(Excerpt from Father Marquette
In this Christian heroism,...)
Excerpt from Father Marquette
In this Christian heroism, this romance, the history of the West fully shares and in the history of the West though Marquette is not the greatest figure, of the great figures he is the purest, the noblest and the best.
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Franklin MacVeagh was an American politician. He was a secretary of the treasury.
Background
Franklin MacVeagh was the third son and seventh child of Maj. John and Margaret (Lincoln) MacVeagh and younger brother of Isaac Wayne MacVeagh. He was born on November 22, 1837 near Phoenixville, Chester County, Pennsylvania.
His mother was a distant cousin of Abraham Lincoln; his father, a prosperous farmer, hotelkeeper, and local politician, was a great-great-grandson of Edmund MacVeagh, a native of Ireland, who was in Philadelphia about 1689.
Education
Franklin was graduated from Yale College in 1862. He spent the next two years in New York studying law at Columbia University, from which he received the degree of LL. B. in 1864, and reading in the office of Judge John Worth Edmonds.
Career
In 1866, MacVeagh went to Chicago, where he became a member of a wholesale grocery firm. As he later explained, he abandoned the law to enter business for two reasons: "first, to lead a life of pecuniary ease; and second, to have done with ill health". He was soon able to buy out his partners' interests. The business survived the difficult periods of the panic of 1873 and the Chicago fire and became one of the largest of its kind in the Middle West.
It was operated on the principle that with a proper selection of subordinates the continuous presence of the owner was not required. He was deeply interested in civic reform. After the great fire of 1874, he was one of the organizers and the first president of the Citizens' Association of Chicago, which successfully promoted the complete non-political reorganization of the fire department, the substitution of a strong and responsible city government for a hodgepodge of bureaus, and the enlargement of the water supply.
He was actively connected with the Civil Service Reform League of Chicago and its vice-president, 1884-85; president of the Chicago Bureau of Charities, 1896-1904; and a trustee of the University of Chicago, 1901-13. Always inclined to non-partisanship, he left the Republican party in 1884 and was the Democratic candidate for United States senator ten years later; in 1896, he joined with other Democrats in opposing William Jennings Bryan's free silver policy, later drifting back to the Republican party; in 1928, however, he supported Alfred E. Smith for the presidency.
During the entire administration of President Taft, 1909-13, MacVeagh was secretary of the treasury. He had had no real banking experience, though he had been for twenty-nine years a director of the Commercial National Bank of Chicago. He contributed little toward solving the problem of currency reform, leaving it to the national monetary commission.
MacVeagh's death was caused by myocarditis and pneumonia, and he was buried in Graceland Cemetery, Chicago.
(Excerpt from Father Marquette
In this Christian heroism,...)
Views
MacVeagh supported the recommendation for the creation of a central banking system for the rather naïve reason that it would prevent future panics. Nor was he influential in the tariff controversy, though he is sometimes credited with having suggested President Taft's policy of piecemeal revision downward. What he did contribute to the administration was a businesslike management of the Treasury Department and a spark of progressiveness in an otherwise conservative cabinet.
The customs service was rehabilitated following the report of a Congressional investigating committee which exposed frauds in the importation of sugar during preceding administrations. Antiquated regulations requiring payments to the treasury to be made in certain kinds of currency were modified for the convenience of the public. Other reorganizations were effected to promote efficiency and economy.
MacVeagh tried to obtain a systematic compilation of the pension rolls and provision for the retirement of overage employees. He chafed under the existing appropriation methods, which gave the executive no real power in budget making. In his relations with the conservative leaders of Congress he was more independent than most of his predecessors.
As Taft is said to have remarked, he was "a little tinged with insurgent doctrines". Against Taft's wishes he supported the candidacy of Senator Albert J. Beveridge for reelection in 1910. Throughout the presidential campaign of 1912, however, he loyally supported Taft against Theodore Roosevelt.
Membership
MacVeagh was a member of Skull and Bones.
Personality
MacVeagh traveled widely, spending long vacation periods in Europe, where he indulged his hobby of studying architecture. At the time of his secretaryship MacVeagh was described as being short in stature, slender, white-haired, blue-eyed, and always well groomed.
Connections
MacVeagh was married on October 2, 1866, to Emily Eames of Chicago. One son, Eames MacVeagh, survived him; four other children died in infancy or early childhood.