Creature From Jekyll Island by G. Edward

Centralization of control over financial resources was far advanced by 1910. In the United States, there were two main focal points of this control: the Morgan group and the Rockefeller group.

Within each orbit was a maze of commercial banks, acceptance banks, and investment firms. In Europe, the same process had proceeded even further and had coalesced into the Rothschild group and the Warburg group. An article appeared in the Nezv York Times on May 3, 1931, commenting on the death of George Baker, one of Morgan's closest associates. It said: "One-sixth of the total wealth of the world was represented by members of the Jekyll Island Club." The reference was only to those in the Morgan group, (members of the Jekyll Island Club). It did not include the Rockefeller group or the European financiers. When all of these are combined, the previous estimate that one-fourth of the world's wealth was represented by these groups is probably conservative.

In 1913, the year that the Federal Reserve Act became law, a subcommittee of the House Committee on Currency and Banking, under the chairmanship of Arsene Pujo of Louisiana, completed its investigation into the concentration of financial power in the United States. Pujo was considered to be a spokesman for the oil interests, part of the very group under investigation, and did everything possible to sabotage the hearings. In spite of his efforts, however, the final report of the committee at large was devastating: Your committee is satisfied from the proofs submitted ... that there is an established and well defined identity and community of

interest between a few leaders of finance ... which has resulted in great and rapidly growing concentration of the control of money and credit in the hands of these few men....

Under our system of issuing and distributing corporate securitiesthe investing public does not buy directly from the corporation. The

securities travel from the issuing house through middlemen to theinvestor. It is only the great banks or bankers with access to themainsprings of the concentrated resources made up of other people'smoney, in the banks, trust companies, and life insurance companies,and with control of the machinery for creating markets and

distributing securities, who have had the power to underwrite orguarantee the sale of large-scale security issues. The men who throughtheir control over the funds of our railroad and industrial companiesare able to direct where such funds shall be kept, and thus to createthese great reservoirs of the people's money are the ones who are in a

THE JOURNEY TO JEKYLL ISLAND

7

position to tap those reservoirs for the ventures in which they areinterested and to prevent their being tapped for purposes which theydo not approve....