Henry Morgenthau, Jr. (1891-1967), was secretary of the U.S. Treasury and a longtime confidant and adviser to President Franklin Roosevelt.

Henry Morgenthau, Jr., was born in New York City on May 11, 1891, into a prosperous family of German-Jewish ancestry. The senior Morgenthau, who had become wealthy through real estate investments, was active in Democratic party affairs and in sponsoring various social welfare projects in the city. Henry Morgenthau, Jr., attended Phillips Exeter Academy and then Sachs Collegiate Institute in New York City before entering Cornell University. Morgenthau left Cornell after three semesters to recuperate from typhoid fever. He again enrolled in Cornell, this time to study agriculture. But he soon left on a trip to the Pacific Coast to investigate different kinds of farming at firsthand. When he returned more excited than ever about a career in farming, his father bought several hundred acres for him in Dutchess...