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History of the Treasury
Secretaries of the Treasury
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Franklin MacVeagh
(1909 - 1913)
Although Franklin MacVeagh (1837-1934) had been a director
of the Commercial National Bank of Chicago for twenty-nine years when President
William Howard Taft asked him to be Secretary of the Treasury in 1909, he
was a man with little real banking  experience. He did not tackle the pressing
problem of currency reform, leaving it to the National Monetary Commission,
which had been established by the Aldrich-Vreeland Act of 1907 to study
the issue. He did, however, stress the urgency of reform in his Annual Report:
"Taking large sums of actual money out of ordinary financial uses and locking
them up as a dead mass in the vaults of the Treasury is ... unscientific
and unreasoned."
What he contributed to the administration was a businesslike
management of the Treasury Department and a spark of progressiveness in
an otherwise conservative cabinet. The era was marked by efforts to modernize
the federal government and MacVeagh promoted efficiency and economy within
the Treasury Department. In 1909 MacVeagh commissioned the architectural
firm of York and Sawyer to study the Department's efficiency, which resulted
in a physical rearrangement of offices and an increase in the security
of the Main Treasury Building in Washington. He abolished 450 unnecessary
positions, rehabilitated the Customs Service with the introduction of
electric automatic weighing devices and accepted certified checks instead
of currency for customs and internal revenue payments. MacVeagh resigned
at the end of Taft's term.
About the Artist
Born in Philadelphia in 1877, Adolph E. Borie, III
spent most of his life in that city. He studied art at the Pennsylvania
Academy under William Merritt Chase and Thomas Anshutz and later in Munich
under Carl Marr. Upon his return from Munich, Borie exhibited portraits
and received immediate recognition; commissions came readily for the rest
of his life. He was a member of the National Society of Portrait Painters
and an Academician of the National Academy of Design. In 1918, after the
entrance of the United States into World War I, Borie produced portraits
in various media, which were offered in return for subscriptions to the
last Liberty Loan. His portrait of Franklin MacVeagh was painted from
life in 1910, while MacVeagh was Secretary of the Treasury.
Office of the Curator
All rights reserved. 2001
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