EQ’s Views

The founder of the modern Bush dynasty was Samuel Prescott Bush, an Ohio steel executive, whose Buckeye Steel Castings Co. business projects included making parts for the Harriman railway empire. Before becoming President of Buckeye (1905-1927), Samuel Bush held a railroad position in Pennsylvania.

After the US entered World War I in April 1917, Samuel Bush obtained a position as head of the War Industries Board’s Ordnance, Small Arms and Ammunition Section and an advisor to President Herbert Hoover. This is surprising, considering he had no background in armaments. There was a hidden logic. As an apparent ‘cleanskin’ suitable for a sensitive official position, Bush already had powerful patrons eager to put his name forward. We can note for example Frank and Percy Rockefeller, whose famous family had moved to gain control of the Remington Arms Company in 1914. (Frank Rockefeller, a brother of clan head John D. Rockefeller, was the previous President of Buckeye Steel).

In 1879 Remington Arms Co. was selling ammunition to both Russia and Turkey when they were at war with each other. Closer to home, they sold rifles to Cuban revolutionaries and at the same time ammunition to the Spanish Government fighting them. Remington later topped this when Colombia and Venezuela were at war, but both states were also facing civil insurrections. There Remington achieved a quadruple sales bonanza by having all four parties firing at each other with Remington rifles loaded with Remington UMC bullets. Percy A. Rockefeller took direct control of the Remington Arms company,  pointing his own man, Samuel F. Pryor, as the new chief executive of Remington. Remington supplied machine guns and Colt automatic pistols; millions of rifles to Czarist Russia; over half of the small-arms ammunition used by the Anglo-American allies in World War I; and 69 percent of the rifles used by the United States in that conflict.

So the link between the Bushes, war, patriotism and profits was now firmly established through an informal network of influence. It has continued ever since.