Enjoying a Wealthy Lifestyle
After they married, Joe and Rose settled into a seven-room, two-and-a-half-story home in a Protestant neighborhood in Brookline, Massachusetts. Their first child, Joseph Patrick Kennedy Jr., was born in 1915.
THEY SAID…
“[H]e is going to be President of the United States, his mother and father have already decided that he is going to Harvard, where he will play on the football and baseball teams and incidentally take all the scholastic honors. Then he's going to be a captain of industry until it's time for him to be president for two or three terms.”
— John Fitzgerald, on the birth of his grandson Joseph Patrick Kennedy Jr.
Creating Family Wealth
On May 29, 1917, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born in an upstairs bedroom in the Kennedy home. The world at large was in turmoil, and the United States had just entered World War I. Joseph Kennedy Sr., unlike many of his college buddies, decided that it was more beneficial to continue his quest for wealth than to volunteer to serve in the war. Despite the world events, Joe moved ahead with his plan to become a millionaire by the age of thirty-five.
THEY SAID…
“The limits of Jack's knowledge about his Irish relatives was partly the result of his parent's upward mobility and their eagerness to replace their ‘Irishness’ with an American identity. Rose Kennedy, Jack's mother, took pains to instill American values in the children, ignoring their Irish roots.”
— Robert Dallek, An Unfinished Life
Joe was more determined than ever for social acceptance and desperately wanted to throw off the label of “Irishman.” He was finally able to break through the wall of prejudice at the Massachusetts Electric Company. After a series of rejections in his bid to become a board member, Joe was elected to the company board in 1917. His real step toward wealth came that same year when he left the bank to take a position as the general manager of Bethlehem Steel's Fore River shipyards in Quincy. The annual salary of $20,000 was well worth the expense for the company. Joe increased wartime production substantially and his inventiveness made him indispensable.
John F. Kennedy and sister Eunice, circa 1925, Brookline, Massachusetts, Naples Road.
Photo Credit: John F. Kennedy Library Foundation in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston
After Joe left Bethlehem in 1919, he was hired as a stockbroker by Galen Stone of the investment banking firm Hayden, Stone and Company. His salary was half of what he received at Bethlehem, but his investments more than made up for it. Under the guidance of the firm, Joe learned the art of earning money in the stock market by trading on inside information. For example, when he learned that Henry Ford planned to acquire the Pond Creek Coal Company, he bought 15,000 shares at $16 per share and then sold them for a sizable profit of $45 per share. Insider trading made Joe a rich man. In 1922, Joe opened his own office and expanded his business dealings into real estate and the movie industry. Within six years, Joe had made $2 million.
Joe also acquired his wealth from buying Massachusetts movie theaters and entering the liquor business. During Prohibition, according to Kennedy family legend, he was a bootlegger who worked with mobsters. The real money, however, came from his importation of Irish whiskey and Scotch from England. When Prohibition ended in 1933, he worked as an agent for such companies as Haig and Haig, John Dewar and Sons, and Gordon's Dry Gin.
In 1921, Joe used his growing wealth to purchase a twelve-room home in Brookline and hire a live-in nursemaid for his expanding family. Rosemary was born in 1918, followed by Kathleen in 1920, Eunice in 1921, Patricia in 1924, Robert in 1925, Jean Ann in 1928, and Edward in 1932.
The Kennedy family.
Photo Credit: Miki Ansen/Getty Images News/Getty Images
The Perks of Wealth
The Kennedy family benefited as Joe continued to acquire wealth, especially during difficult economic times. When the Great Depression hit in 1929, the family hardly felt its effects. In 1960, when Jack was asked about his memory of the depression, he stated that he recalled very little about the time except that his family's wealth continued to grow. He remembered his father hiring more servants, the traveling, and the larger homes. The only effect of the depression that he could recollect was his father hiring extra gardeners to help them make ends meet.
FACT
In 1926, Joe Kennedy bought the Film Booking Offices of America, Inc. (FBO). He made a substantial fortune by cutting the cost of producing the already low-quality films and by increasing production to an average of one film per week. In 1928, he bought the KAO theater chain. In nearly three years, Joe had made $5,000,000.
While the family money had sheltered Jack from the effects of the Great Depression, it had also sheltered him from social mores. He developed a habit of carrying very little cash or none at all. Jack, like his siblings, had early on in childhood come to believe that as a Kennedy he was entitled to special treatment. Jack believed that he was good for his debt and it was quite common for friends, storeowners, and restaurants to get stuck with the tab. Nevertheless, more often than not, the debt was later paid.
