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 deep-seated
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 hiWalker, a Missouri stock broker and corporate wheeler- dealer. s own. The man Harriman sought to create such an institution for him was Bert
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 with his crony,
former Missouri Governor David R. Francis. Walker and Francis together had sufficient influence
to select the party's candidates.@s1@s
Back in 1904, Bert Walker, David Francis, Washington University President Robert Brookings and
their banker/broker circle had organized a world's fair in St. Louis, the Louisiana Purchase
Exposition. In line with the old Southern Confederacy family backgrounds of many of these
sponsors, the fair featured a "Human Zoo" : live natives from backward jungle regions were
exhibited in special cages under the supervision of anthropologist William J. McGee.
So Averell Harriman was a natural patron for Bert Walker. Bert shared Averell's passion for horse
breeding and horse racing, and easily accommodated the Harriman family's related social
philosophy. They believed that the horses and racing stables they owned showed the way toward a
sharp upgrainferior animals. ding of the human stock--just select and mate thoroughbreds, and spurn or eliminate
The First World War had brought the little St. Louis oligarchy into the Confederate-slaveowner-
oriented administration of President Woodrow Wilson and his advisors, Col. Edward House and
Bernard Baruch.