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AND, only one member of the Board is to pass out of office while the 

President is in office."

The ten year terms of office of the members of the Board were 

lengthened by the Banking Act of 1935 to fourteen years, which meant 

that these directors of the nation’s finances, although not elected by 

the people, held office longer than three presidents.

While Col. House, Jacob Schiff and Paul Warburg basked in the glow 

of a job well done, the other actors in this drama were subject to later 

afterthoughts. Woodrow Wilson wrote in 1916, National Economy and 

the Banking System, Sen. Doc. No. 3, No. 223, 76th Congress, 1st 

session, 1939: "Our system of credit is concentrated (in the Federal 

Reserve  

29 

System). The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities, are 

in the hands of a few men."

When he was asked by Clarence W. Barron whether he approved of 

the bill as it was finally passed. Warburg remarked, "Well, it hasn’t got 

quite everything we want, but the lack can be adjusted later by 

administrative processes."

Woodrow Wilson and Carter Glass are given credit for the Act by most 

contemporary historians, but of all those concerned, Wilson had least 

to do with Congressional action on the bill. George Creel, a veteran 

Washington correspondent, wrote in Harper’s Weekly, June 26, 1915:

"As far as the Democratic Party was concerned, Woodrow Wilson was 

without influence, save for  the patronage he possessed. It was Bryan