Morgan & Company was not the only banking firm on WallStreet to endorse a three-way election as a means of defeating Taft.
Within the firm of Kuhn, Loeb & Company, Felix Warburg wasdutifully putting money into the Republican campaign as expected,but his brother, Paul Warburg and Jacob Schiff were backingWilson, while yet another partner, Otto Kahn, supportedRoosevelt. Other prominent Republicans who contributed to theDemocratic campaign that year were Bernard Baruch, HenryMorganthau, and Thomas Fortune Ryan.2 And the Rockefeller 1. Lundberg, pp. 106-12.
2. Kolko,
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THE CREATURE FROM JEKYLL ISLAND
component of the cartel was just as deeply involved. WilliamMcAdoo, who was Wilson's national campaign vice chairman, saysthat Cleveland Dodge of Rockefeller's National City Bank personally contributed $51,300—more than one-fourth the total raisedfrom all other sources. In McAdoo's words, "He was a Godsend."
Ferdinand Lundberg describes Dodge as "the financial geniusbehind 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 carefullyselected their candidate and set about to clear the way for hisvictory. The maneuver was brilliant. Who would suspect that WallStreet would support a Democrat, especially when the Partyplatform contained this plank: "We oppose the so-called AldrichBill or the establishment of a central bank; and ... what is known asthe money trust."
What irony it was. The Party of the working man, the Party ofThomas Jefferson—formed only a few generations earlier for thespecific purpose of opposing a central bank—was now cheering anew leader who was a political captive of Wall Street bankers andwho had agreed to the hidden agenda of establishing the FederalReserve System. As George Harvey later boasted, the financiers
"felt no animosity toward Mr. Wilson for such of his utterances asthey regarded as radical and menacing to their interests. He hadsimply played the political game."
William McAdoo, Wilson's national campaign vice chairman,destined to become Secretary of the Treasury, saw what washappening 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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