Carter Glass

For more information on Carter Glass, visit Britannica.com.

Carter Glass sponsored important banking laws of the twentieth century, among them the Glass-Steagall Acts of 1932 and 1933 (48 Stat. 162). He wrote and sponsored the legislation that established the Federal Reserve System in 1913. He was also a key player in making amendments to the system during the decades following its establishment. A Virginia Democrat, he served as secretary of the treasury under Woodrow Wilson and was a member of the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Glass was born January 4, 1858, in Lynchburg, Virginia, the youngest of twelve children. His mother, Augusta Christian Glass, died when he was two years old, and Glass was raised by a sister ten years older than he. His father, Robert H. Glass, was the editor of the Daily Republic.

Following the Civil War, Glass's father turned down an offer of reappointment to his old position as postmaster general, because he did not want to be on the payroll of the nation he had just fought. Having lived through a financially strapped childhood during the Reconstruction period, Glass would as an adult consistently oppose strong centralized control by the federal government except in emergencies.

Glass left school at age fourteen to begin a printer's apprenticeship at his father's paper. He completed his apprenticeship in 1876 when the family moved to Petersburg, Virginia. Glass soon moved back to Lynchburg to work as an auditor for the railroad. In 1880 he became the city editor, and then the editor, of the Lynchburg News. With savings and the financial backing of friends, he purchased that newspaper in 1888. The same year he married Aurelia McDearmon Caldwell, a teacher. In the early 1890s, Glass bought and consolidated other Lynchburg newspapers.

In 1899 Glass was elected to the Virginia state senate, where he was put on the committee of finance and banking. During his career as a state legislator, he was an active debater on suffrage for African Americans, the subject of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. He supported restricting voting rights for illiterate former slaves on the theory that these votes were used by those in power to maintain their power. He also argued in defense of the Eighteenth Amendment, prohibiting the sale of alcohol. In 1933, however, he voted for its appeal on the grounds that it was futile to maintain a law that could not be enforced.

In 1902 Glass was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served until 1918. In 1904 he was appointed to the Banking and Currency Committee. He devoted the next several years to studying the topic of banking, and introduced few bills during this period.

The U.S. banking system of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was unstable, leading to a series of banking panics over a thirty-four-year span. By the end of the nineteenth century, banks were largely independent from, and often in competition with, one another. The relatively young U.S. banking system was burdened primarily with a lack of flexibility in lending (or rediscounting) policies and currency availability, as well as weak supervision and inadequate check collection systems.

In the first decade of the twentieth century, Glass began crafting a bill to address the need for banking reform. In 1912 Democrat Wilson was elected president of the United States. Glass, now chair of the House Banking Committee, enlisted and got Wilson's support for his reform bill.

The Federal Reserve Act, 12 U.S.C.A. §221 et seq., the most radical banking reform bill in U.S. history, was passed into law December 23, 1913. In presenting his bill to the House, Glass said in his closing remarks, "I have tried to reconcile conflicting views, to compose all friction and technical knowledge of the banker, the wisdom of the philosopher, and the rights of the people."

According to its preamble, Glass's bill was created to "provide for the establishment of Federal reserve banks, to furnish an elastic currency, to afford means of rediscounting commercial paper, to establish a more effective supervision of banking in the United States, and for other purposes." It provided the establishment of up to twelve Federal Reserve banks (district banks) to develop policy with the seven-member Federal Reserve Board in Washington, D.C. (This board's title was later changed to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.) Glass's plan also required all nationally chartered banks to be members of the Federal Reserve System and weakened the power of private banks. Although the Federal Reserve System would be criticized for failing to stave off the Great Depression in the 1930s, it would be credited with helping control the effects of a 1987 stock plunge.

During the years leading up to World War I, Glass headed a committee that investigated the act's effectiveness and made amendments as needed. Three test cases in 1923 and 1926 resulted in various changes in the act, which continues to be altered as circumstances dictate.

Glass was appointed Secretary of the Treasury in late 1918 and worked to develop and promote a new "Victory loan" under Wilson's administration (which was renamed "Fifth Liberty Loan" because the V looked like the Roman numeral for 5) as World War I drew to a close. These loans were bonds that the U.S. government encouraged Americans to buy to help generate revenue for war debts and for rebuilding war-torn Europe. In February 1920, Glass resigned as secretary and accepted a vacant seat in the U.S. Senate.

In early 1920, an election year, sentiments against Wilson grew. A movement took hold to select Glass as the Democratic presidential candidate. But Glass, a strong supporter and close friend of Wilson's throughout his lifetime, did not support the effort. Warren G. Harding, a critic of the Federal Reserve Board, was elected president in 1920.

In the late 1920s, conditions began to develop that would lead to a stock market crash and the subsequent Great Depression. In fall 1928 Glass wrote an article addressing his concern that the Reserve System was being misused for financial speculation. In early 1929 he gave a speech on the Senate floor warning of financial disaster and urging that action be taken against individuals abusing the system in gambling ventures.

Glass also began work on amendments to reduce the consequences of the disaster he suspected was coming. This work resulted in the Glass-Steagall Acts of 1932 and 1933, sponsored by Glass and Representative Henry B. Steagall. The Glass-Steagall Acts marked the third time in early U.S. history that a major crisis precipitated banking reform. (The first was the Civil War and the development of the National Banking System; the second was the panic of 1907 and the development of the Federal Reserve Act.)

The act of 1932 liberalized terms under which member banks could borrow from the Federal Reserve System. The act of 1933, also called the Banking Act of 1933, established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. This institution guaranteed bank depositors' savings, separated commercial banking from investment banking and insurance underwriting, regulated interests on time deposits, and increased the power of the Federal Reserve Board.

Glass served in the Senate until 1946. He died May 28, 1946.

Quotes:

"A liberal is a man who is willing to spend somebody else's money."

Carter Glass
47th United States Secretary of the Treasury
In office December 16, 1918 – February 1, 1920
President	Woodrow Wilson
Preceded by	William G. McAdoo
Succeeded by	David F. Houston
United States Senator from Virginia
In office February 20, 1920 – May 28, 1946
Preceded by	Thomas S. Martin
Succeeded by	Thomas G. Burch
President pro tempore of the United States Senate
In office July 11, 1941 – January 2, 1945
Preceded by	Pat Harrison
Succeeded by	Kenneth McKellar
Born	January 4, 1858(1858-01-04) Lynchburg, Virginia, U.S.
Died	May 28, 1946 (aged 88) Washington, D.C., U.S.
Political party	Democratic
Profession	Politician, Editor

Carter Glass (January 4, 1858 – May 28, 1946) was a newspaper publisher and American politician from Lynchburg, Virginia. He served many years in Congress with the Democratic Party. He was a key figure in developing the U.S. legislation which created the system of Federal Reserve Banks, and then served as the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury under President Woodrow Wilson. He was also a strong advocate of disfranchising African-American voters, saying "Discrimination! Why that is exactly what we propose. To remove every negro voter who can be gotten rid of, legally, without materially impairing the numerical strength of the white electorate"^[1].

Contents 1 Youth, education, early career 2 Early politics 3 Congress, Secretary of the Treasury 4 Family, decline, death 5 Additional reading 6 References 7 External links

Youth, education, early career

Carter Glass was born in Lynchburg, Virginia, the fifth of twelve children. His mother, Augusta Elizabeth (née Christian) Glass, died in 1860, when he was only 2 years old and his sister, Nannie, ten years older, was his surrogate mother. His father, Robert Henry Glass, owned the Lynchburg Daily Republican, a newspaper and was also the postmaster of Lynchburg.

The American Civil War (1861-1865) broke out when Carter was 3 years old. His father initially worked to try to help keep Virginia from seceding. However, after the state did so, Robert Henry Glass served, initially in the Virginia forces in 1861, and then with the Confederate Army where he was a major on the staff of Brigadier General John B. Floyd, a former Governor of Virginia. Carter's father survived the Civil War, although 18 of his mother's relatives did not.

In poverty-stricken Virginia during the post-War period, young Carter received only a basic education. He became an apprentice printer to his father when he was 13 years old. Although no longer in school, young Carter continued his education through reading. His father kept an extensive library. Among the works he read were those of Plato, Edmund Burke and William Shakespeare. This would stimulate an intellectual interest in Glass which would be life-long. His formative years as Virginia struggled to resolve a large pre-War debt were to help mold his conservative fiscal thinking, much as it did others of Virginia's political leaders of his era.

When Carter Glass was 19 years old, he moved with his father to Petersburg. However, when he failed to obtain a desired job as a newspaper reporter in Petersburg, he returned to Lynchburg, where he went to work for former Confederate General William Mahone's Atlantic, Mississippi and Ohio Railroad (AM&O) at the company headquarters. Glass became a clerk in the auditor's office at the railroad, which was in receivership, from 1877 to 1880. Several years later, under new owners, the railroad was to become the Norfolk and Western (N&W), with headquarters relocated to Roanoke. However, by then, Glass had returned to work in the newspaper industry.

Photographic portrait of Carter Glass as a young man

At the age of 22, he finally became a reporter, a job he had long sought, for the Lynchburg News. He rose to become the newspaper's editor by 1887. The following year, the publisher retired and offered Glass the first option to purchase the business. Desperate to find financial backing, Glass received the unexpected assistance of a relative who loaned Glass enough to make a down payment of $100 on the $13,000 deal, and Glass became an editor and publisher.^[2]. Free to publish whatever he wished, Glass wrote bold editorials and encouraged tougher reporting, and the morning paper had increased sales. Soon, Glass was able to acquire the afternoon Daily Advance, to buy out the competing Daily Republican and to become the only newspaper publisher in Lynchburg. The modern-day Lynchburg News and Advance is the successor publication to his newspapers.

Early politics

As a prominent and respected newspaper editor, Carter Glass often supported candidates who ran against Virginia's Democrats of the post-Reconstruction period, who he felt were promoting bad fiscal policy. In 1896, the same year his father died, Carter Glass attended the Democratic National Convention as a delegate, and heard William Jennings Bryan speak. [1] He was elected to the Virginia State Senate in 1899, and was a delegate to the Virginia constitutional convention of 1901-1902. He was one of the most influential members of the convention, which imposed a poll tax and a literacy test in order to disenfranchise African Americans, but which also instituted measures associated with the Progressive movement, such as the establishment of the State Corporation Commission to regulate railroads and other corporations, replacing the former Virginia Board of Public Works.

Congress, Secretary of the Treasury

Former residence of Carter Glass located in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C.

Glass was elected to United States House of Representatives as a Democrat in 1902, to fill a vacancy. In 1913, he became Chairman of the House Committee on Banking and Currency, where he worked with President Woodrow Wilson, a fellow Virginian, on the Federal Reserve Act. In 1918, Wilson appointed him Secretary of the Treasury, succeeding William Gibbs McAdoo. His signature as Secretary of the Treasury can be found on series 1914 Federal Reserve Notes, issued while he was in office. He served in that role until 1920, when he was appointed to the United States Senate to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Virginia's senior senator, Thomas Staples Martin.

Martin had been widely regarded as the head of Virginia's Democratic Party, a role filled during the 1920s by Harry Flood Byrd of Winchester, another Virginia newspaperman who shared many of Glass' political views and headed the political machine of Conservative Democrats known as the Byrd Organization which dominated Virginia's politics until the 1960s. In 1933, Byrd became Virginia's junior Senator, joining Glass in the Senate after former Governor and then-senior U.S. Senator Claude A. Swanson was appointed as U.S. Secretary of the Navy by President Franklin Roosevelt. Both Glass and Byrd were opposed to Roosevelt's New Deal policies. Each was a strong supporter of fiscal conservatism and state's rights while representing Virginia in Congress. Glass and Byrd invoked senatorial courtesy to defeat Roosevelt's nomination of Floyd H. Roberts to a federal judgeship, as part of a greater conflict over control of federal patronage in Virginia.

Carter Glass served in the U.S. Senate for the remainder of his life, turning down the offer appointment as Secretary of the Treasury from President Roosevelt in 1933. When the Democrats regained control of the Senate in 1933, Glass became Chairman of the Appropriations Committee He was President pro tempore from 1941 to 1945. As a Senator, Glass's most notable achievement was passage of the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated the activities of banks and securities brokers and created FDIC insurance.

Family, decline, death

Carter Glass had married Aurelia McDearmon Caldwell, a school teacher, when he was age 28. They had four children. She died of a heart ailment in 1937. [2] A widower, Glass remarried in 1940 at the age of 82. His second wife, Mary Scott, was his constant companion as his health began to fail in the next few years. Living together at the Mayflower Hotel Apartments in Washington, D.C., starting in 1942, he began suffering from various age-related illnesses, and he did not attend Senate meetings after that time. However, he refused to resign despite many requests to do so, and even kept his committee chairmanship. Many visitors were also kept from him by his wife. [3]

Glass died in Washington, DC, on May 28, 1946 of congestive heart failure. He is buried in Spring Hill Cemetery, Lynchburg, VA.

"Montview", also known as the "Carter Glass Mansion", was built in 1923 on his farm, which was then outside Lynchburg in Campbell County. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and now serves as a museum on the grounds of Liberty University within the expanded city limits of Lynchburg, an independent city. The front lawn of "Montview" is the burial site of Dr. Jerry Falwell, founder of Liberty University.[4]

The Virginia Department of Transportation's Carter Glass Memorial Bridge was named in his honor in 1949. It carries the Lynchburg bypass of U.S. Route 29, major north-south highway in the region, across the James River between Lynchburg and Amherst County. [5]

A Chair in the department of Government, currently held by Dr. Barbara A. Perry, was created in his honor at Sweet Briar College.

Additional reading

• Biographical Dictionary of the United States Secretaries of the Treasury, 1789-1995 By Bernard S. Katz, C. Daniel Vencill, Greenwood Press

• Carter Glass: A Biography By Rixey Smith, Norman Beasley (1939) republished by Ayer Company Publishers, ISBN 0836954467

References

1. ^ Damon W. Root, When bigots become reformers: the Progressive Era's shameful record on race, May 2006
2. ^ Current Biography 1941, pp.321-23

External links

• Carter Glass at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress

United States House of Representatives
Preceded by Peter J. Otey	Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Virginia's 6th congressional district November 4, 1902 - December 16, 1918	Succeeded by James P. Woods
Political offices
Preceded by William G. McAdoo	United States Secretary of the Treasury Served under: Woodrow Wilson December 16, 1918 – February 1, 1920	Succeeded by David F. Houston
Preceded by B. Patton Harrison	President pro tempore of the United States Senate July 11, 1941 - January 2, 1945	Succeeded by Kenneth D. McKellar
United States Senate
Preceded by Thomas S. Martin	United States Senator (Class 2) from Virginia February 2, 1920 - May 28, 1946 Served alongside: Claude A. Swanson, Harry F. Byrd	Succeeded by Thomas G. Burch
Awards and achievements
Preceded by Alfred von Tirpitz	Cover of Time Magazine 9 June 1924	Succeeded by Pope Pius XI

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