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CHAPTER TWO

                   The Aldrich Plan

"Finance and the tariff are reserved by Nelson Aldrich as falling 
within his sole purview and jurisdiction. Mr. Aldrich is endeavoring to 
devise, through the National Monetary Commission, a banking and 

currency law. A great many hundred thousand persons are firmly of 
the opinion that Mr. Aldrich sums up in his personality the greatest 
and most sinister menace to the popular welfare of the United 
States. Ernest Newman recently said, ‘What the South visits on the 

Negro in a political way, Aldrich would mete out to the mudsills of 

the North, if he could devise a safe and practical way to 
accomplish it.’"--Harper’s Weekly, May 7, 1910."

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."

In his biography of Nelson Aldrich in 1930, Stephenson says:

"A pamphlet was issued January 16, 1911, ‘Suggested Plan for 
Monetary Legislation’, by Hon. Nelson Aldrich, based on Jekyll Island 

conclusions." Stephenson says on page 388, "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."11

It is notable that Stephenson characterizes the work of the National 
Citizens League as "propaganda", in line with Seligman’s exposition 
of