ABSTRACT

Despite the political potency of money and banking issues, historians have largely dismissed the Progressive Era political debate over banking as irrelevant and have been preoccupied with explaining the shortcomings, limitations and inadequacies of the Federal Reserve Act. The picture that has emerged is one of bankers controlling the course of financial reform with the assistance of political leaders who were either subservient, hopelessly naive or insincere in their public opposition to bankers. This book places their exertions in a larger, unfolding political context and traces in an analytical narrative the interplay of sectional and economic interests, political ideologies and partisan clashes that shaped the course of banking reform.

chapter |24 pages

Prelude to Panic, 1905-1907

chapter |34 pages

Panic and Reaction, 1907-1910

chapter |22 pages

Wall Street Consolidation, 1911

chapter |21 pages

Toward Self-Regulation, 1911

chapter |33 pages

The Aldrich Plan, 1911

chapter |35 pages

The Counteroffensive, 1912–1913