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CHAPTER THREE

The Federal Reserve Act

"Our financial system is a false one and a huge burden on the 
people . . . This Act establishes the most gigantic trust on earth."--
Congressman Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Sr.

The speeches of Senator LaFollette and Congressman Lindbergh 
became rallying points of opposition to the Aldrich Plan in 1912. 

They also aroused popular feeling against the Money Trust. 
Congressman Lindbergh said, on December 15, 1911, "The 
government prosecutes other trusts, but supports the money trust. I 

have been waiting patiently for several years for an opportunity to 

expose the false money standard, and to show that the greatest of 
all favoritism is that extended by the government to the money 

trust."

Senator LaFollette publicly charged that a money trust of fifty men 
controlled the United States. George F. Baker, partner of J.P. 
Morgan, on being queried by reporters as to the truth of the 

charge, replied that it was absolutely in error. He said that he knew 
from personal knowledge that not more than eight men ran this 
country.

The Nation Magazine replied editorially to Senator LaFollette that "If 
there is a Money Trust, it will not be practical to establish that it 

exercises its influence either for good or for bad."

Senator LaFollette remarks in his memoirs that his speech against the 

Money Trust later cost him the Presidency of the United States, just 

as Woodrow Wilson’s early support of the Aldrich Plan had brought 
him into consideration for that office.

Congress finally made a gesture to appease popular feeling by 
appointing a committee to investigate the control of money and 
credit in the United States. This was the Pujo Committee , a 
subcommittee of the House Banking and Currency Committee, 

which conducted the famous "Money Trust" hearings in 1912, under 

the leadership of Congressman Arsene Pujo of Louisiana, who was 
regarded as a spokesman for the oil interests. These hearings were 
deliberately dragged on for five months, and resulted in six-

thousand pages of printed testimony in four volumes. Month after 
month, the bankers made the train trip from New York to