1912

The psychologist Henry Goddard had introduced the Binet intelligence test to the US at the start of the century. This gave the eugenicists a way to quantify intelligence, and, more particularly, measure and define ‘idiots’, ‘imbeciles’ and ‘morons’. Goddard’s famous study of the inheritance of feeble-mindedness in the pseudonymous ‘Kallikak’ family was published in 1912.

Senator LaFollette and Congressman Lindbergh spoke regularly in opposition to the Aldrich Plan in 1912. They also aroused popular feeling against the Money Trust. Senator LaFollette publicly charged that a money trust of fifty men controlled the United States. George F. Baker, partner of J.P. Morgan, on being queried by reporters as to the truth of the charge, replied that it was absolutely in error. He said that he knew from personal knowledge that not more than eight men ran this country. The Nation Magazine replied editorially to Senator LaFollette that “If there is a Money Trust, it will not be practical to establish that it exercises its influence either for good or for bad.” Senator LaFollette remarks in his memoirs that his speech against the Money Trust later cost him the Presidency of the United States, just as Woodrow Wilson’s early support of the Aldrich Plan had brought him into consideration for that office.

Congress appointed a committee to investigate the control of money and credit in the United States. This was the Pujo Committee , a subcommittee of the House Banking and Currency Committee, which conducted the famous “Money Trust” hearings in 1912, under the leadership of Congressman Arsene Pujo of Louisiana, who was regarded as a spokesman for the oil interests. These hearings were deliberately dragged on for five months, and resulted in six-thousand pages of printed testimony in four volumes. Month after month, the bankers made the train trip from New York to Washington, testified before the Committee and returned to New York. The hearings were extremely dull, and no startling information turned up at these sessions. The bankers solemnly admitted that they were indeed bankers, insisted that they always operated in the public interest, and claimed that they were animated only by the highest ideals of public service, like the Congressmen before whom they were testifying.

The man who single-handedly carried on these hearings, Samuel Untermyer. He was one of the principal contributors to Woodrow Wilson’s Presidential campaign fund, and was one of the wealthiest corporation lawyers in New York. He refused to ask either Senator LaFollette or Congressman Lindbergh to testify in the investigation which they alone had forced Congress to hold. […]

Although he was a specialist in such matters, Untermyer did not ask any of the bankers about the system of interlocking directorates through which they controlled industry. He did not go into international gold movements, which were known as a factor in money panics, or the international relationships between American bankers and European bankers. The international banking houses of Eugene Meyer, Lazard Freres, J. & W. Seligman, Ladenburg Thalmann, Speyer Brothers, M. M. Warburg, and the Rothschild Brothers did not arouse Samuel Untermyer’s curiosity, although it was well known in the New York financial world that all of these family banking houses either had branches or controlled subsidiary houses in Wall Street. When Jacob Schiff appeared before the Pujo Committee, Mr. Untermyer’s adroit questioning allowed Mr. Schiff to talk for many minutes without revealing any information about the operations of the banking house of Kuhn Loeb Company, of which he was senior partner, and which Senator Robert L. Owen had identified as the representative of the European Rothschilds in the United States. […]

The farce of the Pujo Committee ended without a single well-known opponent of the money creators being allowed to appear or testify. As far as Samuel Untermyer was concerned, Senator LaFollette and Congressman Charles Augustus Lindbergh had never existed. […] At the close of the hearings, the bankers and their subsidized newspapers claimed that the only way to break the “Money Trust monopoly” was to enact the banking and currency legislation now being proposed to Congress, a bill which would be passed a year later as the Federal Reserve Act. The press seriously demanded that the New York banking monopoly be broken by turning over the administration of the new banking system to the most knowledgeable banker of them all, Paul Warburg. […]

The Presidential campaign of 1912 records one of the more interesting political upsets in American history. The incumbent, William Howard Taft, was a popular president, and the Republicans, in a period of general prosperity, were firmly in control of the government through a Republican majority in both houses. The Democratic challenger, Woodrow Wilson, Governor of New Jersey, had no national recognition, and was a stiff, austere man who excited little public support. Both parties included a monetary reform bill in their platforms: The Republicans were committed to the Aldrich Plan, which had been denounced as a Wall Street plan, and the Democrats had the Federal Reserve Act. Neither party bothered to inform the public that the bills were almost identical except for the names. In retrospect, it seems obvious that the money creators decided to dump Taft and go with Wilson. […]

Since the bankers were financing both candidates, they would win regardless of the outcome. Later Congressional testimony showed that in the firm of Kuhn Loeb Company, Felix Warburg was supporting Taft, Paul Warburg and Jacob Schiff were supporting Wilson. The result was that a Democratic Congress and a Democratic President were elected in 1912 to get the central bank legislation passed. It seems probable that the identification of the Aldrich Plan as a Wall Street operation predicted that it would have a difficult passage through Congress, as the Democrats would solidly oppose it, whereas a successful Democratic candidate, supported by a Democratic Congress, would be able to pass the central bank plan. […] Col. Garrison, an agent of Brown Brothers bankers, later Brown Brothers Harriman, wrote in this book, “Paul Warburg is the man who got the Federal Reserve Act together after the Aldrich Plan aroused such nationwide resentment and opposition. The mastermind of both plans was Baron Alfred Rothschild of London.” […]

Colonel Edward Mandell House was referred to by Rabbi Stephen Wise in his autobiography, Challenging Years as “the unofficial Secretary of State”. House noted that he and Wilson knew that in passing the Federal Reserve Act, they had created an instrument more powerful than the Supreme Court. The Federal Reserve Board of Governors actually comprised a Supreme Court of Finance, and there was no appeal from any of their rulings. […]

In 1911, prior to Wilson’s taking office as President, Colonel House had returned to his home in Texas and completed a book called Philip Dru, Administrator. Ostensibly a novel, it was actually a detailed plan for the future government of the United States, “which would establish Socialism as dreamed by Karl Marx”, according to House.

This “novel” predicted the enactment of the graduated income tax, excess profits tax, unemployment insurance, social security, and a flexible currency system. In short, it was the blueprint which was later followed by the Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt administrations. It was published “anonymously” by B. W. Huebsch of New York, and widely circulated among government officials, who were left in no doubt as to its authorship. […] Westbrook Pegler, the Hearst columnist from 1932 to 1956, heard of the Philip Dru book and wrote a column about it, stating: “One of the institutions outlined in Philip Dru is the Federal Reserve System. The Schiffs, the Warburgs, the Kahns, the Rockefellers and Morgans put their faith in House. The Schiff, Warburg, Rockefeller and Morgan interests were personally represented in the mysterious conference at Jekyll Island. Frankfurter landed on the Harvard law faculty, thanks to a financial contribution to Harvard by Felix Warburg and Paul Warburg, and so we got Alger and Donald Hiss, Lee Pressman, Harry Dexter White and many other proteges of Little Weenie.” […]

House’s openly Socialistic views were forthrightly expressed in Philip Dru, Administrator; on pages 57-58, House wrote: “In a direct and forceful manner, he pointed out that our civilization was fundamentally wrong, inasmuch, among other things, as it restricted efficiency. […] In his book, House (Dru) envisions himself becoming a dictator and forcing on the people his radical views, page 148: “They recognized the fact that Dru dominated the situation and that a master mind had at last risen in the Republic.” He now assumes the title of General. “General Dru announced his purpose of assuming the powers of a dictator . . . they were assured that he was free from any personal ambition . . . he proclaimed himself “Administrator of the Republic.” […]

Like most of the behind-the-scenes operators in this book, Col. Edward Mandell House had the obligatory “London connection”. Originally a Dutch family, “Huis”, his ancestors had lived in England for three hundred years, after which his father settled in Texas, where he made a fortune in blockade-running during the Civil War, shipping cotton and other contraband to his British connections, including the Rothschilds, and bringing back supplies for the beleaguered Texans. The senior House, not trusting the volatile Texas situation, prudently deposited all his profits from his blockade-running in gold with Baring banking house in London. At the close of the Civil War, he was one of the wealthiest men in Texas. […] At the age of twelve, the young Edward Mandell House had brain fever, and was later further crippled by sunstroke. He was a semi-invalid, and his ailments gave him an odd Oriental appearance. He never entered any profession, but used his father’s money to become the kingmaker of Texas politics, successively electing five governors from 1893 to 1911. In 1911 he began to support Wilson for president, and threw the crucial Texas delegation to him which ensured his nomination. House met Wilson for the first time at the Hotel Gotham, May 31, 1912. […]

House recorded some of his efforts on behalf of the Federal Reserve Act in The Intimate Papers of Col. House, “December 19, 1912. I talked with Paul Warburg over the phone concerning currency reform. I told of my trip to Washington and what I had done there to get it in working order. I told him that the Senate and the Congressmen seemed anxious to do what he desired, and that President- elect Wilson thought straight concerning the issue.” Thus we have Warburg’s agent in Washington, Col. House, assuring him that the Senate and Congressmen will do what he desires, and that the President-elect “thought straight concerning the issue.” In this context, representative government seems to have ceased to exist. (Secrets of the Federal Reserve, Griffin, 1952)

Woodrow Wilson wins by only 42% of the popular vote.

United States, Lockport, Illinois. Witnesses watched, as an object appeared to traverse the moon’s face for about three minutes. It was rectangular with absolutely flat ends, about two-thirds the diameter of the full moon in length.