America's Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve by Roger Lowenstein Read Free Book Online

Papers, Box 20.
    as an “administration bill”: Willis to Carter Glass, May 27, 1913, Willis Papers, Box 1; see also Willis,
The Federal Reserve System,
241.
    McAdoo met with Owen and Glass: Vanderlip to James Stillman, May 24, 1913, Vanderlip Papers, Box 1-5.
    “I am all in the air”: Carter Glass to Willis, June 6, 1913, Willis Papers, Box 1.
    Glass got an audience: Glass to Woodrow Wilson, June 7, 1913, Glass Collection, Box 64; Glass to A. Barton Hepburn, June 7, 1913, ibid.; and Glass to Willis, June 6, 1913. Among those who provided letters were Hepburn, Reynolds, and the Chicago banker E. D. Hulbert. Some letters were delivered to Wilson the following day. The Wilsonquote (“I feel Mac is deceived”) is recounted by Glass in
An Adventure in Constructive Finance,
107–9. See also Rixey Smith and Norman Beasley,
Carter Glass
(New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1939), 106, citing a “flood” of protests from bankers and economists.
    “The chief point of danger”: Glass to Hepburn, June 7, 1913.
    He found the senator: Glass to H. Parker Willis, June 9, 1913, Glass Collection, Box 47. Glass’s letter said Owen was in agreement on the “essential principles,” but since they continued to differ on the issue of government vs. banker control, this was incorrect. For specifics on their negotiations, see Owen,
The Federal Reserve Act,
74–75.
    Wall Street laid an egg: The Dow Jones Industrials traded as low as 57 in late 1907. By May 1909 they were back in the low 90s, approximately their level before the Panic. For the next few years they traded mostly in the 80s and 90s. On March 4, Wilson’s inauguration, the average closed at 80. After the May–June swoon, it stood (on June 10) at 72.
    “We will need the gold badly”: Vanderlip to Stillman, May 24, 1913, Vanderlip Papers, Box 1-5; his follow-up letter is dated June 6, 1913, ibid., and see also a further letter to Stillman of June 13, also in ibid. See also various market reports in the first week of June, such as “Stocks Lowest in Five Years,”
The New York Times,
June 5, 1913, and “Review and Outlook,”
The Wall Street Journal,
June 9, 1913.
    McAdoo suspected that Wall Street: William McAdoo to House, June 18, 1913, House Papers, Box 73; and “Financial Markets,”
The New York Times,
June 13, 1913.
    “should be pushed rapidly”: “Review and Outlook.”
    he had no choice but to oppose: Paolo E. Coletta,
William Jennings Bryan
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1969), 2:130–31; Joseph P. Tumulty,
Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page, 1921), 178; and William Jennings Bryan and Mary Baird Bryan,
The Memoirs of William Jennings Bryan
(New York: Haskell House, 1971), 369–70. These three books give consistent accounts of the Wilson-Bryan meeting, though none supply a date. “Deep regret” is from Bryan and Bryan. As evidence of Bryan’s desire to be supportive, he had told his brother to hold back articles on banking reform in
The Commoner,
the family periodical, until Wilson’s position became known.
    “It begins to look as if”: Tumulty,
Woodrow
Wilson as I Know Him,
178.
    “a brick couldn’t be thrown”: “Wilson Denounces Tariff Lobbyists,”
The New York Times,
May 27, 1913.
    the public was treated to a spectacle: For a general account of the tariff debate, see Cooper,
Woodrow Wilson,
216–18; Link,
Wilson and the Progressive Era
,
36–42; and Link,
Wilson,
vol 2,
The New Freedom
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1956), 177–94 (La Follette quote on p. 190).
    “It is extremely dangerous”: Louis Brandeis to Wilson, June 14, 1913, in
The Papers of Woodrow Wilson,
27:520; see also Alpheus Thomas Mason,
Brandeis: A Free Man’s Life
(New York: Viking, 1956), 397–99.
    “to eliminate all banking representation”: Glass’s account of this meeting is from Carter Glass to Willis, June 17, 1913, Willis Papers, Box 1, and from Glass,
An Adventure in Constructive Finance,
112–14.
    “in