America's Money Machine

The Bill Considered 73
Congress meantime had completed its action on a tariffbill. The Payne­
Aldrich Tariff of 1909 had recognized the public demand for freer trade
by scaling down the rates set in the Dingley Tariff of 1897 (averaging 57
per cent) to around 38 per cent. The Underwood Tariff now reduced
duties another 8 points to an average of 30 per cent. It put iron, steel,
rClW wool and sugar on the fr.ee list. The bill was signed October 3.
The Congressional whips now had difficulty in holding the House in
session while waiting for the Senate Committee to make its report on the
currency bill. "An illness seemed to sweep over the House ofRepresentatives
today, to judge by the number of requests from members to be
excus.ed from attending on the ground that indisposition kept them from
Washington," reported the Times, 7 and added, "The House laughed derisively
as those requests were made."
Finally, on October 20, President Wilson was compelled to agree toa
recess until the bill could be reported out, but for not later than November
15. At the same time he let it be known that he would not oppose
amendments to reduce the number of reserve banks and to remove the
Secretary of Agriculture and the Comptroller of the Currency from the
Federal Reserve Board. His Republican opposition, nettled at the long
delay, now announced that they would oppose any recess.
At this point Frank A. Vanderlip appeared before the Senate Banking
and Currency Committee with a draft of the plan he had enunciated
earlier. The proposal threw the debate into ,even greater confusion. Here
was a Wall Streeter cutting the ground from under the radicals by proposing
even greater government control, and exclusion ofbanker influence,
than the most radical member of the Committee had ever contemplated.
He had gotten his ideas, he admitted, from Senators Bristow of Kansas,
Reed of Missouri, Hitchcock of Nebraska, and O'Gorman of New York.
At the same time, his proposal for a single central bank, instead of
twelve or more, was the very item that the Democratic platform of the
previous yearhad blasted as the invention of the arch-conservative, Nelson
Aldrich, and was the thing that the Democratic Party had opposed
since AndrewJackson had killed the second Bank of the United States in
1832, when he vetoed the renewal of its charter.
Nine ofthe twelve Committee members indicated their approval ofthe
Vanderlip plan, but as the House was effectively under Presidential domination,
enthusiasm cooled when Wilson issued a statement reiterating
his warm endorsement of the pending bill. At the same time he
declined to receive Vanderlip and Henry P. Davison at the White