THE SINKING OF THE TITANIC

(April 14-15, 1912 – North Atlantic Ocean)

Nelson W. Aldrich

(Rockefeller Financial Empire)

The Official Story

NELSON W. ALDRICH
(Rockefeller Financial Empire)

Nelson Wilmarth Aldrich (November 6, 1841 – April 16, 1915) was a prominent American politician and a leader of the Republican Party in the United States Senate, where he represented Rhode Island from 1881 to 1911. By the 1890s, he was one of the “Big Four” key Republicans who largely controlled the major decisions of the Senate, along with Orville H. Platt, William B. Allison, and John Coit Spooner. Because of his impact on national politics and central position on the pivotal Senate Finance Committee, he was referred to by the press and public alike as the “general manager of the Nation”, dominating tariff and monetary policy in the first decade of the 20th century.

Born in Foster, Rhode Island, Aldrich served in the Union Army during the American Civil War. After the war, he became a partner in a large wholesale grocery firm and won election to the Rhode Island House of Representatives. He served a single term in the United States House of Representatives before winning election to the Senate. In the Senate, he helped to create an extensive system of tariffs that protected American factories and farms from foreign competition, and he was a cosponsor of the Payne–Aldrich Tariff Act. He also helped win Senate approval of the 1898 Treaty of Paris, which ended the Spanish–American War.

Aldrich led the passage of the Aldrich–Vreeland Act, which established the National Monetary Commission to study the causes of the Panic of 1907. He served as chair of that commission, which drew up the Aldrich Plan as a basis for a reform of the financial regulatory system. The Aldrich Plan strongly influenced the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, which established the Federal Reserve System. Aldrich also sponsored the Sixteenth Amendment, which allowed for a direct federal income tax.

Deeply committed to the efficiency model of the Progressive Era, he believed that his financial and trade policies would lead to greater efficiency. Reformers, however, denounced him as representative of the evils of big business. His daughter Abigail married American financer John Davison Rockefeller Jr. who was the son of Standard Oil co-founder John D. Rockefeller. His descendants, including namesake Nelson A. Rockefeller, became powerful figures in American politics and banking.

Federal Reserve Act

Following the Panic of 1907, Aldrich took control as chairman of the Congressionally established National Monetary Commission. A proponent of Progressive Era themes of Efficiency and scientific expertise, he led a team of experts to study the European national banks. After his trip, he came to believe that Britain, Germany and France had much superior central banking systems. He worked with several key bankers and economists, including Paul Warburg, Abram Andrew, Frank A. Vanderlip, and Henry Davison, to design a plan for an American central bank in 1911. This work included a trip to Jekyll Island in 1910 to finalize the details of the federal reserve banking plan. In 1913 Woodrow Wilson signed into law the Federal Reserve Act patterned after Aldrich’s vision, creating the modern Federal Reserve System.

Source: Wikipedia