Richard Whitney

Richard Whitney was born in Boston, Massachusetts on August 1, 1888. His father, George Whitney, was the president of the North National Union Bank. Richard Whitney established his own bond brokerage firm in 1910, called Richard Whitney & Co., which bought a seat on the New York Stock Exchange using money from Whitney’s family. In 1916, he married Gertrude Sheldon Sands, and they would end up having three children together. Three years after they got married, Whitney was elected to the Board of Governors of the New York Stock Exchange, and he would soon become its vice president.

When the stock market crashed on October 24, 1929, the day that would come to be known as Black Thursday, Whitney was chosen from a group of prominent Wall Street bankers to take action, as the vice president of the New York Stock Exchange. He went enthusiastically across the exchange floor and bought many shares of U.S. Steel, spending a lot of money to send a message to the worried people that things were okay. However, this act only put off the rest of the downfall for a very short period of time, and soon the economic conditions continued to deteriorate and the Great Depression ensued.

Richard Whitney was anti-Semitic, and at the beginning of the next decade, he prevented Jewish people working in his exchange from being promoted to high-ranking positions. He was very wealthy and showed off his wealth, but his ostentatious way of living eventually left him in major debt. Searching for new ways to quickly make money, Whitney turned to crime.

Whitney was against the measures President Roosevelt was taking to intervene in the economy. He tried to discourage Roosevelt and even led a campaign attacking the regulations Roosevelt had been putting forth. President Roosevelt continued to get reforms passed and defend them, though, and did not listen to Whitney.

In 1938, Whitney ended up being indicted for grand larceny, and President Roosevelt was forced to decide how he would respond to the misconduct of the prominent Wall Street figure. He was advised by some of the people close to him to magnify the drama, in order to send the message to people of how poorly some powerful economic leaders could behave. However, Roosevelt ultimately chose not to overdramatize the financier’s corruption, even if it could have benefitted his own reputation. For this reason, Whitney is not extremely well-known today. When he is remembered, though, it is generally for his superficial act of audacity on Black Thursday, which may have given a glint of hope and false security to some people for a brief moment but would not truly be helpful or heroic in the long run.

Sources:

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/14/upshot/from-white-knight-to-thief.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Whitney_(financier)

Images:

http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/151925

https://fineartamerica.com/featured/richard-whitney-1888-1974-president-everett.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/14/upshot/from-white-knight-to-thief.html