ABSTRACT
The three Americans each reputedly worth a billion dollars were also granted fives well beyond the Biblical span. Henry Ford died at eighty-four, John D. Rockefeller at ninety-eight, Andrew W. Mellon at eighty-two. Possibly the richest of the three, and surely the least known, was Mellon. Not even his name, much less his picture, had ever appeared in the New York Times until January 1, 1921, when he was already sixty-six years old and an official or director of companies capitalized, as somebody took the pains to figure out, at two billion dollars. His name then appeared in Times not because of his wealth, which as yet was largely unknown, but because he was being urged upon President-Elect Warren G. Harding for post of Secretary of the Treasury. When Morgan faced a camera, the resulting picture more often than not showed a figure as if in headlong charge upon the photographer, the fierce eyes glaring with something like leonine fury.
