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CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The 1930’s

In 1930 Herbert Hoover appointed to the Federal Reserve Board an old 

friend from World War I days, Eugene Meyer, Jr., who had a long 

record of public service dating from 1915, when he went into 

partnership with Bernard Baruch in the Alaska-Juneau Gold Mining 

Company. Meyer had been a Special Advisor to the War Industries 

Board on Non-Ferrous Metals (gold, silver, etc.); Special Assistant to the 

Secretary of War on aircraft production; in 1917 he was appointed to 

the National Committee on War Savings, and was made Chairman of 

the War Finance Corporation from 1918-1926. He then was appointed 

chairman of the Federal Farm Loan Board from 1927-29. Hoover put 

him on the Federal Reserve Board in 1930, and Franklin D. Roosevelt 

created the Reconstruction Bank for Reconstruction and Development 

in 1946. Meyer must have been a man of exceptional ability to hold so 

many important posts. However, there were some Senators who did 

not believe he should hold any Government office, because of his 

family background as an international gold dealer and his mysterious 

operations in billions of dollars of Government securities in the First 

World War. Consequently, the Senate held Hearings to determine 

whether Meyer ought to be on the Federal Reserve Board.

At these Hearings, Representative Louis T. McFadden, Chairman of the 

House Banking and Currency Committee, said:

"Eugene Meyer, Jr. has had his own crowd with him in the government 

since he started in 1917.