(Pages 412 It is the reproduction of the old book publishe...)
Pages 412 It is the reproduction of the old book published long back(1927) We try our level best to give you perfect book but some time, due to old books some imperfections like missing or damaged Pages left in the book. These are due to the original artefact or left at the time of scanning. We found this book important for current readers who want to know about our old treasure so we brought them back to the shelves for you. We hope you will encourage us by accepting them in this reformed condition. We do not change the contents of the book just make it more readable by removing its yellow background. A coloured Dust cover with glossy Lamination is wrapped on the book. Print on Demand
Hostage to Fortune: The Letters of Joseph P. Kennedy
(The previously unpublished letters of Joseph Kennedy offe...)
The previously unpublished letters of Joseph Kennedy offer new insights into the man who fathered so many great Americans as they capture his relationships with his wife, children, and the great figures of his age, including Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Pope Pius XII, and Charles Lindbergh, among others. First serial, The New Yorker.
Joseph Patrick Kennedy was an American entrepreneur, investor, and politician. He was the father of three political leaders: President John F. Kennedy, U. S. Representative Ted Kennedy and U. S. Senator Robert Kennedy. He served as the 1st Chair of the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission from 1934 to 1935 and United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom from 1938 to 1940.
Background
Joseph Patrick Kennedy was born on September 6, 1888 in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, the son of Patrick Joseph Kennedy and Mary Hickey. His father was a successful saloonkeeper, businessman, and politician who served in both houses of the Massachusetts legislature. All four of Joe's grandparents had immigrated to Massachusetts in the 1840s to escape the Irish famine.
Education
Kennedy was educated among the Brahmin elite at Boston Latin School and Harvard, from which he received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1912.
Career
Kennedy began his career as an appointed state bank examiner. By 1914 he had acquired stock in, and become president of, a small bank his father had helped to found, the Columbia Trust Company; at the age of twenty-five he was perhaps the youngest bank president in the state.
In 1917, after the entrance of the United States into World War I, Kennedy became the assistant general manager of Bethlehem Steel's Quincy, Massachusetts, shipyards, which brought him into contact with Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt. After the war he became manager of the Boston branch of the investment banking firm of Hayden, Stone, a position he kept until 1924. In the fall of 1927 he moved his family to New York; from then on, he lived mostly there and in Palm Beach, Florida.
From 1926 to 1930 Kennedy was chiefly involved in the motion-picture business, first as the head of a syndicate that purchased thirty-one small New England movie houses; then, as chairman of the board of the Keith-Albee-Orpheum Theaters Corporation, he helped arrange the merger that created RKO Pictures. In the course of this merger, he made the kind of insider profits that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) would later regulate. He was also involved in the production of profitable but unmemorable motion pictures. Sometime before the 1929 crash he got out of the stock market. By the time he began to play an important role in politics in the 1930's, he was many times a millionaire. His continued business success was largely dependent on his penchant for seeking and taking good advice and his employment of able managers and advisers. Thus, his wide-ranging enterprises continued to prosper even while he devoted himself largely to public service.
Kennedy served in three government posts during the New Deal and was, after James A. Farley, the most visible Catholic New Dealer, often serving as an intermediary between Roosevelt and certain elements in the Catholic community, including Father Charles E. Coughlin. He became a member and first chairman of the SEC from 1934 to 1935. Although some purists, including Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes, were shocked at the appointment of an ex-speculator, Kennedy got that important regulatory agency off to a good start.
After the 1936 campaign, during which he contributed money and signed his name to a vigorous book, I'm for Roosevelt, he served for less than a year (1937) as chairman of the United States Maritime Commission, where he effected reorganization and earned the enmity of labor by his pro-shipowner policies. In 1938, Kennedy was appointed ambassador to Great Britain. No envoy to the Court of St. James's since John Adams can have felt as much personal satisfaction as this third-generation Boston Irish Catholic. In the early days of his mission, he made a great social success; but with the coming of war, his views, which Roosevelt increasingly felt were tantamount to appeasement, drifted farther and farther from those of his own government.
He returned home days before the 1940 election, and after press speculation about a possible break, he gave a radio address endorsing Roosevelt. He never again held a New Deal post and made no public endorsement in 1944. His only other government positions were as a Senate appointee to the Hoover Commission in 1953 and 1957. His political support in those years went largely to right-wingers, including Senator Joseph R. McCarthy. When his second son, John, began to develop a national political career in the mid-1950's, Kennedy was both an asset and an embarrassment. Money and contacts were what made his son's early career possible, while his own reputation made his son suspect to many liberal Democrats. His son's nomination and election as president in 1960 brought the elder Kennedy back into the public spotlight. The entire Kennedy family took on an almost mythical aura, with some even trying to cast Joseph Kennedy as Merlin to his son's Arthur. The aura could only be heightened by subsequent Kennedy triumphs and tragedies. On December 19, 1961, Joseph Kennedy suffered a coronary thrombosis that left him a helpless invalid. He died at Hyannis, Massachusetts.
Kennedy was a member of the Democratic Party. He was a strong supporter of New Deal and Franklin D. Roosevelt policies.
Views
Kennedy's controversial views earned him a reputation as an anti-Semite and appeaser of Hitler, in addition to perceptions that he was a womanizer and probably had ties to organized crime.
Quotations:
"Whenever you're sitting across from some important person, always picture him sitting there in a suit of long red underwear. That's the way I always operated in business".
"More men die of jealousy than of cancer".
"We must get into the picture business. This is a new industry and a gold mine. it looks like another telephone industry".
"When the going gets tough, the tough get going".
Connections
On October 7, 1914, Kennedy married Rose Fitzgerald, the daughter of John Francis ("Honey Fitz") Fitzgerald, an early--but not, as often stated, the first--Irish-American Catholic mayor of Boston and a sometime congressman; they had nine children, four of whom predeceased him. He was a devoted father who insisted that his children excel, but as a husband he freely exercised the double standard: among his extramarital lovers was the actress Gloria Swanson.