28

Vreeland’s fantastic claims were typical of the propaganda flood 

unleashed to pass the Aldrich Plan. Monopolies would disappear, 

the Government would disappear from the banking business. Pie in 
the sky.

Nation Magazine, January 19, 1911, noted, "The name of Central 
Bank is carefully avoided, but the ‘Federal Reserve Association’, the 

name given to the proposed central organization, is endowed with 

the usual powers and responsibilities of a European Central Bank."

After the National Monetary Commission had returned from Europe, 
it held no official meetings for nearly two years. No records or 

minutes were ever presented showing who had authored the 
Aldrich Plan. Since they held no official meetings, the members of 
the commission could hardly claim the Plan as their own. The sole 

tangible result of the Commission’s three hundred thousand dollar 

expenditure was a library of thirty massive volumes on European 
banking. Typical of these works is a thousand page history of the 

Reichsbank, the central bank which controlled money and credit in 
Germany, and whose principal stockholders, were the Rothschilds 

and Paul Warburg’s family banking house of M.M. Warburg 

Company. The Commission’s records show that it never functioned 
as a deliberative body. Indeed, its only "meeting" was the secret 

conference held at Jekyll Island, and this conference is not 
mentioned in any publication of the Commission. Senator Cummins 

passed a resolution in Congress ordering the Commission to report 
on January 8, 1912, and show some constructive results of its three 
years’ work. In the face of this challenge, the National Monetary 
Commission ceased to exist.

12 

With their five million dollars as a war chest, the Aldrich Plan 
propagandists waged a no-holds barred war against their 

opposition. Andrew Frame testified before the House Banking and 
Currency Committee of the American Bankers Association. He 
represented a group of Western bankers who opposed the Aldrich 

Plan:

CHAIRMAN CARTER GLASS: "Why didn’t the Western bankers make 
themselves heard when the American Bankers Association gave its 
unqualified and, we are assured, unanimous approval of the 

scheme proposed by the National Monetary Commission?"