seem to hurt the nation's economy, which
was in the midst of a great business boom. Coolidge once declared, "The
business of America is business," and indeed, from 1921 to 1929, the
gross national product soared from $74 billion to $104.4 billion. The buying power of a skilled laborer swelled 50 percent during that period.
Bricklayers' wives began wearing silk stockings and the bricklayers themselves bought touring cars.'
Al Munger had moved the roughly 50 miles from Lincoln to Omaha
because it would have been problematic to practice law in his hometown
where his father was the only federal judge and a dominant force in the
community. Charlie's father practiced law in the same building in downtown Omaha from 1915 to 1959, taking time out to serve as an assistant
attorney general and to fulfill his obligations in World War I.
The Munger family history stretched way back in America, reaching
to an ancestor who was among the earliest British settlers in New England. The Munger name derives from the German word monger, a person
who sells some commodity, such as fish or iron. At some early point, the
Mungers moved from Germany to England and thereafter were increasingly Anglicized.
The first Munger arrived in America in 1637; Nicholas was a 16-yearold freeman from the county of Surrey, England. He settled in Guilford,
Connecticut, where the family farm proved boggy and unproductive, so
the Mungers moved from one disappointing farmstead to another, hoping
to improve their fortunes. Over time, the family migrated West, with
some landing in the Territory of Nebraska.
"Among us not many great, not many mighty, but most belonging to
the reliable `middle class,' the strength of a nation," wrote a Munger family historian. "Some few have cast considerable luster on the family name.
Among these I class the sturdy pioneer, those who fought in the Colonial
Wars, the Revolution, and in the War for the Union, aren't they worthy?"3
One of these Nebraska Mungers became a teacher and married a
school marm. Teachers earned a pittance in the early days of this country
and the family was extremely poor. Nonetheless, one of their two sons became a doctor and the other, Charlie's grandfather, became a lawyer and
later a judge.
Charlie's grandfather, judge T.C. Munger, was influenced all his life
by his early poverty. He would frequently recall being sent to the butcher
with a nickel to buy the parts of the animal others would not eat. He had
to leave college after one year for lack of funds and thereafter educated
himself, using books and self-discipline. Even so, he rose to a position of
influence, all the while holding to the beliefs and characteristics of his
pioneer forbears. Judge Munger was determined to move the family as far
as possible from the hard-scrabble life his parents had experienced. "He
wanted not to be poor," recalled Charlie. "Self-sufficiency and hard work
would be his salvation. My grandparents thought Robinson Crusoe was a
great moral work. They forced their children to react it, and my grandmother read it to me. That generation admired the conquering of nature
through discipline."
Molly Munger, who takes a great interest in family lore, explained that
"Judge was anti-gambling, anti-saloon. Financially conservative. Underspending his income. Making money by lending money to the good German farmer, the good German butcher. As a judge he was a progressive. It
was a big deal to be a federal judge. There weren't many back then."
Indeed, in 1907 Judge Munger's name made a headline in the Lincoln
newspaper. "Bar president takes train to D.C. to visit President." In 1939,
the Omaha World Herald printed a feature article about judge Munger, who
was celebrating both the fifty-fourth anniversary of his admission to the
bar and the beginning of his thirty-third year as a United States District
judge. Judge Munger, who was 77 at the time the article was published,
was then the second-oldest
Clive Cussler, Paul Kemprecos