Robert Lincoln O'Brien 1891

Mode of exit: Transferred to Harvard

Career: Journalist, public figure

Notable achievement: Chairman of U.S. Tariff Commission

Quote: "There is always room in this organization for a man who knows enough to wear suspenders.

Leaving for that other Ivy school after just a year in Hanover, O'Brien went on to become a secretary to (inner Cleveland, resigning in 1895 to become the Washington correspondent for the Boston Transcript. Fifteen years later he assumed the editorship of the Boston Herald, where he expressed his strong Republican bent. Dartmouth gave him an honorary degree in 1922.

Herbert Hoover named him chairman of the U.S. Tariff Commission in 1931, over violent Democratic protest. Blunt and outspoken, he became a key figure in the controversy over American tariff policy anil a leading endorser of reciprocal trade agreements. In 1931, Franklin Roosevelt reappointed O'Brien over violent Republican protest.

O'Brien made both parties mad.