Jacob Schiff ignites the drive for a central bank.
The defeat of the Fowler Bill for a broader asset currency and branch banking in 1902, coupled with the failure of Treasury Secretary Shaw's attempts of 1903 to 1905 to use the Treasury as a central bank, led the big bankers and their economist allies to adopt a new solution, the frank imposition of a central bank in the United States.
The campaign for a central bank was kicked off by a fateful speech in January 1906 by the powerful Jacob H. Schiff, head of the Wall Street Investment Bank of Kuhn, Leb and Company, before the New York Chamber of Commerce.
Schiff complained that, in the autumn of 1905, when, quote, the country needed money, the Treasury, instead of working to expand the money supply, reduced government deposits in the national banks,
Thereby precipitating a financial crisis, a, quote, disgrace, in which the New York Clearinghouse Banks had been forced to contract their loans drastically, sending interest rates sky high.
A, quote, elastic currency for the nation was therefore imperative, and Schiff urged the New York Chamber's Committee on Finance to draw up a comprehensive plan for a modern banking system to provide for an elastic currency.
A colleague who had already been agitating for a central bank behind the scenes was Schiff's
partner, Paul Moritz Warburg, who had suggested the plan to Schiff as early as 1903.
Warburg had immigrated from the German investment firm of M.M.
Warburg & Company in 1897, and before long his major function at Kuhn-Lebb was to agitate
to bring the blessings of European central banking to the United States.
It took less than a month for the Finance Committee of the New York Chamber to issue
its report, but the bank reformers were furious, denouncing it as remarkably ignorant.
When Frank A. Vanderlip of Rockefeller's flagship bank, the National City Bank of New
York, reported on this development, his boss, James Stillman, suggested that a new five-man
special commission be set up by the New York Chamber to come back with a plan for currency
reform.
In response, Vanderlip proposed that the five-man commission consist of himself, Schiff, JPMorgan,
George Baker of the First National Bank of New York, Morgan's closest and longest associate,
and former Secretary of the Treasury Lyman Gage, now president of the Rockefeller-controlled
U.S. Trust Company.
Thus, the commission would consist of two Rockefeller men, Vanderlip and Gage, two
Two Morgan men, Morgan and Baker, and one representative from Kuhn-Leb.
Only Vanderlip was available to serve, however, so the commission had to be redrawn.
In addition to Vanderlip, beginning in March 1906, there sat, instead of Schiff, his close
friend Isidor Strauss, a director of R.H.
Macy & Company.
Instead of Morgan and Baker, there now served two Morgan men, Dumont Clark, president of
The Fifth Man was a veteran of the Indianapolis Monetary Convention, John Claflin of H.B.
Claflin & Company, a large integrated wholesaling concern.
Coming on board as Secretary of the New Currency Committee was Vanderlip's old friend Joseph
The Commission used the old Indianapolis questionnaire technique, acquiring legitimacy by sending
out a detailed questionnaire on currency to a number of financial leaders.
With Johnson in charge of mailing and co-elating the questionnaire replies, Conant spent his
time visiting and interviewing the heads of the central banks in Europe.
The special commission delivered its report to the New York Chamber of Commerce in October
1906.
To eliminate instability and the danger of an inelastic currency, the commission called
for the creation of a quote, central bank of issue under the control of the government,
end quote.
In keeping with other bank reformers, such as Professor Abram Piat Andrew of Harvard
University, Thomas Nixon Carver of Harvard, and Albert Strauss, partner of J.P. Morgan
and Company.
The Commission was scornful of Secretary Shaw's attempt to use the Treasury as central bank.
Shaw was particularly obnoxious because he was still insisting in his last annual report
of 1906 that the Treasury, under his aegis, had constituted a quote, great central bank.
The Commission, along with the other reformers, denounced the Treasury for over-inflating
by keeping interest rates excessively low.
A central bank, in contrast, would have much larger capital and undisputed control over
the money market, and thus would be able to manipulate the discount rate effectively to
keep the economy under proper control.
The important point, declared the committee, is that there be, quote, centralization of
financial responsibility, end quote.
In the meantime, short of establishing a central bank, the committee urged that, at the least,
The National Bank's powers to issue notes should be expanded to include being based on
general assets as well as government bonds.
After drafting and publishing this quote currency report, the reformers used the report as the
lever for expanding the agitation for a central bank and broader note issue powers to other
corporate and financial institutions.
The next step was the powerful American Bankers Association or ABA.
In 1905, the executive council of the ABA had appointed a currency committee which,
the following year, recommended an emergency assets currency that would be issued by a
federal commission, resembling an embryonic central bank.
In a tumultuous plenary session of the ABA convention in October 1906, the ABA rejected
this plan, but agreed to appoint a 15-man currency commission that was instructed to
Arthur Reynolds, president of the Des Moines National Bank, close to the Morgan-oriented Des Moines Regency, and brother of the prominent Chicago banker George M. Reynolds, formerly of Des Moines and then president of the Morgan-oriented Continental National Bank of Chicago, and the powerful chairman of the Executive Council of the ABA.
James B. Forgen, President of the Rockefeller-run First National Bank of Chicago and close friend
of Jacob Schiff of Kuhn-Leb, as well as of Vanderlip, Joseph T. Talbert, Vice President
of the Rockefeller-dominated Commercial National Bank of Chicago and soon to become Vice President
of Rockefeller's flagship bank, the National City Bank of New York, Myron T. Herrick, one
One of the most prominent Rockefeller politicians and businessmen in the country, Eric was the
head of the Cleveland Society of Savings and was part of the small team of close Rockefeller
business allies who, along with Mark Hanna, bailed out Governor William McKinley from bankruptcy
in 1893.
Eric was a previous president of the ABA and just finished a two-year stint as governor
of Ohio and was later to become ambassador to France under his old friend and political
Federal ally William Howard Taft, as well as later under President Warren G. Harding,
and a recipient of Herrick's political support and financial largesse, and chairman of the
ABA Commission, A. Barton Hepburn, president of one of the leading Morgan commercial banks,
the Chase National Bank of New York, and author of the well-regarded History of Coinage and
Currency in the United States.
After meeting with Vanderlip and Conant as the representatives of the New York Chamber
of Commerce Committee, the ABA Commission, along with Vanderlip and Conant, agreed on
at least the transition demands of the reformers.
The ABA Commission presented proposals to the public, the press, and the Congress in
December 1906 for a broader asset currency as well as provisions for emergency issue
of banknotes by national banks.
But just as sentiment for a broader asset currency became prominent, the bank reformers
The reformers began to worry about an uncontrolled adoption of such a currency, for that would
mean that national bank credit and notes would expand and that, in the existing system, small
state banks would be able to pyramid and inflate credit on top of the national credit using
the expanded national bank notes as their reserves.
The reformers wanted a credit inflation controlled by and confined to the large national banks.
They most emphatically did not want uncontrolled state bank inflation that would siphon resources
to small entrepreneurs and, quote, speculative marginal producers.
The problem was aggravated by the accelerated rate of increase in the number of small southern
and western state banks after 1900.
Another grave problem for the reformers was that commercial paper was a different system
from that of Europe.
In Europe, commercial paper and hence bank assets were two name notes endorsed by a small
group of wealthy acceptance banks.
In contrast to this acceptance paper system, commercial paper in the United States was
unendorsed single-name paper, with the bank taking a chance on the creditworthiness of
the business borrower.
Hence, a decentralized financial system in the United States was not subject to big banker
Control.
Worries about the existing system, and hence about uncontrolled asset currency, were voiced
by the top bank reformers.
Thus, Vanderlip expressed concern that, quote, there are so many state banks that might count
these national banknotes in their reserves, end quote.
Schiff warned that, quote, it would prove unwise, if not dangerous, to clothe six thousand
and banks or more, with the privilege to issue independently a pure credit currency."
And from the Morgan side, a similar concern was voiced by Victor Morowitz, the powerful
chairman of the board of the Acheson, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad.
Taking the lead in approaching this problem of small banks and decentralization was Paul
Moritz Warburg of Kuhn-Leb, fresh from his banking experience in Europe.
In January 1907, Warburg began what would become years of tireless agitation for central
banking with two articles, defects and needs of our banking system, and a plan for a modified
central bank. Calling openly for a central bank, Warburg pointed out that one of the
important functions of such a bank would be to restrict the eligibility of bank assets
to be used for expansion of bank deposits. Presumably, too, the central bank could move
Bankers magazine noted as a crucial reason the fact that asset currency would be expanding
Bank Services to quote small producers and dealers.