Creature From Jekyll Island by G. Edward

deal of cash behind the Wilson campaign through Cleveland H. Dodge. Dodge and Perkins financed, to the extent of $35,500, the Trenton True American, a newspaper that circulated nationally with Wilson propaganda....

Throughout the three-cornered fight, Roosevelt had Munsey and George Perkins constantly at his heels, supplying money, going over his speeches, bringing people from Wall Street in to help, and, in general, carrying the entire burden of the campaign against Taft....

Perkins and J.P. Morgan and Company were the substance of the Progressive Party; everything else was trimming.... Munsey's cash contribution to the Progressive Party brought his total political outlay for 1912 to $229,255.72. Perkins made their joint contribution more than $500,000, and Munsey expended $1,000,000 in cash additionally to acquire from Henry Einstein the New York Press so that Roosevelt would have a New York City morning newspaper. Perkins and Munsey, as the Clapp [Senate Privileges and Election] Committee learned from Roosevelt himself, also underwrote the heavy expense of Roosevelt's campaign train. In short, most of Roosevelt's campaign fund was supplied by the two Morgan hatchet men who were seeking Taft's scalp.

Morgan & Company was not the only banking firm on Wall Street to endorse a three-way election as a means of defeating Taft.

Within the firm of Kuhn, Loeb & Company, Felix Warburg was dutifully putting money into the Republican campaign as expected, but his brother, Paul Warburg and Jacob Schiff were backing Wilson, while yet another partner, Otto Kahn, supported Roosevelt. Other prominent Republicans who contributed to the Democratic campaign that year were Bernard Baruch, Henry Morganthau, and Thomas Fortune Ryan.2 And the Rockefeller 1. Lundberg, pp. 106-12.

2. Kolko, Triumph, pp. 205-11.

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THE CREATURE FROM JEKYLL ISLAND

component of the cartel was just as deeply involved. William McAdoo, who was Wilson's national campaign vice chairman, says that Cleveland Dodge of Rockefeller's National City Bank personally contributed $51,300—more than one- fourth the total raised from all other sources. In McAdoo's words, 'He was a Godsend.'

Ferdinand Lundberg describes Dodge as 'the financial genius behind Woodrow Wilson.' Continuing, he says:

W i l s o n ' s nomination represented a personal triumph for Cleveland H. Dodge, director of the National City Bank, scion of the Dodge copper and munitions fortune.... The nomination represented no less a triumph for Ryan, Harvey, and J.P. Morgan and Company.

Sitting with Dodge as co-directors of the National City Bank at the time were the younger J.P. Morgan, now the head of the [Morgan]

firm, Jacob Schiff, William Rockefeller, J. Ogden Armour, and James Stillman. In short, except for George F. Baker, everyone whom the Pujo Committee had termed rulers of the 'Money Trust' was in this bank.

And so it came to pass that the monetary scientists carefully selected their candidate and set about to clear the way for his victory. The maneuver was brilliant. Who would suspect that Wall Street would support a Democrat, especially when the Party platform contained this plank: 'We oppose the so-called Aldrich Bill or the establishment of a central bank; and ... what is known as the money trust.'

What irony it was. The Party of the working man, the Party of Thomas Jefferson—formed only a few generations earlier for the specific purpose of opposing a central bank—was now cheering a new leader who was a political captive of Wall Street bankers and who had agreed to the hidden agenda of establishing the Federal Reserve System. As George Harvey later boasted, the financiers

'felt no animosity toward Mr. Wilson for such of his utterances as they regarded as radical and menacing to their interests. He had simply played the political game.'

William McAdoo, Wilson's national campaign vice chairman, destined to become Secretary of the Treasury, saw what was happening from a ringside seat. He said:

1. McAdoo, p. 117.

2. Lundberg, pp. 109,113.

3. Quoted by Lundberg, p. 120.

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The major contributions to any candidate's campaign fund are made by men who have axes to grind—and the campaign chest is the grindstone.... The fact is that there is a serious danger of this country becoming a pluto- democracy; that is, a sham republic with the real government in the hands of a small clique of enormously wealthy men, who speak through their money, and whose influence, even today, radiates to every corner of the United States.

Experience has shown that the most practicable method of getting hold of a political party is to furnish it with money in large quantities.

This brings the big money-giver or givers into close communion with the party leaders. Contact and influence do the rest.1

THE MONEY TRUST THEY LOVE TO HATE

Roosevelt actually had very little interest in the banking issue,