Business: Next Mellon

"My brother and I," said Andrew Mellon to his black-hatted banker father one day in 1872, "could start a good business with not very much money." So at 17 Andrew and his younger brother Richard got a loan to start a lumber yard and real estate development outside Pittsburgh. Thereafter Andrew and Richard always prefaced their business decrees with "My brother and I"—a phrase which grew to have the finality of the royal "We." As soon as the two boys had proved their sense for profits, their father took them into the...

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