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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