George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Get a Free Blog

when he was an important, rich U.S. Senator, the story was whispered and puzzled over
among the Congressmen.
Looking to be rescued from this ugly situation, Captain Bush went to the 1919 reunion of
his Yale class in New Haven, Connecticut. Skull and Bones Patriarch Wallace Simmons,
closely tied to the arms manufacturers, offered Prescott Bush a job in his St. Louis
railroad equipment company. Bush took the offer and moved to St. Louis--and his
destiny.
A Thoroughbred Marriage
Prescott Bush went to St. Louis to repair his troubled life. Sometime that same year,
Averell Harriman made a trip there on a project which would have great consequences
for Prescott. The 28- year-old Harriman, until then something of a playboy, wanted to
bring his inherited money and contacts into action in the arena of world affairs.
President Theodore Roosevelt had denounced Harriman's father for "cynicism and deepseated
corruption" and called him an "undesirable citizen." @s9 For the still- smarting
Averell to take his place among the makers and breakers of nations, he needed a financial
and intelligence-gathering organization of his own. The man Harriman sought to create
such an institution for him was Bert Walker, a Missouri stock broker and corporate
wheeler- dealer.
George Herbert ( "Bert" ) Walker, for whom President George H.W. Bush was named,
did not immediately accept Harriman's proposal. Would Walker leave his little St. Louis
empire, to try his influence in New York and Europe?
Bert was the son of a dry goods wholesaler who had thrived on imports from
England.@s1@s0 The British connection had paid for Walker summer houses in Santa
Barbara, California, and in Maine-- "Walker's Point" at Kennebunkport. Bert Walker had
been sent to England for his prep school and college education.
By 1919 Bert Walker had strong ties to the Guaranty Trust Company in New York and to
the British-American banking house J.P. Morgan and Co. These Wall Street concerns
represented all the important owners of American railroads: the Morgan partners and
their associates or cousins in the intermarried Rockefeller, Whitney, Harriman and
Vanderbilt families.
Bert Walker was known as the midwest's premier deal-arranger, awarding the investment
capital of his international-banker contacts to the many railroads, utilities and other
midwestern industries of which he and his St. Louis friends were executives or board
members.
Walker's operations were always quiet, or mysterious, whether in local or global affairs.
He had long been the "power behind the throne" in the St. Louis Democratic Party, along