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Reserve System, these also attracted little public attention. As we
have noted, Warburg’s massive and supposedly definite work on
the Federal Reserve System does not mention Jekyll Island at all,
although he does admit that a conference took place. In none of
his voluminous speeches or writings do the words "Jekyll Island"
appear, with a single notable exception. He agreed to Professor
Stephenson’s request that he prepare a brief statement for the
Aldrich biography. This appears on page 485 as part of "The
Warburg Memorandum". In this excerpt, Warburg writes, "The matter
of a uniform discount rate was discussed and settled at Jekyll
Island."
Another member of the "First Name Club" was less reticent. Frank
Vanderlip later published a few brief references to the conference.
In the Saturday Evening Post, February 9, 1935, p. 25, Vanderlip
wrote:
"Despite my views about the value to society of greater publicity for
the affairs of corporations,
there was an occasion near the close of 1910, when I was as
secretive, indeed, as furtive, as any
conspirator. . . . Since it would have been fatal to Senator Aldrich’s
plan to have it known that he
was calling on anybody from Wall Street to help him in
preparing his bill, precautions were taken that would
have delighted the heart of James Stillman (a colorful
and secretive banker who was President of the
National City Bank during the Spanish-American War,
and who was thought to have been involved in getting
us into that war) . . . I do not feel it is any exaggeration
to speak of our secret expedition to Jekyll Island as the
occasion of the actual conception of what eventually
became the Federal Reserve System."
In a Travel feature in The Washington Post, March 27, 1983, "Follow
The Rich to Jekyll Island", Roy Hoopes writes:
"In 1910, when Aldrich and four financial experts wanted a place to
meet in secret to reform the
country’s banking system, they faked a hunting trip to Jekyll and for
10 days holed up in the