Long Post--Brief Tenure, & Colorful Reminisces of John P McEnery, Superintendent, San Fran, 1952

JCH22

Long Post Warning--what follows involves, among other things, an insurance scandal the rivalry for survival between San Fran & Denver, bottles of scotch and of bourbon, and, an American Legion Hall…..

John P. McEnery served briefly as Superintendent of the San Francisco Mint in 1952. McEnery was a significant force in the California Democratic Party--Member of California State Democratic Central Committee, 1944-48; and Vice-Chairman, 1946-48. He was nominated by Truman to serve as Superintendent of the San Francisco Mint in 1948, and was quickly confirmed by the Senate—without his knowledge! He declined appointment in 1948.

In 1951 an internal scandal arose causing McEnery to accept that position and to briefly serve in 1952. McEnery sat for an Oral History Interview on March 12, 1970 with James R. Fuchs, During that interview he spoke candidly about the politics driving his appointment, the problems facing San Fran, competition with Denver, and gave a colorful recounting of his time as Superintendent. His account is certainly much livelier than usual Mint records!

FUCHS: Would you recount your story about becoming director of the Mint in San Francisco?

[discussion relating to earlier declined appointment omitted]….

MCENERY: Well, in 1951 when everybody was talking about dishonesty in Government, whether it was fur coats or refrigerators, and we were having all the investigation of the Internal Revenue, I got a call one day from Jack Shelley, wanting to know if I could come up and see him.

Well, I didn't know what the world Jack Shelley wanted to see me about. We were always very good friends, but I hadn't seen him, he was a Congressman, and he asked me if I could come up to his place. He said, "Be sure and be there not any later than two o'clock."

Well, it didn't occur to me that there was anything involved in it more than something personal. He wanted to ask me some questions or something or he had some other appointments. Well, what happened was that when I got there George Miller, Frank Havenner, and Jack Shelley were there; and they said, "We got you up here, you've got to take the job of Superintendent of the Mint. We're being criticized, the Democrats can't find anybody to even head up the Mint. In view of all these problems that they're having over dishonesty and everything else, they can't clear anybody for the Mint."

FUCHS: Who had been directing it when you refused the job?

MCENERY: He's in politics in San Francisco today, George Gillin.

FUCHS: What had happened to him?

MCENERY: He had some problems in regard to -- and it's not a matter of record, and it never got out in the press -- but he had been in the insurance business, and he had made sure that his company sold insurance policies and so forth to the employees at the Mint. There was just a little, I guess, investigation, and he just resigned.

But the job was open there for a month or two, and the criticism kept mounting. They couldn't find anybody to even fill in in the Mint. Well, I didn't give it a lot of thought, and I guess I let my better judgment get away with me. When Shelley [Congressman and later Mayor of San Francisco], and George Miller, particularly, the Congressman, asked me if I wouldn't consider it or take it, I said, "Well, gee, if it's that bad I'll take it for a few months until you get somebody else." I was thinking just till after the primary election, that's all I was thinking about.

Well, with that, Jack Shelley picks up the phone and phones Clair Engle who is in Washington, then Congressman, and says, "McEnery will take the job."

He says, "Great, let me talk to him."

So Clair Engle said hello to me, and I said, "Gee, I don't know, it looks to me like I've been boxed in in this thing. I don't want the job now."

The job didn't pay an awful lot, I think it only paid eleven thousand a year or something like that; and when you get through adding that to your other income you only have about two-thirds of it left anyhow. So, I was figuring, "Well, I'm not going to move to San Francisco or anything like that." My home was fifty miles away.

Before another week was up I got a phone call from Mrs. Ross, who was Treasurer of the United States, and a phone call from Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Foley and it got out into the paper that I was going to take the job as Superintendent of the Mint, and the thing was confirmed and I was in up there.

I've been told that I have an all time record of getting out of a political appointed job the day after election….

The other thing that happened, after I was confirmed, I didn't actually take the job for two weeks, because some of the vaults in this Mint had been locked up since they had moved over there to this new Mint in 1933. These vaults had been sealed up for all of these years and I didn't believe the seal and the figures that were on the outside. So they had to send somebody from the Philadelphia Mint, somebody from the General Accounting Office, and somebody from the Denver Mint to supervise a complete inventory of all the coins that were in there -- call it a settlement. I guess I was in there two weeks before I signed a piece of paper saying that I was accountable for the money. But the inventory had come out all right, there was nothing wrong.

We had a good time up at the Mint, everybody working for us was very loyal, I invited everybody to the swearing-in ceremonies, which was just held in a large office. I didn't think any of the employees would come, but I invited them all; and when a few friends and Judge Harris were in there, swore me in as Superintendent of the Mint, and a few newspaper people around, taking pictures and so forth, you couldn't get the employees in there.

So, after it was over, I went out and the employees were all lined up on the steps going down and I made a talk to them and said that I would be around to see the ones that I hadn't met; I would be around and get acquainted with all of them, and I was happy they came. It got me off on the right foot, because the employees at the Mint (the old timers that had been there) they had never been invited by a Superintendent of the Mint to the swearing-in ceremony, I didn't think very many of them would come, we had about two hundred employees in there.

But we had a very successful operation of the Mint. We were in third place as far as production was concerned, and I told these people at the Mint that production had to be brought up, that we were behind the Denver Mint. The Philadelphia Mint had, of course, by far the most employees and the most production. But I told them that they had to get their production up. That if there would be some kind of survey made, and we weren't getting the production out, that if one of the mints was going to be closed, it would be this one.

And we did, we brought the production up, and we passed the Denver Mint easily. Denver was having some trouble. I went up there at the request of Mr. Foley, the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury. Mrs. Ross, I guess, agreed with it, I don't know whether she had the thought or who. The thought, anyhow, first was broached to me by Secretary Foley in a phone call asking me if I would go up there.

There was a schoolteacher that was Superintendent of the Mint up there, and evidently the Denver Mint was in an awful mess. I mean it was just a mess of a building, it wasn't a practical operation. It wasn't a conveyor line operation. In fact we didn't have one in San Francisco. There are a lot of things that could be done, and some of them have been done, to improve the mint field. But in spite of the mess that the Denver Mint was in, I did go up there and helped out our schoolteacher friend, who was a Democrat. It consisted mainly of taking a few of the news-paper people and letting them hold a gold ingot that weighed about forty pounds, and letting them have their pictures taken. And buying a couple of bottles of bourbon and a bottle of scotch and going over to the American Legion Hall, which was two or three blocks away from the Mint, and buying a few drinks. We convinced them, after we showed them through the Mint, that everything was in good shape, there was nothing wrong with the Mint. We got some good write-ups.

I've got clippings of it and so forth afterwards. It was just another one of these attempts on the part of politicians to convince the people that things weren't being handled right, you know, and criticizing the Superintendent and so forth at Denver. But it was a terrible disappointment to me, after I left the Mint, and after the men had worked so hard, and we had got things rolling pretty good that Eisenhower, when elected President, without even a decent survey being made, decided that the San Francisco Mint was supposed to be closed.

Naturally you wouldn't expect him to close the Denver Mint, having his wife's folks and everything coming from there. I wrote a letter at the time about it to the Senate committee and also sent copies of it to the Treasury Department, and I made a prediction which has come true. I said it would cost more for freight to ship the money from Denver down, you know, with insurance and everything, than it would to keep the Mint operating.

Well, they found out that in no time at all that they had to open up the San Francisco Mint on a limited basis to manufacture dimes and nickels and quarters and pennies because it was costing so damn much to ship them in from Denver and from Philadelphia.
I think that that gives you the story, unless you can think of some other question, in regard to the Mint.

FUCHS: That's about all I have. I certainly do thank

Typekat

Great story!
Thanks for bringing real Mint history to life by posting it here.

lermish

Fun read!