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1 

and Company, New York as a partner earning five hundred 

thousand dollars a year.

Six years later, a financial writer named Bertie Charles Forbes (who 
later founded the Forbes Magazine; the present editor, Malcom 

Forbes, is his son), wrote:

"Picture a party of the nation’s greatest bankers stealing out 
of New York on a private railroad car under cover of 
darkness, stealthily hieing hundred of miles South, embarking 

on a mysteriouslaunch, sneaking onto an island deserted by 

all but a few servants, living there a full week under such rigid 
secrecy that the names of not one of them was once 
mentioned lest the servants learn the identity and disclose to 

the world this strangest, most secret expedition in the history 

of American finance. I am not romancing; I am giving to the 

world, for the first time, the real story  of how the famous 

Aldrich currency report, the foundation of our new currency 
system, was  written . . . . The utmost secrecy was enjoined 

upon all. The public must not glean a hint of what was to be 
done. Senator Aldrich notified each one to go quietly into a 

private car of which the railroad had received orders to draw 
up on an unfrequented platform. Off the party set. New 

York’s ubiquitous reporters had been foiled . . . 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."2

The official biography of Senator Nelson Aldrich states:

"In the autumn of 1910, six men went out to shoot ducks, 
Aldrich, his secretary Shelton, Andrews, Davison, Vanderlip 

and Warburg. Reporters were waiting at the Brunswick 

(Georgia) station. Mr. Davison went out and talked to them. 
The reporters dispersed and the secret of the strange journey