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Washington, testified before the Committee and returned to New 

York. The hearings were extremely dull, and no startling information 

turned up at these sessions. The bankers solemnly admitted that 
they  

16 

were indeed bankers, insisted that they always operated in the 
public interest, and claimed that they were animated only by the 
highest ideals of public service, like the Congressmen before whom 

they were testifying.

The paradoxical nature of the Pujo Money Trust Hearings may better 
be understood if we examine the man who single-handedly carried 

on these hearings, Samuel Untermyer. He was one of the principal 
contributors to Woodrow Wilson’s Presidential campaign fund, and 

was one of the wealthiest corporation lawyers in New York. He 
states in his autobiography in "Who’s Who" of 1926 that he once 

received a $775,000 fee for a single legal transaction, the successful 

merger of the Utah Copper Company and the Boston Consolidated 
and Nevada Company, a firm with a market value of one hundred 

million dollars. He refused to ask either Senator LaFollette or 
Congressman Lindbergh to testify in the investigation which they 

alone had forced Congress to hold. As Special Counsel for the Pujo 
Committee, Untermyer ran the hearings as a one-man operation. 

The Congressional members, including its chairman, Congressman 
Arsene Pujo, seemed to have been struck dumb from the 

commencement of the hearings to their conclusion. One of these 

silent servants of the public was Congressman James Byrnes, of 
South Carolina, representing Bernard Baruch’s home district, who 

later achieved fame as "Baruch’s man", and was placed by Baruch 
in charge of the Office of War Mobilization during the Second World 

War.

Although he was a specialist in such matters, Untermyer did not ask 

any of the bankers about the system of interlocking directorates 
through which they controlled industry. He did not go into 

international gold movements, which were known as a factor in 

money panics, or the international relationships between American 

bankers and European bankers. The international banking houses of 
Eugene Meyer, Lazard Freres, J. & W. Seligman, Ladenburg 
Thalmann, Speyer Brothers, M. M. Warburg, and the Rothschild 

Brothers did not arouse Samuel Untermyer’s curiosity, although it 
was well known in the New York financial world that all of these