"Money is the worst of all contraband."
-William Jennings Bryan
It is now apparent that there might have been no World War without the Federal Reserve System. A strange sequence of events, none of which were accidental, had occurred. Without Theodore Roosevelt's "Bull Moose" candidacy, the popular President Taft would have been reelected, and Woodrow Wilson would have returned to obscurity.* If Wilson had not been elected, we might have had no Federal Reserve Act, and World War One could have been avoided. The European nations had been led to maintain large standing armies as the policy of the central banks which dictated their governmental decisions. In April, 1887, the Quarterly Journal of Economics had pointed out:
"A detailed revue of the public debts of Europe shows interest and sinking fund payments of $5,343 million annually (five and one-third billion). M. Neymarck's conclusion is much like Mr. Atkinson's. The finances of Europe are so involved that the governments may ask whether war, with all its terrible chances, is not preferable to the maintenance of such a precarious and costly peace. If the military preparations of Europe do not end in war, they may well end in the bankruptcy of the States. Or, if such follies lead neither to war nor to ruin, then they assuredly point to industrial and economic revolution."
From 1887 to 1914, this precarious system of heavily armed but bankrupt European nations endured, while the United States continued to be a debtor nation, borrowing money from abroad, but making few international loans, because we did not have a central bank or "mobilization of credit". The system of national loans developed by the Rothschilds served to finance European struggles during the nineteenth century, because they were spread out over Rothschild branches in several countries. By 1900, it was obvious that the European countries could not afford a major war. They had large standing armies, universal military service, and modern weapons, but their economies could not support the enormous expenditures. The Federal Reserve System began operations in 1914, forcing the American people to lend the Allies twenty-five billion dollars which was not repaid, although considerable interest was paid to New York bankers. The American people were driven to make war on the German people, with whom we had no conceivable political or economic quarrel. Moreover, the United States comprised the largest nation in the world composed of Germans; almost half of its citizens were of German descent, and by a narrow margin, German had been voted down as the national language.** The German Ambassador to Turkey, baron Wangeheim asked the American Ambassador to Turkey, Henry Morgenthau, why the United States intended to make war in Germany. "We Americans," replied Morgenthau, speaking for the group of Harlem real estate operators of which he was the head, "are going to war for a moral principle." J.P. Morgan received the proceeds of the First Liberty Loan to pay off $400,000,000 which he advanced to Great Britain at the outset of the war. To cover this loan, $68,000,000 in notes had been issued under the provisions of the Aldrich-Vreeland Act for issuing notes against securities, the only time this provision was employed. The notes were retired as soon as the Federal Reserve Banks began operation, and replaced by Federal Reserve Notes.
During 1915 and 1916, Wilson kept faith with the bankers who had purchased the White House for him, by continuing to make loans to the Allies. His Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan, protested constantly, stating that "Money is the worst of all contraband." By 1917, the Morgans and Kuhn, Loeb Company had floated a billion and a half dollars in loans to the Allies. The bankers also financed a host of "peace" organizations which worked to get us involved in the World War. The Commission for Relief in Belgium manufactured atrocity stories against the Germans, while a Carnegie organization, The League to Enforce Peace, agitated in Washington for our entry into war. This later became the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which during the 1940s was headed by Alger Hiss. One writer*** claimed that he had never seen any "peace movement" which did not end in war.
The U.S. Ambassador to Britain, Walter Hines Page, complained that he could not afford the position, and was given twenty-five thousand dollars a year spending money by Cleveland H. Dodge, president of the National City Bank. H.L. Mencken openly accused Page in 1916 of being a British agent, which was unfair. Page was merely a bankers' agent.
On March 5, 1917, Page sent a confidential letter to Wilson. "I think that the pressure of this approaching crisis has gone beyond the ability of the Morgan Financial Agency for the British and French Governments . . . The greatest help we could give the Allies would be a credit. Unless we go to war with Germany, our Government, of course, cannot make such a direct grant of credit."
The Rothschilds were wary of Germany's ability to continue in the war, despite the financial chaos caused by their agents, the Warburgs, who were financing the Kaiser, and Paul Warburg's brother, Max, who, as head of the German Secret Service, authorized Lenin's train to pass through the lines and execute the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. According to Under Secretary of the Navy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, America's heavy industry had been preparing for war for a year. Both the Army and Navy Departments had been purchasing war supplies in large amounts since early in 1916. Cordell Hull remarks in his Memoirs:
"The conflict forced the further development of the income-tax principle. Aiming, as it did, at the one great untaxed source of revenue, the income-tax law had been enacted in the nick of time to meet the demands of the war. And the conflict also assisted the putting into effect of the Federal Reserve System, likewise in the nick of time."70
One may ask, in the nick of time for whom? Certainly not for the American people, who had no need for "mobilization of credit" for a European war, or to enact an income tax to finance a war. Hull's statement affords a rare glimpse into the machinations of our "public servants".
The Notes of the Journal of Political Economy, October, 1917, state:
"The effect of the war upon the business of the Federal Reserve Banks has required an immense development of the staffs of these banks, with a corresponding increase in expenses. Without, of course, being able to anticipate so early and extensive a demand for their services in this connection, the framers of the Federal Reserve Act had provided that the Federal Reserve Banks should act as fiscal agents of the Government."
The bankers had been waiting since 1887 for the United States to enact a central bank plan so that they could finance a European war among the nations whom they had already bankrupted with armament and "defense" programs. The most demanding function of the central bank mechanism is war finance.
On October 13, 1917, Woodrow Wilson made a major address, stating:
"It is manifestly imperative that there should be a complete mobilization of the banking reserves of the United States. The burden and the privilege (of the Allied loans) must be shared by every banking institution in the country. I believe that cooperation on the part of the banks is a patriotic duty at this time, and that membership in the Federal Reserve System is a distinct and significant evidence of patriotism."
E.W. Kemmerer writes that "As fiscal agents of the Government, the federal reserve banks rendered the nations services of incalculable value after our entrance into the war. They aided greatly in the conservation of our gold resources, in the regulation of our foreign exchanges, and in the centralization of our financial energies. One shudders when he thinks what might have happened if the war had found us with our former decentralized and antiquated banking system."
Mr. Kemmerer's shudders ignore the fact that if we had kept "our antiquated banking system" we would not have been able to finance the World War or to enter as a participant ourselves.
Woodrow Wilson himself did not believe in his crusade to save the world for democracy. He later wrote that "The World War was a matter of economic rivalry."
On being questioned by Senator McCumber about the circumstances of our entry into the war, Wilson was asked, "Do you think if Germany had committed no act of war or no act of injustice against our citizens that we would have gotten into this war?"
"I do think so," Wilson replied.
"You think we would have gotten in anyway?" pursued McCumber.
"I do," said Wilson.
In Wilson's War Message in 1917, he included an incredible tribute to the Communists in Russia who were busily slaughtering the middle class in that unfortunate country.
"Assurance has been added to our hope for the future peace of the world by the wonderful and heartening things that have been happening in the last few weeks in Russia. Here is a fit partner for a League of Honor."71
Wilson's paean to a bloodthirsty regime which has since murdered sixty-six million of its inhabitants in the most barbarous manner exposes his true sympathies and his true backers, the bankers who had financed the blood purge in Russia. When the Communist Revolution seemed in doubt, Wilson sent his personal emissary, Elihu Root, to Russia with one hundred million dollars from his Special Emergency War Fund to save the toppling Bolshevik regime.
The documentation of Kuhn, Loeb Company's involvement in the establishment of Communism in Russia is much too extensive to be quoted here, but we include one brief mention, typical of the literature on this subject. In his book, Czarism and the Revolution, Gen. Arsene de Goulevitch writes,
"Mr. Bakmetiev, the late Russian Imperial Ambassador to the United States, tells us that the Bolsheviks, after victory, transferred 600 million roubles in gold between the years 1918-1922 to Kuhn, Loeb Company."
After our entry into World War I, Woodrow Wilson turned the government of the United States over to a triumvirate of his campaign backers, Paul Warburg, Bernard Baruch and Eugene Meyer. Baruch was appointed head of the War Industries Board, with life and death powers over every factory in the United States. Eugene Meyer was appointed head of the War Finance Corporation, in charge of the loan program which financed the war. Paul Warburg was in control of the nation's banking system****.
Knowing that the overwhelming sentiment of the American people during 1915 and 1916 had been anti-British and pro-German, our British allies viewed with some trepidation the prominence of Paul Warburg and Kuhn, Loeb Company in the prosecution of the war. They were uneasy about his high position in the Administration because his brother, Max Warburg, was at that time serving as head of the German Secret Service. On December 12, 1918, the United States Naval Secret Service Report on Mr. Warburg was as follows:
"WARBURG, PAUL: New York City. German, naturalized citizen, 1911.
was decorated by the
Kaiser in 1912, was vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.
Handled large sums furnished by Germany for Lenin and Trotsky. Has a
brother who is leader of the espionage system of Germany."
Strangely enough, this report, which must have been compiled much earlier, while we were at war with Germany, is not dated until December 12, 1918. AFTER the Armistice had been signed. Also, it does not contain the information that Paul Warburg resigned from the Federal Reserve Board in May, 1918, which indicates that it was compiled before May, 1918, when Paul Warburg would theoretically have been open to a charge of treason because of his brother's control of Germany's Secret Service.
Paul Warburg's brother Felix in New York was a director of the Prussian Life Insurance Company of Berlin, and presumably would not have liked to see too many of his policyholders killed in the war. On September 26, 1920, The New York Times mentioned in its obituary of Jacob Schiff in reference to Kuhn, Loeb and Company, "During the world War certain of its members were in constant contact with the Government in an advisory capacity. It shared in the conferences which were held regarding the organization and formation of the Federal Reserve System."
The 1920 Schiff obituary revealed for the first time that Jacob Schiff, like the Warburgs, also had two brothers in Germany during World War I, Philip and Ludwig Schiff, of Frankfurt-on-Main, who also were active as bankers to the German Government! This was not a circumstance to be taken lightly, as on neither side of the Atlantic were the said bankers obscure individuals who had no influence in the conduct of the war. On the contrary, the Kuhn, Loeb partners held the highest governmental posts in the United States during World War I, while in Germany, Max and Fritz Warburg, and Philip and Ludwig Schiff, moved in the highest councils of government. From Memoirs of Max Warburg, "The Kaiser thumbed the table violently and shouted, 'Must you always be right?' but then listened carefully to Max's view on financial matters."72
In June, 1918, Paul Warburg wrote a private note to Woodrow Wilson, "I have two brothers in Germany who are bankers. They naturally now serve their country to their utmost ability, as I serve mine."73
Neither Wilson nor Warburg viewed the situation as one of concern, and Paul Warburg served out his term on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, while World War I continued to rage.
The background of Kuhn, Loeb & Company had been exposed in "Truth Magazine", edited by George Conroy:
"Mr. Schiff is head of the great private banking house of Kuhn, Loeb & Co. which represents the Rothschild interest on this side of the Atlantic. He has been described as a financial strategist and has been for years the financial minister to the great impersonal power known as Standard Oil. He was hand-in-glove with the Harrimans, the Goulds and the Rockefellers, in all their railroad enterprises and has become the dominant power in the railroad and financial world in America. Louis Brandeis, because of his great ability as a lawyer and for other reasons which will appear later, was selected by Schiff as the instrument through which Schiff hoped to achieve his ambition in New England. His job was to carry on an agitation which would undermine public confidence in the New Haven system and cause a decrease in the price of its securities, thus forcing them on the market for the wreckers to buy."74
We mention Schiff's lawyer, Brandeis, here because the first available appointment on the Supreme Court of the United States which Woodrow Wilson was allowed to fill was given to the Kuhn, Loeb lawyer, Brandeis.
Not only was the U.S. Food Administration managed by Hoover's director, Lewis Lichtenstein Strauss, who married into the Kuhn Loeb Company by marrying Alice Hanauer, daughter of partner Jerome Hanauer, but in the most critical field, military intelligence, Sir William Wiseman, chief of the British Secret Service, was a partner of Kuhn, Loeb & Company. He worked most closely with Wilson's alter ego, Col. House. "Between House and Wiseman there were soon to be few political secrets, and from their mutual comprehension resulted in large measure our close cooperation with the British."75
One example of House's cooperation with Wiseman was a confidential agreement which House negotiated pledging the United States to enter into World War I on the side of the Allies. Ten months before the election which returned Wilson to the White House in 1916 'because he kept us out of war', Col. House negotiated a secret agreement with England and France on behalf of Wilson which pledged the United States to intervene on behalf of the Allies. On March 9, 1916, Wilson formally sanctioned the undertaking.76
Nothing could more forcefully illustrate the duplicity of Woodrow Wilson's nature than his nationwide campaign on the slogan, "He kept us out of war", when he had pledged ten months earlier to involve us in the war on the side of England and France. This explains why he was regarded with such contempt by those who learned the facts of his career. H.L. Mencken wrote that Wilson was "the perfect model of the Christian cad", and that we ought "to dig up his bones and make dice of them."
According to The New York Times, Paul Warburg's letter of
resignation stated that some objection had been made because he had a
brother in the Swiss Secret Service. The New York Times has never
corrected this blatant falsehood, perhaps because Kuhn, Loeb Company
owned a controlling interest in its stock. Max Warburg was not Swiss,
and although he had probably come into contact with the Swiss Secret
Service during his term of office as head of the German Secret
Service, no responsible editor at The New York Times could have been
unaware of the fact that Max Warburg was German, and that his family
banking house was in Hamburg, and that he held a number of high
positions in the German Government. He represented Germany at the
Versailles Peace Conference, and remained peacefully in Germany until
1939, during a period when persons of his religion were being
persecuted. To avoid injury during the approaching war, when bombs
would rain on Germany, Max Warburg was allowed to sail to New York,
his funds intact.
At the outset of World War I, Kuhn, Loeb Company had figured in the
transfer of German shipping interests to other control. Sir Cecil
Spring-Rice, British Ambassador to the United States, in a letter to
Lord Grey wrote:
"Another matter is the question of the transfer of the flag to the Hamburg Amerika ships. The company is practically a German Government affair. The ships are used for Government purposes, the Emperor himself is a large shareholder, and so is the great banking house of Kuhn, Loeb Company. A member of that house (Warburg) has been appointed to a very responsible position in New York, although only just naturalized. He is concerned in business with the Secretary of the Treasury, who is the President's son-in-law. It is he who is negotiating on behalf of the Hamburg Amerika Shipping Company."77
On November 13, 1914, in a letter to Sir Valentine Chirol, Spring-Rice wrote, (p. 241, v. 2)
"I was told today that The New York Times has been practically acquired by Kuhn, Loeb and Schiff, special protg of the (German) Emperor. Warburg, nearly related to Kuhn Loeb and Schiff is a brother of the well known Warburg of Hamburg, the associate of Ballin (Hamburg) Amerika line), is a member of the Federal Reserve Board or rather THE member. He practically controls the financial policy of the Administration, and Paish & Blackett (England) had mainly to negotiate with him. Of course, it was exactly like negotiating with Germany. Everything that was said was German property."
Col. Garrison wrote in Roosevelt, Wilson and the Federal Reserve Law, that "Through the banking House of the Kuhn Loeb Company, a powerful weapon would have been placed in the hands of the German Kaiser over the destiny of American business and American citizens."78 Garrison was referring to the Hamburg Amerika affair.
It seemed strange that Woodrow Wilson felt it necessary to place the nation in the hands of three men whose personal history was one of ruthless speculation and the quest for personal gain, or that during war with Germany, he found as persons of supreme trust a German immigrant naturalized in 1911, the son of an immigrant from Poland, and the son of an immigrant from France. Bernard Baruch first attracted attention on Wall Street in 1890 while working for A.A. Housman & Co.
In 1896 he merged the six principal tobacco companies of the United States into the Consolidated Tobacco Company, forcing James Duke and the American Tobacco Trust to enter into this combination. The second great trust set up by Baruch brought the copper industry into the hands of the Guggenheim family, who have controlled it ever since. Baruch worked with Edward H. Harriman, who was Schiff's front man in controlling America's railway system for the Rothschild family. Baruch and Harriman also combined their talents to gain control over the New York City transit system, which has been in perilous financial condition ever since.
In 1901, Baruch formed the firm of Baruch Brothers, bankers, with his brother Herman, in New York. In 1917, when Baruch was appointed Chairman of the War Industries Board, the name was changed to Hentz Brothers.
Testifying before the Nye Committee on September 13, 1937, Bernard Baruch stated that "All wars are economic in their origin." So much for religious and political disagreements, which had been specially touted as the cause of wars.*****
A profile in the "New Yorker" magazine reported that Baruch made a
profit of seven hundred fifty thousand dollars in one day during
World War I, after a phony peace rumor was planted in Washington. In
"Who's Who", Baruch mentions that he was a member of the Commission
which handled all purchasing for the Allies during World War I. In
fact, Baruch WAS the Commission. He spent the American taxpayer's
money at the rate of ten billion dollars a year, and was also the
dominant member of the Munitions Price-Fixing Committee. He set the
prices at which the Government bought war materials. It would be
naive to presume that the orders did not go to firms in which he and
his associates had more than a polite interest.
dictator over American manufacturers.(*) At the Nye
Committee hearings in 1935, Baruch testified,
"President Wilson gave me a letter authorizing me to take over any industry or plant. There was Judge Gary, President of United States Steel, whom we were having trouble with, and when I showed him that letter, he said, 'I guess we will have to fix this up', and he did fix it up."
Some members of Congress were curious about Baruch's qualifications to exercise life and death powers over American industry in time of war. He was not a manufacturer, and had never been in a factory. When he was called before a Congressional Committee, Bernard Baruch stated that his profession was "Speculator". A Wall Street gambler had been made Czar of American Industry.
@insert Facsimile of New York Times article
Facsimile of an article which appeared in The New York Times dated September 23, 1914. Listed are major stockholders of the five New York City banks which purchased 40% of the 203, 053 shares of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York when the System was organized in 1914. They thus obtained control of that Federal Reserve Bank and have held it ever since. As of Tuesday, July 26, 1983, the top five surviving New York City banks have increased their ownership of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to 53% of the shares.
@insert CHART I
@CHART I cont.
CHART I
Chart I reveals the linear connection between the Rothschilds and the Bank of England, and the London banking houses which ultimately control the Federal Reserve Banks through their stockholdings of bank stock and their subsidiary firms in New York. The two principal Rothschild representatives in New York, J.P. Morgan Co., and Kuhn, Loeb & Co. were the firms which set up the Jekyll Island Conference at which the Federal Reserve Act was drafted, who directed the subsequent successful campaign to have the plan enacted into law by Congress, and who purchased the controlling amounts of stock in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in 1914. These firms had their principal officers appointed to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and the Federal Advisory Council in 1914.
In 1914 a few families (blood or business related) owning controlling stock in existing banks (such as in New York City) caused those banks to purchase controlling shares in the Federal Reserve regional banks.
Examination of the charts and text in the House Banking Committee Staff Report of August, 1976 and the current stockholders list of the 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks shows this same family control.
Baruch's erstwhile partner, Eugene Meyer, (Alaska-Juneau Gold Mining Co.), later claimed that Baruch was a nitwit, and that Meyer, with his family banking connections (Lazard Freres), had guided Baruch's investment career. These claims appeared in the fiftieth anniversary edition of The Washington Post, editorial page, June 4, 1983, with a parting shot from Meyer's editor, Al Friendly, that "Every journalist in Washington, Meyer included, knew that Bernard M. Baruch was a self-aggrandizing phony."
The third member of the Triumvirate, Eugene Meyer, was son of the partner in the international banking house of Lazard Freres, of Paris and New York. In My Own Story Baruch explains how Meyer became head of the War Finance Corporation. "At the outset of World War One," he says, "I sought out Eugene Meyer, Jr. . . . who was a man of the highest integrity with a keen desire to be of public service."79
The nation has suffered greatly from persons who desired to be of public service, because their desires often went considerably beyond their passion for office. In fact, Meyer and Baruch had operated an Alaska venture, Alaska-Juneau Gold Mining Company in 1915, and had worked together on other financial schemes. Meyer's family house of Lazard Freres specialized in international gold movements.
Eugene Meyer's stewardship of the War Finance Corporation comprises one of the most amazing financial operations ever partially recorded in this country. We say "partially recorded", because subsequent Congressional investigations revealed that each night, the books were being altered before being brought in for the next day's investigation. Louis McFadden, Chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee, figured in two investigations of Meyer, in 1925, and again in 1930, when Meyer was proposed as Governor of the Federal Reserve Board. The Select Committee to Investigate the Destruction of Government Bonds, submitted, on March 2, 1925, "Preparation and Destruction of Government Bonds--68th Congress, 2d Session, Report No. 1635:
p.2. "Duplicate bonds amounting to 2314 pairs and duplicate coupons amounting to 4698 pairs ranging in denominations from $50 to $10,000 have been redeemed to July 1, 1924. Some of these duplications have resulted from error and some from fraud."
These investigations may explain why, at the end of World War One, Eugene Meyer was able to buy control of Allied Chemical and Dye Corporation, and later on, the nation's most influential newspaper, The Washington Post. The duplication of bonds, "one for the government, one for me" in denominations to the amount of $10,000 each, resulted in a tidy sum.
p. 6 of these Hearings. "These transactions of the Treasury prior to June 20, 1920 (including settlements for purchases and sales), executed by the War Finance Corporation (Eugene Meyer, managing director), were largely directed by the managing director of the War Finance Corporation, and settlements with the Treasury were made principally by him with the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, and the books show that the basis of the price paid by the Government for over $1,894 millions worth of bonds ($1,894,000,000.00), which the Treasury purchased through the War Finance Corporation was not the market price and was not the cost of the bond plus interest, and the elements entering into the settlement are not disclosed by the correspondence. The managing director of the War Finance Corporation stated that he and an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury (Jerome J. Hanauer, partner of Kuhn, Loeb Co. whose daughter married Lewis L. Strauss) agreed to the price, and it was simply an arbitrary figure set by an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury as to the bonds so purchased by the War Finance Corporation. During the period of these transactions and up until quite a recent date the managing director of the War Finance Corporation, Eugene Meyer, Jr., in his private capacity maintained an office at No. 14 Wall Street, New York City, and through the War Finance Corporation sold about $70 millions in bonds to the Government, and also bought through the War Finance Corporation about $10 millions in bonds, and approved the bills for most, if not all, of these bonds in his official capacity as managing director of the War Finance Corporation. When these transactions, just referred to, were disclosed to the committee in open hearing, the managing director appeared before the committee and stated the fact that commissions were paid on these transactions, they were in turn paid over to the brokers, selected by the managing director, who executed the orders issued by his brokerage house, and immediately after this disclosure to the committee, the managing director employed Ernst and Ernst, certified public accountants, to audit the books of the War Finance Corporation, who did, upon completion of the examination of these books, report to the committee that all moneys received by the brokerage house of the managing director had been accounted for. While simultaneously with the examination being made by the committee, the certified public accountants, heretofore referred to, were nightly carrying on their examination, it was discovered by your committee that alterations and changes were being made in the books of record covering these transactions, and when the same was called to the attention of the treasurer of the War Finance Corporation, he admitted to the committee that changes were being made. To what extent these books have been altered during the process the committee have not been able to determine. After June, 1921, about $10 billions worth of securities were destroyed."
CHART II
This chart shows the interlocking banking directorates which were revealed by the backgrounds of the officials selected to be the original members of the Federal Advisory Council in 1914. The principals were the same bankers who had been present or represented at the Jekyll Island Conference in 1910, and during the campaign to have the Federal Reserve Act enacted into law by Congress in 1913. These officials represented the largest stock holdings in the New York banks which bought the controlling stock in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and also were the principal correspondent banks of the banks in other Federal Reserve districts who, in turn, selected their officials to represent them on the Federal Advisory Council.
It was Eugene Meyer's Washington Post, (under the direction of his
daughter, Katherine Graham) which was later to drive a President of
the United States from the White House on the grounds that he had
knowledge of a burglary. What are we to think of the revelations of
duplications of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of bonds
during
@insert CHART III
CHART III
The J. Henry Schroder Banking Company chart encompasses the entire history of the twentieth century, embracing as it does the program (Belgian Relief Commission) which provisioned Germany from 1915-1918 and dissuaded Germany from seeking peace in 1916; financing Hitler in 1933 so as to make a Second World War possible; backing the Presidential campaign of Herbert Hoover; and even at the present time, having two of its major executives of its subsidiary firm, Bechtel Corporation serving as Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State in the Reagan Administration.
The head of the Bank of England since 1973, Sir Gordon Richardson, Governor of the Bank of England (controlled by the House of Rothschild), was chairman of J. Henry Schroder, New York, and Schroder Banking Corporation, New York, as well as Lloyd's Bank of London, and Rolls Royce. He maintains a residence on Sutton Place in New York City, and as head of "The London Connection", can be said to be the single most influential banker in the world.
Meyer's directorship of the War Finance Corporation, the alteration of the books during a Congressional investigation, and the fact that Meyer came out of this situation with many millions of dollars with which he proceeded to buy Allied Chemical Corporation, The Washington Post, and other properties? Incidentally, Lazard Brothers, Meyer's family banking house, personally manages the fortunes of many of our political luminaries, including the Kennedy family fortune.
Besides these men, Warburg, Baruch, and Meyer, a host of J.P. Morgan Co., and Kuhn, Loeb Co., partners, employees, and satellites came to Washington after 1917 to administer the fate of the American people.
The Liberty Loans, which sold bonds to our citizens, were
nominally in the jurisdiction of the United States Treasury, under
the leadership of Wilson's Secretary of the Treasury, William G.
McAdoo, whom Kuhn, Loeb Co. had placed in charge of the
Hudson-Manhattan Railway Co. in 1902. Paul Warburg had most of the
Kuhn Loeb Co. firm with him in Washington during the War. Jerome
Hanauer, partner in Kuhn, Loeb Co., was Assistant Secretary of the
Treasury in charge of Liberty Loans. The two Under-secretaries of the
Treasury during the War were S. Parker Gilbert and Roscoe C.
Leffingwell. Both Gilbert and Leffingwell came to the Treasury from
the law firm of Cravath and Henderson, and returned to that firm when
they had fulfilled their mission for Kuhn, Loeb Co. in the Treasury.
Cravath and Henderson were the lawyers for Kuhn Loeb Co. Gilbert and
Leffingwell subsequently received partnerships in J.P. Morgan Co.
Kuhn, Loeb Company, the nation's largest owners of railroad
properties in this country and in Mexico, protected their interests
during the First World War by having Woodrow Wilson set up a United
States Railroad Administration. The Director-General was William
McAdoo, Comptroller of the Currency. Warburg replaced this set up in
1918 with a tighter organization which he called the Federal
Transportation Council. The purpose of both of these organizations
was to prevent strikes against Kuhn, Loeb Company during the War, in
case the railroad workers should try to get in wages some of the
millions of dollars in wartime profits which Kuhn, Loeb received from
the United States Government.
@insert CHART IV
CHART IV
The Peabody-Morgan chart shows the London Connection of these prominent banking firms, which have been headquartered in London since their inception. The Peabody fortune set up an Educational Fund in 1865, which was later absorbed by John D. Rockefeller into the General Educational Board in 1905, which, in turn, was absorbed by the Rockefeller Foundation in 1960.
Among the important bankers present in Washington during the War was Herbert Lehman, of the rapidly rising firm of Lehman Brothers, Bankers, New York, Lehman was promptly put on the General Staff of the Army, and given the rank of Colonel.
The Lehmans had had prior experience in "taking the profits out of war", a double entendre and one of Baruch's favorite phrases. In Men Who Rule America, Arthur D. Howden Smith writes of the Lehmans during the Civil War, "They were often agents, fixers for both sides, intermediaries for confidential communications and handlers of the many illicit transactions in cotton and drugs for the Confederacy, purveyors of information for the North. The Lehmans, with Mayer in Montgomery, the first capital of the Confederacy, Henry in New Orleans, and Emanuel in New York were ideally situated to take advantage of every opportunity for profit which appeared. They seem to have missed few chances."80
CHART V
The David Rockefeller chart shows the link between the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Standard Oil of Indiana, General Motors, and Allied Chemical Corporation (Eugene Meyer family) and Equitable Life (J.P. Morgan).
CHART VI
This chart shows the interlocks between the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, J. Henry Schroder Banking Corp., J. Henry Schroder Trust Co., Rockefeller Center, Inc., Equitable Life Assurance Society (J.P. Morgan), and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
Other appointments during the First World War were as follows:
J.W. McIntosh, director of the Armour meat-packing trust, who was made chief of Subsistence for the United States Army in 1918. He later became Comptroller of the Currency during Coolidge's Administration, and ex-officio member of the Federal Reserve Board. During the Harding Administration, he did his bit as Director of Finance for the United States Shipping Board when the Board sold ships to the Dollar Lines for a hundredth of their cost and then let the Dollar Line default on its payments. After leaving public service, J.W. McIntosh became a partner in J.W. Wollman Co., New York Stockbrokers.
W.P.G. Harding, Governor of the Federal Reserve Board, was also managing director of the War Finance Corporation under Eugene Meyer.
George R. James, member of the Federal Reserve Board in 1923-24, had been Chief of the Cotton Section of the War Industries Board.
Henry P. Davison, senior partner in J.P. Morgan Co., was appointed head of the American Red Cross in 1917 in order to get control of the three hundred and seventy million dollars cash which was collected from the American people in donations.
Ronald Ransom, banker from Atlanta, and Governor of the Federal Reserve Board under Roosevelt in 1938-39, had been the Director in Charge of Personnel for Foreign Service for the American Red Cross in 1918.
John Skelton Williams, Comptroller of the Currency, was appointed National Treasurer of the American Red Cross.
President Woodrow Wilson, the great liberal who signed the Federal Reserve Act and declared war against Germany, had an odd career for a man who is now enshrined as a defender of the common people. His chief supporter in both his campaigns for the Presidency was Cleveland H. Dodge, of Kuhn Loeb, who controlled National City Bank of New York. Dodge was also President of the Winchester Arms Company and Remington Arms Company. He was very close to President Wilson throughout the great democrat's political career. Wilson lifted the embargo on shipment of arms to Mexico on February 12, 1914, so that Dodge could ship a million dollars worth of arms and ammunition to Carranza and promote the Mexican Revolution. Kuhn, Loeb Co. which owned the Mexican National Railways System, had become dissatisfied with the administration of Huerta and had him kicked out.
When the British naval auxiliary Lusitania was sunk in 1915, it was loaded with ammunition from Dodge's factories. Dodge became Chairman of the "Survivors of Victims of the Lusitania Fund", which did so much to arouse the public against Germany. Dodge also was notorious for using professional gangsters against strikers in his plants, yet the liberal Wilson does not appear to have ever been disturbed by this.
@insert CHART VII
CHART VII
This chart shows the interlocks of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York with Citibank, Guaranty Bank and Trust Co. (J.P. Morgan), J.P. Morgan Co., Morgan Guaranty Trust Co., Alex Brown & Sons (Brown Brothers Harriman), Kuhn Loeb & Co., Los Angeles and Salt Lake RR (controlled by Kuhn Loeb Co.), and Westinghouse (controlled by Kuhn Loeb Co.).
@insert CHART VIII
CHART VIII
This chart shows the link between the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Brown Brothers Harriman, Sun Life Assurance Co. (N.M. Rothschild and Sons), and the Rockefeller Foundation.
Another clue to Wilson's peculiar brand of liberalism is to be found in Chaplin's book Wobbly, which relates how Wilson scrawled the word "REFUSED" across the appeal for clemency sent him by the aging and ailing Eugene Debs, who had been sent to Atlanta Prison for "speaking and writing against war". The charge on which Debs was convicted was "spoken and written denunciation of war". This was treason to the Wilson dictatorship, and Debs was imprisoned. As head of the Socialist Party, Debs ran for the Presidency from Atlanta Prison, the only man ever to do so, and polled more than a million votes. It was ironic that Debs' leadership of the Socialist Party, which at that time represented the desires of many Americans for an honest government, should fall into the sickly hands of Norman Thomas, a former student and admirer of Woodrow Wilson at Princeton University. Under Thomas' leadership, the Socialist Party no longer stood for anything, and suffered a steady decline in influence and prestige.
Wilson continued to be deeply involved in the Bolshevik Revolution, as were House and Wiseman. Vol. 3, p. 421 of House Intimate Papers records a cable from Sir William Wiseman to House from London, May 1, 1918, suggesting allied intervention at the invitation of the Bolsheviki to help organize the Bolshevik forces. Lt. Col. Norman Thwaites, in his memoirs, Velvet and Vinegar says,
"Often during the years 1917-20 when delicate decisions had to be made, I consulted with Mr. (Otto) Kahn, whose calm judgment and almost uncanny foresight as to political and economic tendencies proved most helpful. Another remarkable man with whom I have been closely associated is Sir William Wiseman who was advisor on American affairs to the British delegation at the Peace Conference, and liaison officer between the American and British government during the war. He was rather more the Col. House of this country in his relations with Downing Street."81
In the summer of 1917, Woodrow Wilson named Col. House to head the American War Mission to the Interallied War Conference, the first American mission to a European council in history. House was criticized for naming his son-in-law, Gordon Auchincloss, as his assistant on this mission. Paul Cravath, the lawyer for Kuhn, Loeb Company, was third in charge of the American War Mission. Sir William Wiseman guided the American War Mission in its conferences. In The Strangest Friendship in History, Viereck writes,
"After America entered the War, Wiseman, according to Northcliffe, was the only man who had access at all times to the Colonel and to the White House. Wiseman rented an apartment in the house where the Colonel lived. David Lawrence referred to the Fifty-Third Street house (New York City) jestingly as the American No. 10 Downing St. . . . Col. House had a special code used only with Sir William Wiseman. Col. House was Bush, the Morgans were Haslam, and Trotsky was Keble."82
Thus these two "unofficial" advisors to the British and American governments had a code solely for each other, which no one else could understand. Even stranger was the fact that the international Communist espionage apparatus for many years used Col. House's book, Philip Dru, Administrator, as their official code book. Francois Coty writes,
"Gorodin, Lenin's agent in China, was alleged to have with him a copy of the book published by Col. House, Philip Dru, Administrator and a code expert who lived in China told this writer that the purpose of having constant access to this book by Gorodin was to use it for coding and decoding messages."83
After the Armistice, Woodrow Wilson assembled the American Delegation to the Peace Conference, and embarked for Paris. It was, on the whole, a most congenial group, consisting of the bankers who had always guided Wilson's policies. He was accompanied by Bernard Baruch, Thomas W. Lamont of J.P. Morgan Co., Albert Strauss of J & W Seligman bankers, who had been chosen by Wilson to replace Paul Warburg on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, J.P. Morgan, and Morgan lawyers Frank Polk and John W. Davis. Accompanying them were Walter Lippmann, Felix Frankfurter, Justice Brandeis, and other interested parties. Mason's biography of Brandeis states that "In Paris in June of 1919, Brandeis met with such friends as Paul Warburg, Col. House, Lord Balfour, Louis Marshall, and Baron Edmond de Rothschild."
Indeed, Baron Edmond de Rothschild served as the genial host to the leading members of the American Delegation, and even turned over his Paris mansion to them, although the lesser members had to rough it at the elegant Hotel Crillon with Col. House and his personal staff of 201 servants.
@insert CHART IX
CHART IX
This chart shows the interlocks between the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and J.P. Morgan Co., Morgan Guaranty Trust Co., and the Rothschild affiliates of Royal Bank of Canada, Sun Life Assurance Co. of Canada, Sun Alliance, and London Assurance Group.
Baruch later testified before the Graham Committee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
"I was economic advisor with the peace mission.
GRAHAM: Did you frequently advise the President while there?
BARUCH: Whenever he asked my advice I gave it. I had something to do with the reparations clauses. I was the American Commissioner in charge of what they called the Economic Section. I was a member of the Supreme Economic Council in charge of raw metals.
GRAHAM: Did you sit in the council with the gentlemen who were negotiating the treaty?
BARUCH: Yes, sir, some of the time.
GRAHAM: All except the meetings that were participated in by the Five? (The Five being the leaders of the five allied nations).
BARUCH: And frequently those also."
Paul Warburg accompanied Wilson on the American Commission to Negotiate Peace as his chief financial advisor. He was pleasantly surprised to find at the head of the German delegation his brother, Max Warburg, who brought along Carl Melchior, also of M.M. Warburg Company, William Georg von Strauss, Franz Urbig, and Mathias Erzberger.
Thomas W. Lamont states in his privately printed memoirs, Across World Frontiers, "The German delegation included two German bankers of the Warburg firm whom I happened to know slightly and with whom I was glad to talk informally, for they seemed to be striving earnestly to offer some reparations composition that might be acceptable to the Allies."84 Lamont was also pleased to see Sir William Wiseman, chief advisor to the British delegation.
The bankers at the conference convinced Wilson that they needed an international government to facilitate their international monetary operations. Vol. IV, p. 52, Intimate Papers of Col. House quotes a message from Sir William Wiseman to Lord Reading, August 16, 1918, "The President has two main principles in view; there must be a League of Nations and it must be virile."
Wilson, who seems to have lived in a world of fantasy, was shocked when American citizens booed him during his campaign to have them sign over their hard won independence to what appeared to many to be an international dictatorship. He promptly went into a depression, and retired to his bedroom. His wife immediately shut the White House doors against Col. House, and from September 25, 1919 to April 13, 1920, she ruled the United States with the aid of an intimate friend, her "military aide", Col. Rixey Smith. As everyone was shut out of their deliberations, no one ever knew which of the pair functioned as the President, and which was the Vice President.
The admirers of Woodrow Wilson were led for decades by Bernard Baruch, who stated that Woodrow Wilson was the greatest man he ever knew. Wilson's appointments to the Federal Reserve Board, and that body's responsibility for financing the First World War, as well as Wilson's handing over the United States to the immigrant triumvirate during the War, made him appear to be the most important single effector of ruin in American history.
It is no wonder that after his abortive trip to Europe, where he was hissed and jeered in the streets by the French people, and snickered at in the halls of Versailles by Orlando and Clemenceau, Woodrow Wilson returned home to take to his bed. The sight of the destruction and death in Europe, for which he was directly responsible, was perhaps more of a shock than he could bear. The Italian Minister Pentaleoni expressed the feelings of the European peoples when he wrote that:
"Woodrow Wilson is a type of Pecksniff who was now disappeared amid universal execration."
It is America's misfortune that our subsidized press and educational system have been devoted to enshrining a man who colluded in causing so much death and sorrow throughout the world.
The financial cartel suffered only minor setbacks in those crucial years. On February 12, 1917, The New York Times reported that "The five members of the Federal Reserve Board were impeached on the floor of the House by Rep. Charles A. Lindbergh, Republican member of the House Banking and Currency Committee. According to Mr. Lindbergh, 'the conspiracy began in' 1906 when the late J.P. Morgan, Paul M. Warburg, a present member of the Federal Reserve Board, the National City Bank and other banking firms 'conspired' to obtain currency legislation in the interest of big business and the appointment of a special board to administer such a law, in order to create industrial slaves of the masses, the aforesaid conspirators did conspire and are now conspiring to have the Federal Reserve Board administered so as to enable the conspirators to coordinate all kinds of big business and to keep themselves in control of big business in order to amalgamate all the trusts into one great trust in restraint and control of trade and commerce." The impeachment resolution was not acted on by the House.
The New York Times reported on August 10, 1918, "Mr. Warburg's term having expired, he voluntarily retired from the Federal Reserve Board." Thus the previous intimation that Mr. Warburg left the Federal Reserve Board because he had a brother in the Secret Service of a foreign country, namely, Germany, with whom we were at war, was not the cause of his retirement. In any case, he did not leave the Federal Reserve Administration, as he immediately took over J.P. Morgan's seat on the Federal Advisory Council, from which post he continued to administer the Federal Reserve System for the next ten years.
NOTES:
*NOTE: P.34. "House revealed to me in a confidential moment, 'Wilson was elected by Teddy Roosevelt.'" The Strangest Friendship in History, Woodrow Wilson and Col. House, George Sylvester Viereck, Liveright, N.Y. 1932
** 1787 Constitutional Convention
*** NOTE: Emmett Tyrell, Jr., Richmond Times Dispatch, Feb. 15, 1983 "Every peace movement of this century has been followed by war."
**** NOTE: New York Times, August 10, 1918; "Mr. (Paul) Warburg was the author of the plan organizing the War Finance Corporation."
***** NOTE: Baruch also stated in this testimony, "I carried through the war three major investments, Alaska Juneau Gold Mining Company (with partner Eugene Meyer), Texas Gulf Sulphur, and Atolia Mining Company (tungsten)." Rep. Mason, Illinois, told the House on February 21, 1921 that Baruch made more than $50 million in copper during the war.
(*) Baruch chose as Assistant Chairman of the War Industries Board a fellow Wall Street speculator, Clarence Dillon (Lapowitz). See biographies.
70. Cordell Hull, Memoirs, Macmillan, New York, 1948, v. 1, page
76
71. Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson, Dodd & Baker, v.5, p.
12-13
72. Max Warburg, Memoirs of Max Warburg, Berlin, 1936
73. David Farrar, The Warburgs, Michael Joseph, Ltd., London,
1974
74. "Truth Magazine", George Conroy, editor, Boston, issue of
December 16, 1912
75. Edward M. House, The Intimate Papers of Col. House, edited by
Charles Seymour, Vol. II, p. 399. Houghton, Mifflin Co.
76. George Sylvester Viereck, The Strangest Friendship in History,
Woodrow Wilson and Col. House, p. 106
77. Letters and Friendships of Sir Cecil Spring-Rice, p. 219-220
78. Col. Elisha Garrison, Roosevelt, Wilson and the Federal Reserve
Law, Christopher Publishing House, Boston, 1931, p. 260
79. Bernard Baruch, My Own Story, Henry-Holt Company, New York, 1957,
p. 194
80. Arthur D. Howden Smith, Men Who Rule America, Bobbs Merrill, N.Y.
1935, p. 112
81. Lt. Col. Norman Thwaites, Velvet and Vinegar, Grayson Co.,
London, 1932
82. George Sylvester Viereck, The Strangest Friendship in History,
Woodrow Wilson and Col. House, Liveright, N.Y. 1932, p. 172
83. Francois Coty, Tearing Away the Veil, Paris, 1940
84. Thomas W. Lamont, Across World Frontiers, (Privately printed)
1950, p. 138