background image

 

130

states  that  he  was  "World  War  administrative assistant to Herbert 

Hoover in all war and post-war organizations including the Commission 

For  Relief  in  Belgium.  He  also  served  on  the  U.S.  Food  Administration 

from 1914-1924." He remained one of Hoover’s closest friends, and 

usually the Rickards and Hoovers took their vacations together. After 

Hoover became Secretary of Commerce under Coolidge, Hamill tells 

us that Hoover awarded his friend the Hazeltine Radio patents, which 

paid him one million dollars a year in royalties.

In 1928, "the London Connection" decided to run Herbert Hoover for 

president of the United States. There was only one problem; although 

Herbert Hoover had been born in the United States, and was thus 

eligible for the office of the presidency, according to the Constitution, 

he had never had a business address or a home address in the United 

States, as he had gone abroad just after completing college at 

Stanford. The result was that during his campaign for the presidency, 

Herbert Hoover listed as his American address Suite 2000, 42 Broadway, 

New York, which was the office of Edgar Rickard. Suite 2000 was also 

shared by the grain tycoon and partner of J. Henry Schroder Banking 

Corporation, Julius H. Barnes.

After Herbert Hoover was elected president of the United States, he 

insisted on appointing one of the old London crowd, Eugene Meyer, as 

Governor of the Federal Reserve Board. Meyer’s father had been one 

of the partners of Lazard Freres of Paris, and Lazard Brothers of London. 

Meyer, with Baruch, had been one of the most powerful men in the 

United States during World War I, a member of the famous Triumvirate 

which exercised unequalled power; Meyer as Chairman of the War 

Finance Corporation, Bernard Baruch as Chairman of the War