Prescott Bush - Business Career

Business Career

After his discharge in 1919, Prescott Bush went to work for the Simmons Hardware Company in St. Louis, Missouri.

The Bushes moved to Columbus, Ohio in 1923, where Prescott Bush briefly worked for the Hupp Products Company. In November 1923 he became president of sales for Stedman Products in South Braintree, Massachusetts. During this time, he lived in a Victorian home at 173 Adams Street in Milton, Massachusetts, where his son, George H.W. Bush, was born.

In 1924, Bush became vice-president of A. Harriman & Co. His father-in-law, George Herbert Walker also worked with the company, as did E. Roland Harriman and Knight Woolley, Bush's Yale classmates and fellow Bonesmen.

In 1925, Bush joined the United States Rubber Company of New York City as manager of the foreign division, and moved to Greenwich, Connecticut.

In 1931, Bush became a partner of Brown Brothers Harriman & Co., which was created through the 1931 merger of A. Harriman & Co with Brown Bros. & Co. (a merchant bank founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1818) and with Harriman Brothers & Co. (established in New York City in 1927).

Bush was an avid golfer, and in 1935 named head of the USGA.

From 1944 to 1956, Bush was a member of the Yale Corporation, the principal governing body of Yale University. Bush was on the board of directors of CBS, having been introduced to chairman William S. Paley around 1932 by his close friend and colleague William Averell Harriman, who became a major Democratic Party power-broker.