Ron Chernow Quote
From modest origins, the Treasury offices proliferated until they occupied the entire block. The 1791 city directory gives an anatomy of this burgeoning department, with 8 employees in Hamilton’s office, 13 in the comptroller’s, 15 in the auditor’s, 19 in the register’s, 3 in the treasurer’s, 14 in the office for settling accounts between the federal government and the states, and 21 in the customs office on Second Street, with an additional 122 customs collectors and surveyors scattered in various ports. By the standards of the day, this represented a prodigious bureaucracy. For its critics, it was a monster in the making, inciting fears that the department would become the Treasury secretary’s personal spy force and military machine. Swollen by the Customs Service, the Treasury Department payroll ballooned to more than five hundred employees under Hamilton,
From modest origins, the Treasury offices proliferated until they occupied the entire block. The 1791 city directory gives an anatomy of this burgeoning department, with 8 employees in Hamilton’s office, 13 in the comptroller’s, 15 in the auditor’s, 19 in the register’s, 3 in the treasurer’s, 14 in the office for settling accounts between the federal government and the states, and 21 in the customs office on Second Street, with an additional 122 customs collectors and surveyors scattered in various ports. By the standards of the day, this represented a prodigious bureaucracy. For its critics, it was a monster in the making, inciting fears that the department would become the Treasury secretary’s personal spy force and military machine. Swollen by the Customs Service, the Treasury Department payroll ballooned to more than five hundred employees under Hamilton,
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About Ron Chernow
Chernow won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Biography and the 2011 American History Book Prize for his 2010 book Washington: A Life. He is also the recipient of the National Book Award for Nonfiction for his 1990 book The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance. His biographies of Alexander Hamilton (2004) and John D. Rockefeller (1998) were both nominated for National Book Critics Circle Awards. His biography of Hamilton inspired the popular Hamilton musical, which Chernow worked on as a historical consultant. For another book, The Warburgs: The Twentieth-Century Odyssey of a Remarkable Jewish Family, he was awarded the 1993 George S. Eccles Prize for Excellence in Economic Writing. As a freelance journalist, Chernow has written over sixty articles for various national publications.