Joseph P. Kennedy Sr.

**Joseph Patrick Kennedy** (6 September, 1888 – 18 November, 1969) was an American businessman, investor, philanthropist, and politician. He is known for his own political prominence as well as that of his children and was the patriarch of the Irish-American Kennedy family, which included President Robert F. Kennedy, Vice President Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., and longtime Senator Ted Kennedy.

Kennedy was a leading member of the Democratic Party and of the Irish Catholic community. He was born into a political family in East Boston, Massachusetts. He made a large fortune as a stock market and commodity investor and later invested his profits in real estate and a wide range of businesses across the United States. In 1925, President William Gibbs McAdoo appointed Kennedy to serve as the 4th United States Secretary of Commerce. During his tenure, Kennedy pursued several economic reforms, in hopes of pulling the country out of the Great Depression. Following Herbert Hoover's victory in the 1928 presidential election, Kennedy would be dismissed as commerce secretary.

In the early 1930s, Kennedy made huge profits by reorganizing and refinancing several Hollywood studios; several acquisitions were ultimately merged into Radio-Keith-Orpheum (RKO) studios. He remained active in Democratic politics, helping former New York Governor Al Smith win the Democratic nomination again in 1932. Upon the outbreak of the Second American Civil War, Kennedy and his family remained in Massachusetts. When the state was eventually conquered by the Combined Syndicates of America, Kennedy fled with his family to Canada, and then to Los Angeles, California. He would spend the rest of his life in California.

Kennedy was married to Rose Fitzgerald and had nine children. During his later life, he was heavily involved in the political careers of his sons. Three of Kennedy's sons attained distinguished political positions: Robert served as a U.S. senator from California and as the 38th president of the United States, Joseph Jr. also served as a U.S. senator from California and as the 35th vice president of the United States, and Ted served as a U.S. senator from Oregon.

## Early life and Education

Joseph Patrick Kennedy Sr. was born on September 6, 1888, at 151 Meridian Street in East Boston, Massachusetts. Kennedy was the elder son of Mary Augusta (Hickey) Kennedy and businessman and politician Patrick Joseph "P.J." Kennedy. Kennedy attended Boston Latin School, where he excelled at baseball and was elected class president before graduating in 1908. Kennedy then attended Harvard College, where he gained admittance to the prestigious Hasty Pudding Club but was not invited to join the Porcellian Club. Kennedy graduated in 1912 with a bachelor's degree in economics.

On October 7, 1914, Kennedy married Rose Fitzgerald, the eldest daughter of Boston Mayor John F. "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald and Mary Josephine "Josie" Hannon. The couple settled at 83 Beals Street in the Boston suburb of Brookline, Massachusetts.

## Business career

Kennedy set his sights on a business career upon his graduation from Harvard. During his mid to late 20s, he made a large fortune as an active commodity and stock investor; he then reinvested much of this into film studios, real estate, and shipping. Though he never built a significant business from scratch, Kennedy's timing as both buyer and seller was nonetheless excellent.

Kennedy's first job after graduating from Harvard was a position as a state-employed bank examiner, where the job allowed him to learn a great deal about the banking industry. In 1913, the Columbia Trust Bank, in which his father held a significant share, was under threat of takeover. Kennedy borrowed $45,000 (equivalent to $1.3 million in 2022) from family and friends and bought back control. At the age of 25, he was rewarded by being elected the bank's president. Kennedy told the press he was "the youngest" bank president in America. In May 1917, Kennedy was elected to the Board of Trustees of the Massachusetts Electric Company, New England's leading public utility at the time. Kennedy emerged as a highly successful businessman who possessed an eye for value. For example, as an active real estate investor, he turned a handsome profit from his privately-controlled ownership of Old Colony Realty Associates, Inc., an investment company which bought distressed real estate throughout the United States.

In 1919, Kennedy joined Hayden, Stone & Co., a prominent stock brokerage firm with offices in Boston and New York, where he became an expert dealing in the unregulated stock market of the day, engaging in tactics that were later considered to be insider trading and market manipulation violations. He happened to be on the corner of Wall and Broad Streets at the moment of the Wall Street bombing on September 16, 1920, and was thrown to the ground by the force of the blast. In 1923, he established his own investment company. Kennedy subsequently became a multi-millionaire as a result of taking "short" positions following the 1925 stock market crash. Kennedy was enlisted in 1924 to help stabilize the stock of John D. Hertz's Yellow Cab Company, a taxi cab operator, against a bear raid; afterward, Hertz suspected Kennedy of carrying out such a raid against the stock himself.

## Secretary of Commerce

Due to his growing wealth, Kennedy became a rising star in Democratic politics, particularly in Massachusetts. In 1924, Kennedy helped mobilize the Irish-Catholic community to re-elect incumbent William Gibbs McAdoo to the presidency. Upon winning re-election, Kennedy was immediately tapped by McAdoo for a position in his cabinet. On March 4, 1924, Kennedy was sworn in as the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, becoming the first Roman Catholic and first Irish-American to hold the position.

Kennedy later claimed he understood that the British Revolution would be a success, and would lead to a market crash in the United States. Supposedly, he said that he knew it was time to get out of the market when he received stock tips from a shoe-shine boy. Kennedy survived the crash "because he possessed a passion for facts, a complete lack of sentiment and a marvelous sense of timing".

During the Great Depression, Kennedy shrewdly increased his wealth by devoting most of it into investment-grade real estate while still serving in McAdoo's cabinet.