The Secret Meeting at Jekyll Island and the Aldrich Plan (HOM 30-B)

History of Money, Lecture 30, Pt. B: the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 actually got its start three years earlier, at a clubhouse at Jekyll Island, Georgia, in November 1910. The Jekyll Island Club was the site of a secret meeting of the nation's top bankers and financiers to hammer the details of a central bank for the United States. Shortly after the meeting, Senator Nelson Aldrich introduced his plan for a "National Reserve Association." The plan was initially shot down by the Democrats, who were currently investigating the Money Trust in the Pujo Committee (spawned by a resolution from Charles A. Lindbergh, a vocal critic of the Aldrich bill). However, after the election of Woodrow Wilson in 1912, the plan, after undergoing some revision, passed Congress and received the President's signature on December 23, 1913: the birthdate of the Federal Reserve System. Attendees at the storied Jekyll Island meeting included: Henry P. Davison (senior partner at J. P. Morgan & Co.); Charles D. Norton (president of First National Bank of New York); Benjamin Strong, Jr. (vice president of Bankers Trust of New York); Paul Warburg (representative of Kuhn, Loeb & Co. and director at Wells Fargo); Frank A. Vanderlip (president of National City Bank of New York [citibank]); Senator Nelson Aldrich; and A. Piatt Andrew, university economist.
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Dr. Jonathan Barth received his PhD in history from George Mason University in 2014. He specializes in the history of money and banking in the early modern period, with corollary interests in early modern politics, empire, culture, and ideas. Barth is Associate Professor of History at Arizona State University and Associate Director of the Center for American Institutions at Arizona State University.
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