Saturday, October 3, 2009

Young Man Lyndon

While rummaging around in the papers of the Hoover-era Reconstruction Finance Corporation at the National Archives, in an attempt to nail down some facts about its Legal Division, I happened upon this letter from a young congressional secretary (and failed Georgetown law student) to Jesse Jones, a Houston banker and the RFC's leading Democratic director, who was about to take charge of the nation's principal vehicle of state capitalism. At 24, Lyndon Johnson already knew which side the bread was buttered on, and how to lay it on thick. (Click on the image for a better view.)