1700’s
Elihu Yale was born near Boston, educated in London, and served with
the British East India Company, eventually becoming governor of Fort
Saint George, Madras, in 1687. He amassed a great fortune from trade
and returned to England in 1699. Yale became known as a
philanthropist; upon receiving a request from the Collegiate School
in Connecticut, he sent a donation and a gift of books. After
subsequent bequests, Cotton Mather suggested the school be named
Yale College, in 1718.
A statue of Nathan Hale stands on
Old Campus at Yale University.
There is a copy of that statue in front of the CIA’s headquarters in
Langley, Virginia. Yet another stands in front of Phillips Academy
in Andover, Massachusetts (where George H.W. Bush (’48) went to prep
school and joined a secret society at age twelve). Nathan Hale,
along with three other Yale graduates, was a member of the "Culper
Ring," one of America’s first intelligence operations. Established
by George Washington, it was successful throughout the Revolutionary
War. Nathan was the only operative to be ferreted out by the
British, and after speaking his famous regrets, he was hanged in
1776. Ever since the founding of the Republic, the relationship
between Yale and the "Intelligence Community" has been unique.
Go Back
1806
In Germany, the "scientific method" was being applied to all forms
of human endeavor. Prussia, which blamed the defeat of its forces by
Napoleon in 1806 on soldiers only thinking about themselves in the
stress of battle, took the principles set forth by John Locke and
Jean Rosseau and created a new educational system. Johan Fitche, in
his "Address to the German People," declared that the children would
be taken over by the State and told what to think and how to think
it. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel took over Fitche’s chair at the
University Of Berlin in 1817, and was a professor there until his
death in 1831. Hegel was the culmination of the German idealistic
philosophy school of Immanuel Kant. To Hegel, our world is a world
of reason. The state is Absolute Reason and the citizen can only
become free by worship and obedience to the state. Hegel called the
state the "march of God in the world" and the "final end". This
final end, Hegel said, "has supreme right against the individual,
whose supreme duty is to be a member of the state." Both fascism and
communism have their philosophical roots in Hegellianism.
It may be observed that both the extreme right and the extreme left
of the conventional political spectrum are absolutely collectivist.
The national socialist (for example, the fascist) and the
international socialist (for example, the Communist) both recommend
totalitarian politico-economic systems based on naked, unfettered
political power and individual coercion. Both systems require
monopoly control of society. An alternative concept of political
ideas and politico-economic systems would be that of ranking the
degree of individual freedom versus the degree of centralized
political control. Under such an ordering the corporate welfare
state and socialism are at the same end of the spectrum. Hence we
see that attempts at monopoly control of society can have different
labels while owning common features. [Sutton, Wall Street and the
Bolshevik Revolution]
The major barrier to understanding the events of the past two
hundred years is the COINTELPRO debunking labels of "right vs.
left," or red vs. black, communist vs. fascist, and so on. The
erroneous idea that all capitalists are the bitter enemies of all
Marxists and socialists originated with Karl Marx and was
undoubtedly useful to his purposes. It is, in fact, nonsense.
There has been a continuing, albeit concealed, alliance between
international political capitalists and international revolutionary
socialists - to their mutual benefit. This alliance has gone
unobserved largely because academic historians have an unconscious
Marxian bias and are thus locked into the impossibility of any such
alliance existing. There are two clues: monopoly capitalists are the
bitter enemies of laissez-faire entrepreneurs; and, given the
weaknesses of socialist central planning, the totalitarian socialist
state is a perfect captive market for monopoly capitalists, if an
alliance can be made with the socialist powerbrokers. Suppose - and
it is only hypothesis at this point - that American monopoly
capitalists were able to reduce a planned socialist Russia to the
status of a captive technical colony? Would not this be the logical
twentieth-century internationalist extension of the Morgan railroad
monopolies and
the Rockefeller petroleum trust of the late
nineteenth century? [Sutton]
Go Back
1823
Samuel Russell established Russell and Company for the purpose of
acquiring opium in Turkey and smuggling it to China.
Russell and
Company merged with the Perkins (Boston) syndicate in 1830 and
became the primary American opium smuggler. Many of the great
American and European fortunes were built on the "China" (opium)
trade. One of Russell and Company’s Chief of Operations in Canton
was Warren Delano, Jr., grandfather of Franklin Roosevelt. Other
Russell partners included John Cleve Green (who financed
Princeton), Abiel Low (who financed construction of
Columbia), Joseph Coolidge
and the Perkins, Sturgis and Forbes families. (Coolidge’s son
organized the United Fruit company, and his grandson, Archibald C.
Coolidge, was a co-founder of the
Council on Foreign Relations both
of which will be itemized further on.)
Go Back
1832
William Huntington Russell, Samuel’s cousin, studied in Germany from
1831-32. Hegellian philosophy was very much in vogue during William
Russell’s time in Germany. When Russell returned to
Yale in 1832, he
formed a senior society with Alphonso Taft. According to information
acquired from a break-in to the "tomb" (the Skull and Bones meeting
hall) in 1876, "Bones is a chapter of a corps in a German
University.... General Russell, its founder, was in Germany before
his Senior Year and formed a warm friendship with a leading member
of a German society. He brought back with him to college, authority
to found a chapter here." So class valedictorian William H. Russell,
along with fourteen others, became the founding members of "The
Order of Scull and Bones," later changed to "The Order of Skull and
Bones".
Go Back
1860’s and 70’s
Abraham and Sarah Warburg had three children:
Moritz, Siegmund and a
daughter (unnamed in ref) who married Paul Schiff. Schiff was a
director of Vienna’s Creditanstalt Bank, which was controlled by
Baron Albert Rothschild. The Schiff’s and Rothschild families used
to share the same house in Frankfurt. Siegmund developed close ties
to Baron Lionell von Rothschild of the London family. While
Moritz
worked with Baron Alphonse Rothschild of Paris, Baron Leopold of
London and Baron Albert of Vienna. Moritz had five sons that were
later dubbed the Hamburger 5. Two of them, Felix and
Paul moved to
the U.S. Paul married the daughter of Mr. Soloman Loeb and
Felix
married the daughter of Jacob Schiff. Felix’s daughter Carola
married Walter N. Rothschild of Brooklyn.
Jacob Schiff was born on January 10, 1847, in Frankfurt- am-Main,
Germany. The son of Moses and Clara (Niederhofheim) Schiff, he was a
descendant of a distinguished rabbinical family that could trace its
lineage back to 1370. He received a secular and religious education
at the Israelitische Religionsgesellschaft. He came to America and
went to work in a brokerage firm in New York and he later became a
partner in Budae, Schiff and Company. He met and fell in love with
Theresa Loeb, the daughter of Solomon Loeb, head of the banking
firm, Kuhn, Loeb and Company. They were married on May 6, 1875, and
he entered her father’s firm. had come to the U.S. in the 1870’s and
with his connections to the
Rothschilds of Vienna gave the financial
connections necessary to make Kuhn and Loeb the 2nd largest
investment bank in the U.S., just behind J.P. Morgan.
Go Back
1889
Robert Sterling Clark, heir to the Singer Fortune, graduated from
Yale University’s Sheffield Scientific School with a degree in
engineering. He then entered the United States Army, which sent him
to Manila and also to China.
Go Back
1893
Cleveland takes office and 2 months later the Panic of 1893 sweeps
the country. He calls a special session of Congress to deal with the
currency situation.
McKinley, aiming at the Republican nomination for the presidency,
makes hundreds of speeches throughout the country in the
congressional campaign. He comes to be known as "the advance agent
of prosperity."
Go Back
1897
William McKinley, after waging a "front porch" campaign, is the 25th
president. The Republicans also win control of both houses of
Congress. There will be unbroken Republican control of the
presidency and both houses for 14 years. John Hay, one of the
country’s greatest diplomats, who had been private secretary to
Lincoln, secretary of the legations at Paris, Vienna, and Madrid,
and Hayes’ assistant secretary of state, is McKinley’s secretary of
state.
Jacob Schiff attained considerable prestige in banking circles when
he provided the financial backing that enabled railroad magnate
Edward H. Harriman to purchase control of the bankrupt Union Pacific
Railroad.
Go Back
1898
After an explosion on the night of February 15th rips through the
U.S. ship Maine, anchored in Havana Harbor, killing 267 officers and
men, the newspapers of Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst
stir up anger in the U.S. and help to push it toward war with Spain.
McKinley makes every effort to avoid war, but even his own assistant
secretary of the navy, Theodore Roosevelt, wants war. He is forced
to recommend it to Congress. On April 25th Congress declares war on
Spain to the shouts of "Remember the Maine and Hell with Spain!" But
the true cause of the explosion will remain a mystery.
Warren Harding is elected to the Ohio State Senate. His party
loyalty and ability to get party agreement on programs will gain him
popularity.
The Paris Peace Treaty of December 10th gives
Puerto Rico, Guam, and
the Philippines to the U.S. and liberates Cuba. The new
responsibilities will bring the U.S. into closer contact with the
great powers of Europe and Asia.
Go Back
1900
McKinley, the most popular chief executive since Abraham Lincoln, is
re-nominated with Theodore Roosevelt as vice president. The
prosperity of the nation continues. One of the best Republican
slogans is "four years more of the full dinner-pail."
J. Henry Schroder Banking Company is listed as Number 2 in
capitalization on the list of the seventeen merchant bankers who
make up the exclusive Accepting Houses Committee in London. Although
it is almost unknown in the United States, it has played a large
part in our history. Like the others on this list, it had first to
be approved by the Bank of England. The von Schroders began their
banking operations in Hamburg, Germany. In 1900, Baron Bruno von Schroder established the London branch of the firm. He was soon
joined by Frank Cyril Tiarks, in 1902. Tiarks married
Emma Franziska
of Hamburg, and was a director of the Bank of England from 1912 to
1945.
Robert Sterling Clark - helped to suppress the
Boxer Rebellion. In
July 1900 his courageous and distinguished participation in the
capture of Tientsin earned him the commission of first lieutenant,
and Clark subsequently took part in the siege and capture of
Peking
(Beijing).
Emile Francqui, director of a large Belgian bank,
Societe Generale,
and a London mining promoter, an American named Herbert Hoover, who
had been associated with Francqui in a number of scandals which had
become celebrated court cases, notably the Kaiping Coal Company
scandal in China, said to have set off the Boxer Rebellion, which
had as its goal the expulsion of all foreign businessmen from China.
Go Back
1901
William Taft is appointed civil governor of the Philippines, with
full responsibility for reorganizing the national and municipal
government, the judiciary and police, and the taxation system.
Princeton University trustees unanimously elect
Woodrow Wilson
president of the university on June 9th. He is determined to build
the university into an institution that will produce leaders and
statesmen.
Robert Sterling Clark - still in the Army - returns to Washington.
On September 6th, President McKinley makes a final public appearance
in the Temple of Music of the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo,
New York. He is notorious for discounting his own personal safety at
public appearances and has repeatedly resisted attempts by his
personal secretary, George Cortelyou, to cancel the event. Cortelyou
tightens security as best he can. But anarchist Leon Czolgosz (after
hearing notorious anarchist leader Emma Goldman speak about action
against the government 2 weeks before) shoots McKinley. Roosevelt
hastens to Buffalo. Assured that the president is recovering and out
of danger, he joins his family at a camp in the Adirondack
Mountains.
Secretary of State John Hay has already experienced the
assassinations of 2 presidents, Abraham Lincoln (he was his personal
secretary) and James Garfield (a close friend and confidant). He is
afraid the president will die, although everyone else is optimistic.
McKinley dies 8 days later on September 14th.
Theodore Roosevelt (R) becomes the American President.
With a few companions, Roosevelt climbs up Mount Tahawus. A guide
overtakes him with the news that the president is dying. Roosevelt’s
company undertakes a 10-mile hike to the nearest road, then a wild
night ride by horse and buggy over 40 miles of roads dangerously
washed by heavy rains a few days earlier. They reach the railroad
station at 5:30 a.m., where a special train is waiting to rush
Roosevelt to Buffalo. He takes the oath of office after McKinley’s
death in the home of a friend on the afternoon of September 14th.
At the end of the year, President Roosevelt requests that
Taft
replace Elihu Root as secretary of war. Later during an illness of
John Hay, Taft is acting secretary of state. After Hay’s death,
Root
will return to the Cabinet as secretary of state. Roosevelt,
Taft,
and Root work so well together that they will come to be known as
the Three Musketeers.
Jacob Schiff was a major figure in the protracted but ultimately
inconclusive struggle for control of the Northern Pacific Railroad,
backing Harriman against James J. Hill and his banker,
J.P. Morgan.
The struggle brought about the stock market panic of 1901, and the
warring factions agreed to a compromise, banding together to form
the Northern Securities Company.
Go Back
1903
The US Dept of Commerce and Labor is established.
Thomas Edison produces the first ’western’ The
Great Train Robbery.’
Henry Ford founds Ford Motors.
Robert Sterling Clark - still in the Army - returns to Peking China.
Yale Divinity School set up a program of schools and hospitals in
China. Mao Zedong was among the staff. During the intrigues of
China
in the 1930s and ’40s, American intelligence called upon the
resources of "Yale in China", and George Bush’s cousin and fellow "Bonesman"
Reuben Holden.
Go
Back
1904
The
foundations of eugenics were laid down in the 19th century by
Francis Galton. A cousin of Charles Darwin and a man of wayward
brilliance, Galton was convinced of the need to improve human stock
by selective breeding.
At the start of the 20th century, industrialists like
Andrew
Carnegie and John D Rockefeller saw a justification for competitive
capitalism in Darwin’s ’survival of the fittest’. Eugenics would
surely be the logical step forward, enabling man to command his own
evolution in a way that was efficient and progressive. In 1904, the
Carnegie Institution founded a centre for genetic research at
Cold
Spring Harbour, with Charles Davenport as director. Davenport soon
turned his attention to human inheritance. Along with such purely
genetic traits as albinism and Huntington’s disease, he also traced
conditions like alcoholism and ’feeble-mindedness’ through family
lineages. He pronounced these to be Mendelian in nature.
The
American eugenic movement involved itself with legislation to
restrict immigration for those not of Anglo-Saxon or Nordic
heritage.
Lt. Frank H. Schofield,
"Three objects appeared beneath the clouds,
their color a rather bright red. As they approached the ship they
appeared to soar, passing above the broken clouds. After rising
above the clouds they appeared to be moving directly away from the
earth. The largest had an apparent area of about six suns. It was
egg-shaped, the larger end forward. The second was about twice the
size of the sun, and the third, about the size of the sun. Their
near approach to the surface appeared to be most remarkable. That
they did come below the clouds and soar instead of continuing their
southeasterly course is also curious. The lights were in sight for
over two minutes and were carefully observed by three people whose
accounts agree as to the details."
Lt. Frank H. Schofield, later to
become Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Fleet, aboard the U.S.S.
Supply off of the eastern coast of Korea, February 28, 1904
Schiff, Harriman, Hill and Morgan - The legality of the
Northern
Securities Company was challenged by President Theodore Roosevelt
under the anti-trust laws, and the Supreme Court ordered the company
dissolved in 1904. Schiff’s banking firm also arranged numerous
other transactions involving major railroads throughout the country,
most notably the Pennsylvania Railroad. Through Kuhn, Loeb, and
Company he played a central role in securing $200,000,000 in loans
for Japan in the United States in 1904 during the Russo-Japanese
War, for which he was subsequently decorated by the emperor of
Japan. Schiff was angry over the anti-Semitic pogroms and policies
of the czar. Helping Japan fight Russia was one of his methods of
striking back at anti-Semitism.
[Al Gore’s daughter Karenna Gore married
Andrew Schiff, a descendant
of Jacob Schiff.]
Go Back
1905
Albert Einstein’s "Theory of Special Relativity." See, "Elektrodynamik
Bewegter Kärper," 17 Annalen der Physik, pp. 891-921. (1905).
Robert Sterling Clark - still in the Army - travels to the West
Indies to begin preparations for an ambitious undertaking: an
expedition to a remote area of northern China.
The beginning of the 20th century saw
eugenicists questioning the
health of the German race. The ’poorer’ specimens of the race - the
’ill-educated, disease-ridden lower classes’ in particular - were
tending to breed more than the ’better’ specimens. Social reforms
and improved medical care only exacerbated the problem by helping
the less fit survive and therefore stopping what
Charles Darwin had
termed ’natural selection’. With such fears in mind, the Society for
Racial Hygiene was founded by Alfred Ploetz in 1905. It would be
fair to say that initially the Society was not overtly racist.
Indeed, Ploetz himself applauded the Jewish race as being equal in
merit to the Nordic. Although never large in numbers, the Society
grew in influence, particularly in the years following World War I.
Franklin Roosevelt marries Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, his 6th cousin,
on March 17th. President Theodore Roosevelt comes to New York City
to give the bride away. His liberal ideas and strong leadership will
help Franklin decide on a career in public service.
Rumania, Bucovina . During the evening a retired doctor saw a
brightly glowing elongated, saucer-shaped object bigger than the
moon traveling steadily westwards.
Go Back
1906
The
Race Betterment Foundation was set up in Michigan, U.S.A., by
J.H. Kellogg of cornflakes fame.
Canada, in the North Atlantic, NE of Newfoundland, deck of the ship
St Andrew.
"I saw three meteors fall into the water dead ahead of
the ship one after another at a distance of about five miles.
Although it was daylight, they left a red streak in the air from
zenith to the horizon. Simultaneously the third engineer shouted to
me. I then saw a huge meteor on the port beam falling in a zigzag
manner less than a mile away to the southward. We could distinctly
hear the hissing of water as it touched. It fell with a rocking
motion leaving a broad red streak in its wake. The meteor must have
weighed several tons, and appeared to be 10 to 15 feet in diameter.
It was saucer shaped which probably accounted for the peculiar
rocking motion. When the mass of metal struck the water the spray
and steam rose to a height of at least 40 feet, and for a few
moments looked like the mouth of a crater. If it had been night, the
meteor would have illuminated the sea for 50 or 60 miles."
China Sea. Giant luminous wheels were seen by a British steamer.
Go Back
1907
Inspired by
Galton’s ideas, the Eugenics Education Society of UK was
founded with the explicit aim of spreading the doctrine of genetic
improvement throughout the land. Galton became its honorary
president in 1908. Galton’s protëgë, Karl Pearson, a statistician of
real originality, developed the founder’s ideas of human measurement
and formed the Biometric Laboratory at University College, London in
the 1890s. If Galton was an enthusiast, Pearson was a fanatic - a
cold, calculating measurer of man who claimed to be a socialist, but
loathed the working class. His journal Biometrika became
influential, particularly in the United States. In 1911 he became
the first Galton Professor of Eugenics at London University, a post
created in accordance with Galton’s will. Galton’s movement never
achieved legislative power in Britain. The story was different in
the US.
Panic of 1907 results in a public outcry that the nation’s monetary
system be stabilized.
Go Back
1908
The
Tunguska meteorite. A mysterious fireball exploded over
Tunguska
in Siberia, creating shock waves felt miles away and setting 1,200
acres on fire. In 1927, Russian scientists first visit the sight of
the blast. They find no meteorite fragments.
Robert Sterling Clark - still in the Army - undertakes an ambitious
expedition to a remote area of northern China. Under
Clark’s
leadership an expedition of thirty-six men carried out zoological
and ethnological research and made the first map of a little-known
area of China between 1908 and 1909. This expedition came to an
abrupt end, however, when the party’s Indian surveyor and
interpreter, Hazrat Ali, was killed by the Chinese. Clark returned
to the United States and published a vivid account of the day-to-day
experiences of the expedition together with its scientific results:
Through Shên-kan: The Account of the Clark Expedition in North
China, 1908-1909, by Robert Sterling Clark and Arthur de C. Sowerby,
ed. by Major C. H. Chepmell (London and Leipzig: T. Fisher Unwin,
1912). Clark describes:
The visitor to Hsi-an, as he travels over the rolling plain from no
matter what direction, cannot fail to notice numerous mound of
unusual shape dotted about everywhere like immense molehills, often
attaining a height of at least 100 feet, and standing on bases of
very considerable area. [...] they are the tombs of kings and
emperors, and their wives, and of scholars and sages notable in
their day. [...] Concerning some, fantastic legends still linger in
the minds of the people. [p.45]
Sowerby and Clark nowhere refer to the mounds as "pyramids."
Bulgaria, Sofia. A very bright spherical object flew slowly above a
square one afternoon.
President Theodore Roosevelt signed into law the bill creating the
National Monetary Commission.
Go Back
1909
England. Mystery airships seen almost exclusively at night, once
again visited many parts of Britain. Mostly described as oblong in
shape and equipped with a large searchlight, the craft was capable
of propelling itself through the air at great speed.
Persian Gulf. Objects described as rotating wheels, which could go
under water were sighted and a Danish captain.
Vietnam. Fishermen located at the port city of Dong Hui; saw an
elongated brightly lit object flying over the community for nearly
ten minutes. It then disappeared after plunging into the sea of the
cost.
Creation of British MI5 and
MI6 - the world’s oldest secret
intelligence agencies. A military section (MOT, became MI5) and a
naval section (M1-1C, later MI6).
November 22, a delegation of the nation’s leading financiers led by
Senator Nelson Aldrich, head of the National Monetary Commission,
attend a meeting at Jekyll Island, Georgia. Accompanying Senator
Aldrich were his private secretary, Shelton; A. Piatt Andrew,
Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, and Special Assistant of the
National Monetary Commission; Frank Vanderlip, president of the
National City Bank of New York, Henry P. Davison, senior partner of
J.P. Morgan Company, and generally regarded as Morgan’s personal
emissary; and Charles D. Norton, president of the Morgan-dominated
First National Bank of New York. Joining the group just before the
train left the station were Benjamin Strong, also known as a
lieutenant of J.P. Morgan; and Paul Warburg, (see above) from
Germany (who had married the daughter of Solomon Loeb, and whose
father was closely associated with the
Rothchilds) joined the
banking house of Kuhn, Loeb. (Prof. Nathaniel Wright Stephenson,
Paul Warburg’s Memorandum, Nelson Aldrich A Leader in American
Politics, Scribners, N.Y. 1930)
[...] Nelson (Aldrich) had confided to
Henry, Frank, Paul and Piatt
that he was to keep them locked up at Jekyll Island, out of the rest
of the world, until they had evolved and compiled a scientific
currency system for the United States, the real birth of the present
Federal Reserve System, the plan done on
Jekyll Island in the
conference with Paul, Frank and Henry . . . .
Warburg is the link
that binds the Aldrich system and the present system together. He
more than any one man has made the system possible as a working
reality. The full complement of "guests" may never be known, but the
New York Times later noted, on May 3, 1931, in commenting on the
death of George F. Baker, one of J.P. Morgan’s closest associates,
that "Jekyll Island Club has lost one of its most distinguished
members. One-sixth of the total wealth of the world was represented
by the members of the Jekyll Island Club." Membership was by
inheritance only.
Why all this secrecy? Why this thousand mile trip in a closed
railway car to a remote hunting club? Ostensibly, it was to carry
out a program of public service, to prepare banking reform which
would be a boon to the people of the United States, which had been
ordered by the National Monetary Commission.
The participants were no strangers to public benefactions. Usually,
their names were inscribed on brass plaques, or on the exteriors of
buildings which they had donated. This was not the procedure which
they followed at Jekyll Island. No brass plaque was ever erected to
mark the selfless actions of those who met at their private hunt
club in 1910 to improve the lot of every citizen of the United
States. In fact, no benefaction took place at Jekyll Island. The
Aldrich group journeyed there in private to write the banking and
currency legislation which the National Monetary Commission had been
ordered to prepare in public. At stake was the future control of the
money and credit of the United States. If any genuine monetary
reform had been prepared and presented to Congress, it would have
ended the power of the elitist one world money creators. Jekyll
Island ensured that a central bank would be established in the
United States which would give these bankers everything they had
always wanted. [...]
The "monetary reform" plan prepared at
Jekyll Island was to be
presented to Congress as the completed work of the National Monetary
Commission. It was imperative that the real authors of the bill
remain hidden. So great was popular resentment against bankers since
the Panic of 1907 that no Congressman would dare to vote for a bill
bearing the Wall Street taint, no matter who had contributed to his
campaign expenses. The Jekyll Island plan was a central bank plan,
and in this country there was a long tradition of struggle against
inflicting a central bank on the American people. It had begun with
Thomas Jefferson’s fight against Alexander Hamilton’s scheme for the
First Bank of the United States, backed by James Rothschild. It had
continued with President Andrew Jackson’s successful war against
Alexander Hamilton’s scheme for the Second Bank of the United
States, in which Nicholas Biddle was acting as the agent for
James
Rothschild of Paris. The result of that struggle was the creation of
the Independent Sub-Treasury System, which supposedly had served to
keep the funds of the United States out of the hands of the
financiers. A study of the panics of 1873, 1893, and 1907 indicates
that these panics were the result of the international bankers’
operations in London. The public was demanding in 1908 that Congress
enact legislation to prevent the recurrence of artificially induced
money panics. Such monetary reform now seemed inevitable. It was to
head off and control such reform that the National Monetary
Commission had been set up with Nelson Aldrich at its head, since he
was majority leader of the Senate. [...]
In the chapter on Jekyll Island in his biography of
Aldrich,
Stephenson writes of the conference:
"How was the Reserve Bank to be
controlled? It must be controlled by Congress. The government was to
be represented in the board of directors, it was to have full
knowledge of all the Bank’s, affairs, but a majority of the
directors were to be chosen, directly or indirectly, by the banks of
the association." [...]
In the final refinement of Warburg’s plan, the
Federal Reserve Board
of Governors would be appointed by the President of the United
States, but the real work of the Board would be controlled by a
Federal Advisory Council, meeting with the Governors. The Council
would be chosen by the directors of the twelve Federal Reserve
Banks, and would remain unknown to the public. [...]
This patent removal of the system from Congressional control meant
that the Federal Reserve proposal was unconstitutional from its
inception, because the Federal Reserve System was to be a bank of
issue. Article 1, Sec. 8, Par. 5 of the Constitution expressly
charges Congress with "the power to coin money and regulate the
value thereof.". Warburg’s plan would deprive Congress of its
sovereignty, and the systems of checks and balances of power set up
by Thomas Jefferson in the Constitution would now be destroyed.
[...]
The participants in the Jekyll Island conference returned to New
York to direct a nationwide propaganda campaign in favor of the
"Aldrich Plan". Three of the leading universities,
Princeton,
Harvard, and the University of Chicago, were used as the rallying
points for this propaganda, and national banks had to contribute to
a fund of five million dollars to persuade the American public that
this central bank plan should be enacted into law by Congress. [...]
Woodrow Wilson, governor of New Jersey and former president of
Princeton University, was enlisted as a spokesman for the Aldrich
Plan. During the Panic of 1907, Wilson had declared,
"All this
trouble could be averted if we appointed a committee of six or seven
public-spirited men like J.P. Morgan to handle the affairs of our
country."
(Secrets of the Federal Reserve,
Griffin, 1952)
Go Back
1910
With the financial support of the
Harriman and Rockefeller families,
Charles Davenport established the Eugenics Record Office at
Cold
Spring Harbour and appointed Harry Laughlin as its superintendent.
Normandy. The crew of a French fishing boat operating off the coast
saw ’a large, black, bird-like object’ fall from the sky into the
sea, then bounded back before it fell once more and disappeared
under the waves.
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1911
A political cartoon drawn by cartoonist
Robert Minor for the St.
Louis Post-Dispatch in 1911 made an unusual statement. Minor’s
cartoon portrays a bearded, beaming Karl Marx standing in Wall
Street with Socialism tucked under his arm and accepting the
congratulations of financial luminaries J.P. Morgan, Morgan partner
George W. Perkins, a smug John D. Rockefeller, John D. Ryan of
National City Bank, and Teddy Roosevelt - prominently identified by
his famous teeth - in the background. Wall Street is
decorated by
Red flags. The cheering crowd and the airborne hats suggest that
Karl Marx must have been a fairly popular sort of fellow in the New
York financial district.
"A pamphlet was issued January 16, 1911,
'Suggested Plan for
Monetary Legislation’, by Hon. Nelson Aldrich, based on Jekyll
Island conclusions. An organization for financial progress has been
formed. Mr. Warburg introduced a resolution authorizing the
establishment of the Citizens’ League, later the National Citizens
League . . . Professor Laughlin of the University of Chicago was
given charge of the League’s propaganda." (biography of Nelson
Aldrich by Stephenson, 1930)
The two most tireless propagandists for the
Aldrich Plan were
Professor O.M. Sprague of Harvard, and J. Laurence Laughlin of the
University of Chicago. Congressman Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr., notes:
"J. Laurence Laughlin, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the
National Citizens’ League since its organization, has returned to
his position as professor of political economics in the University
of Chicago. In June, 1911, Professor Laughlin was given a year’s
leave from the university, that he might give all of his time to the
campaign of education undertaken by the League . . . He has worked
indefatigably, and it is largely due to his efforts and his
persistence that the campaign enters the final stage with flattering
prospects of a successful outcome . . . The reader knows that the
University of Chicago is an institution endowed by John D.
Rockefeller, with nearly fifty million dollars."
(Secrets of the
Federal Reserve, Griffin, 1952)
Testifying before the Committee on Rules, December 15, 1911, after
the Aldrich plan had been introduced in Congress, Congressman
Lindbergh stated,
"Our financial system is a false one and a huge burden on the people
. . . I have alleged that there is a Money Trust. The Aldrich plan
is a scheme plainly in the interest of the Trust . . . Why does the
Money Trust press so hard for the Aldrich Plan now, before the
people know what the money trust has been doing? [...]
The Aldrich Plan is the
Wall Street Plan. It is a broad challenge to
the Government by the champion of the Money Trust. It means another
panic, if necessary, to intimidate the people. Aldrich, paid by the
Government to represent the people, proposes a plan for the trusts
instead. It was by a very clever move that the National Monetary
Commission was created. In 1907 nature responded most beautifully
and gave this country the most bountiful crop it had ever had. Other
industries were busy too, and from a natural standpoint all the
conditions were right for a most prosperous year. Instead, a panic
entailed enormous losses upon us.
Wall Street knew the American
people were demanding a remedy against the recurrence of such a
ridiculously unnatural condition. Most Senators and Representatives
fell into the Wall Street trap and passed the Aldrich Vreeland
Emergency Currency Bill. But the real purpose was to get a monetary
commission which would frame a proposition for amendments to our
currency and banking laws which would suit the Money Trust. The
interests are now busy everywhere educating the people in favor of
the Aldrich Plan. It is reported that a large sum of money has been
raised for this purpose. Wall Street speculation brought on the
Panic of 1907. The depositors’ funds were loaned to gamblers and
anybody the Money Trust wanted to favour. Then when the depositors
wanted their money, the banks did not have it. That made the panic."
(Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr.,
Banking, Currency and the Money Trust,
1913, p. 131)
The Aldrich Plan never came to a vote in Congress, because the
Republicans lost control of the House in 1910, and subsequently lost
the Senate and the Presidency in 1912.
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