M.C.A, the Executive Committee of the Pennsylvania State Council of National Defense, and the National Research Council of Washington.
Andrew Mellon was a major addition to the Cabinet being put together by President Warren G. Harding in 1921 to face the post-war problems. Along with Mellon being appointed Secretary of the Treasury were such distinguished individuals as Charles Evans Hughes as Secretary of State, and Herbert Hoover as Secretary of Commerce. The President, in his address on March 4, 1921, had called for a prompt and thorough revision of the tax system, an emergency tariff act, readjustment of war taxes and creation of a Federal budget system, among others. These were policies Mellon wholeheartedly subscribed to, and his long experience as a banker qualified him to set about implementing these programs immediately. As a conservative Republican and a financier, Mellon was irritated by the unbusinesslike manner in which the Government's budget was maintained, with expenses due now and in the future rising rapidly, and with income or revenues not keeping pace with those expense increases, to say nothing of the lack of planning to put something away for a rainy day.
Secretary Mellon firmly believed that high taxes increased the cost of living, and insofar as possible, taxes should be reduced realistically and the cost of living lowered. He proceeded, therefore, as he repeatedly pointed out to Congress, to attack the fixed expenses, especially interest on the public debt paid out by the Government. He acted to reduce the public debt, and as it was paid off, the interest charges became less, thus effecting a saving each year in the Government's budget expenses. With these lowered expenses, taxes could also be lowered.
When Mellon became Secretary, the cost of running the Government for the previous year (Fiscal Year 1920) was $6.5 billion and the Government had fixed expenses and obligations maturing within the next 2-1/2 years amounting to $7.5 billion. At the end of his first three years as Secretary, the Government's annual budget was reduced to $3.5 billion, and the fixed short-term expenses of $7.5 billion had either been completely paid off or traded for more advantageous maturities. The public debt had been reduced by $2.8 billion, which meant much less Government interest charges paid out and, therefore, a saving each year of Government expenses.
In November 1923, Secretary Mellon presented to the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee a letter in which he outlined what has come to be known as "Mellon Plan". It was a balanced program for tax reform based upon the common sense idea of lowering taxes out of surplus revenues. It subsequently became law as the Revenue Act of 1924, although without some of the reforms Mellon advocated. It did reduce the taxpayers' bill by some $400 million annually over what would have been collected if the 1921 tax rates had remained in effect. Mellon reduced the public debt (largely inherited from World War I obligations) from almost $26 billion in 1921 to about $16 billion in 1930, when the depression caused it to rise again.
Through the prosperous 1920s, Mellon was a popular individual, but the onslaught of the Great Depression affected his standing. Upon leaving the Treasury Department and President Hoover's Cabinet in February 1932, Mellon accepted the post of U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain, serving for one year and then retiring to private life.
During his retirement years, as he had done in earlier years, Mellon was very active in philanthropy, and gave generously of his vast wealth to support educational, cultural, and research causes. Throughout his lifetime, Mellon exhibited a genius for recognizing the potential value of a person or an idea, and never hesitated to back his conviction with financial support. Three such infant concepts that grew to giant proportions were his backing of Charles M. Hall, which Mellon built into the Aluminum Company of America; his aid to Edward Goodrich Acheson, becoming his partner in manufacturing carborundum steel, which Mellon built into the Carborundum Company; and creation of an entire industry through his help to Heinrich Kopper, who invented coke ovens which transformed industrial waste into usable products such as gas, tar, and sulphur.
In 1937, he gave to the Nation his magnificent art collection, plus $10 million, to build the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C
Andrew W. Mellon died on August 27, 1937, in Southampton, Long Island, New York.
The original text of this article was collected from http://www.ustreas.gov/education/history/secretaries/awmellon.html .