Jekyll Island Secret Meeting (Fed Creation)

Overview

The Jekyll Island meeting of November 1910 stands as one of the most consequential confirmed conspiracies in American financial history. A small group of men representing the most powerful banks and political interests in the United States gathered in strict secrecy at a private resort on Jekyll Island, Georgia, where they spent approximately ten days drafting the plan that would become the basis for the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 — the legislation creating the central banking system that has governed American monetary policy for over a century.

The meeting’s existence was kept secret for years. Participants traveled under assumed names, used only first names during the meeting, and denied that it had taken place when questioned. The secrecy was so effective that the meeting’s existence was not publicly confirmed until decades later, when several participants — including Frank Vanderlip and Paul Warburg — described it in their memoirs and in magazine articles. The fact that the nation’s private banking establishment designed the institution that would ostensibly regulate it, in a secret meeting facilitated by the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, provides the factual foundation for the century-long debate about the Federal Reserve’s legitimacy and purpose.

This entry is classified as confirmed because the meeting’s occurrence, participants, purpose, and outcome are all documented facts, acknowledged by the participants themselves and confirmed by subsequent historical research. The meeting was, by any definition, a secret conspiracy to influence national policy. The ongoing debate — and the reason this remains a subject of conspiratorial discourse — centers on interpretation: whether the Jekyll Island meeting was a responsible exercise in expert policy-making that produced a necessary institution, or a self-serving power grab by financial elites who designed a system to serve their interests at the expense of the public.

Origins & History

The Jekyll Island meeting occurred against the backdrop of a sustained debate about the structure of the American financial system. The United States had operated without a central bank since 1836, when President Andrew Jackson allowed the charter of the Second Bank of the United States to expire. The resulting system of largely unregulated private banking was characterized by periodic financial panics — severe credit crunches and bank runs that caused widespread economic hardship.

The most devastating of these was the Panic of 1907, during which the collapse of the Knickerbocker Trust Company triggered a cascading bank run that threatened the entire financial system. The crisis was famously resolved through the personal intervention of J.P. Morgan, who organized a consortium of bankers to provide liquidity to failing institutions. While Morgan’s intervention prevented a complete collapse, the fact that the nation’s financial stability depended on the willingness and ability of a single private individual to act as a lender of last resort demonstrated the urgent need for institutional reform.

In response to the 1907 panic, Congress established the National Monetary Commission in 1908, chaired by Senator Nelson Aldrich of Rhode Island. Aldrich was one of the most powerful members of the Senate, serving as chairman of the Finance Committee, and was closely connected to the banking establishment through both political alliances and family ties — his daughter Abigail married John D. Rockefeller Jr. in 1901.

The Monetary Commission studied banking systems around the world, with particular attention to the European central banks, and Aldrich traveled extensively to consult with European financial leaders. By 1910, Aldrich had assembled a substantial body of research but had not yet developed a specific proposal for American central banking reform.

The Jekyll Island meeting was organized in November 1910 to produce this proposal. The participants traveled from New York to Georgia in a private railroad car, using first names only and telling curious reporters that they were going on a hunting trip. The Jekyll Island Club, owned by a consortium of America’s wealthiest families including the Morgans, Rockefellers, and Vanderbilts, was chosen for its privacy and exclusivity.

The six key participants — aside from Aldrich — represented a cross-section of the American financial elite. Abraham Piatt Andrew was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, providing government expertise. Frank Vanderlip was president of National City Bank of New York (predecessor to Citibank), then the nation’s largest bank. Henry P. Davison was a senior partner at J.P. Morgan & Co., the most powerful investment bank. Charles D. Norton was president of the First National Bank of New York, another Morgan-affiliated institution. Benjamin Strong was the head of J.P. Morgan’s Bankers Trust Company and would later become the first president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Paul Warburg, a German-born partner at the investment bank Kuhn, Loeb & Co., brought intimate knowledge of the European central banking systems, particularly the German Reichsbank.

Over approximately ten days of intensive work, the group drafted what became known as the “Aldrich Plan” — a detailed proposal for a “National Reserve Association” that would serve as a central bank for the United States. The plan drew heavily on Warburg’s knowledge of European systems while attempting to address American political sensitivities about concentrated financial power.

The Aldrich Plan was introduced in Congress in 1911 but was politically toxic due to Aldrich’s well-known connections to the banking establishment and the Republican Party’s loss of the 1912 elections to Woodrow Wilson and the Democrats. The plan was revised and repackaged by Representative Carter Glass and Senator Robert Owen as the “Federal Reserve Act,” which incorporated many of the Aldrich Plan’s core provisions while restructuring the system to include more government oversight. Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act into law on December 23, 1913.

Key Claims

• Secret banker meeting: The Federal Reserve was designed in secret by a small group of the nation’s most powerful private bankers, without public knowledge or democratic input
• Self-regulation design: The bankers designed the institution that would regulate them, creating an inherent conflict of interest at the core of American monetary policy
• Private ownership: Despite its governmental veneer, the Federal Reserve is effectively a private banking cartel that serves the interests of its member banks rather than the public
• Wealth transfer mechanism: The Federal Reserve’s ability to create money and set interest rates functions as a mechanism for transferring wealth from the public to the banking establishment through inflation, debt, and monetary manipulation
• Deceptive naming: The system was deliberately named the “Federal Reserve” to give the impression of a government institution, when it is actually controlled by private banking interests
• Political manipulation: The passage of the Federal Reserve Act was achieved through political manipulation, including the strategic timing of the vote (December 23, 1913, when many members of Congress had left for Christmas break)
• Perpetual debt creation: The Federal Reserve system ensures perpetual government indebtedness to private banks, creating a permanent revenue stream for the banking establishment

Evidence

This theory is confirmed in its core factual claims — the secret meeting occurred, private bankers designed the Federal Reserve, and the process was deliberately concealed from the public.

Participant admissions: The most compelling evidence comes from the participants themselves. Frank Vanderlip wrote in a 1935 Saturday Evening Post article: “I was as secretive — indeed, as furtive — as any conspirator… Discovery, we knew, simply must not happen, or else all our time and effort would be wasted. If it were to be exposed publicly that our particular group had got together and written a banking bill, that bill would have no chance whatever of passage by Congress.” Paul Warburg described the meeting in his posthumously published memoir The Federal Reserve System: Its Origin and Growth (1930). Aldrich’s biographer Nathaniel Wright Stephenson described the meeting in detail in Nelson W. Aldrich: A Leader in American Politics (1930).

Meeting documentation: While no formal minutes of the Jekyll Island meeting survive, the Aldrich Plan itself — published in 1911 — represents the meeting’s output. The plan’s provisions closely match what the participants later described producing during the meeting, and its resemblance to the eventual Federal Reserve Act confirms the meeting’s central role in the system’s creation.

Federal Reserve structure: The Federal Reserve’s actual organizational structure confirms several of the theory’s claims. The twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks are owned by their member commercial banks. Member banks receive dividends on their stock. Private bankers serve on the boards of regional Fed banks and participate in the selection of regional bank presidents, who in turn vote on monetary policy through the Federal Open Market Committee.

Congressional timing: The Federal Reserve Act was voted on December 22, 1913, and signed by President Wilson on December 23, 1913, near the end of a Congressional session when many members had departed for the holiday recess. While the bill had been extensively debated throughout 1913, the timing of the final vote has been cited as evidence of deliberate manipulation.

Mainstream scholarly confirmation: The Jekyll Island meeting is not a fringe claim but a documented historical event confirmed by mainstream historians, including Roger Lowenstein (America’s Bank, 2015) and G. Edward Griffin (The Creature from Jekyll Island, 1994, though Griffin’s interpretive framework is more conspiratorial than mainstream).

Debunking / Verification

This theory is confirmed in its factual claims. The secret meeting occurred. Private bankers designed the Federal Reserve. The process was deliberately concealed from public scrutiny. These facts are not disputed by any serious historian.

The interpretive questions that remain subjects of legitimate debate include:

Was the secrecy justified? Defenders of the Federal Reserve argue that the secrecy was a pragmatic necessity — any banking reform proposal publicly associated with Wall Street bankers would have been politically impossible in the populist climate of the Progressive Era. The secrecy was not to conceal nefarious intent but to prevent premature political opposition. Critics counter that policy-making in secret by self-interested parties is inherently anti-democratic regardless of the stated justification.

Does the Fed serve public or private interests? The Fed’s track record is mixed by any objective assessment. It has stabilized the banking system and prevented the kind of frequent panics that characterized the pre-Fed era. However, it has also presided over periods of severe inflation, contributed to asset bubbles, and been criticized for prioritizing the stability of large banks over the interests of ordinary citizens, particularly during the 2008 financial crisis when it provided trillions of dollars in support to financial institutions while millions of Americans lost their homes.

Is the private ownership structure meaningful? While member banks technically own stock in their regional Fed banks, the practical significance of this ownership is debated. Member banks cannot sell or trade their stock and receive a fixed 6% dividend. The Fed’s profits are remitted to the Treasury. The Board of Governors is appointed by the President. These facts suggest that the “private ownership” of the Fed is more nominal than real, though critics argue that the structural connections between the Fed and the banking industry create conflicts of interest that influence policy in ways not captured by formal ownership structure analysis.

Was the Christmas timing significant? While the final vote occurred near the holiday recess, the bill had been extensively debated for months, and the key votes were not close — the Senate passed the act 43-25 and the House 298-60. The timing may have reduced the number of potential opponents present, but the wide margins suggest the bill would have passed regardless.

Cultural Impact

The Jekyll Island meeting has become one of the foundational narratives of American monetary conspiracy culture, providing a factual anchor for a wide range of theories about the Federal Reserve, central banking, and the financial system.

G. Edward Griffin’s The Creature from Jekyll Island (1994) brought the meeting to widespread public awareness and became a bestseller that remains in print after thirty years. Griffin’s interpretation — that the Fed is a banking cartel designed to protect the banking establishment at the expense of the public — has been enormously influential in libertarian, populist, and conspiracy communities. The book is required reading in some libertarian circles and has been cited by politicians including Ron Paul.

The Jekyll Island meeting has been central to the “End the Fed” movement, most prominently associated with Ron Paul, who ran for president in 2008 and 2012 on a platform that included abolishing the Federal Reserve. Paul’s book End the Fed (2009) drew heavily on the Jekyll Island narrative. The movement has continued through his son, Senator Rand Paul, and through various libertarian and populist organizations.

The meeting has also been incorporated into broader conspiracy narratives about the New World Order, the Bilderberg Group, and shadowy financial elites controlling world events. In these frameworks, the Jekyll Island meeting serves as proof that a small group of financial insiders can and do shape national and international policy in their own interests, with devastating consequences for ordinary people.

In academic economics and financial history, the Jekyll Island meeting is treated as a significant historical event that reflects the tensions inherent in American democracy between expertise and democratic participation, between the need for effective financial regulation and the danger of regulatory capture. The meeting is taught in economics courses and discussed in academic literature, though academic treatments generally emphasize the contextual factors — the Panic of 1907, the absence of a central bank, and the Progressive Era reform climate — rather than the conspiratorial interpretation.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta maintains a visitors’ center on Jekyll Island that describes the 1910 meeting and its role in the Fed’s creation, reflecting the institution’s acknowledgment of this aspect of its history.

Timeline

• 1907 — Panic of 1907 demonstrates the need for a central banking institution; J.P. Morgan personally organizes a bailout
• 1908 — Congress establishes the National Monetary Commission, chaired by Senator Nelson Aldrich
• 1908-1910 — Aldrich and the Monetary Commission study banking systems worldwide
• November 1910 — Secret meeting at Jekyll Island Club produces the “Aldrich Plan” for a National Reserve Association
• January 1911 — Aldrich presents his plan to the National Monetary Commission
• 1911-1912 — Aldrich Plan introduced in Congress but faces political opposition due to Aldrich’s Wall Street connections
• November 1912 — Woodrow Wilson elected president; Democrats gain control of Congress
• 1913 — Carter Glass and Robert Owen revise and repackage the Aldrich Plan as the Federal Reserve Act
• December 23, 1913 — President Wilson signs the Federal Reserve Act into law
• November 1914 — Federal Reserve System begins operations
• 1914 — Benjamin Strong, a Jekyll Island participant, becomes president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York
• 1930 — Paul Warburg’s memoir posthumously published, describing the Jekyll Island meeting
• 1935 — Frank Vanderlip publicly describes the meeting and its secrecy in the Saturday Evening Post
• 1994 — G. Edward Griffin publishes The Creature from Jekyll Island, bringing the meeting to widespread public awareness
• 2009 — Ron Paul publishes End the Fed, drawing on the Jekyll Island narrative
• 2010 — Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta opens Jekyll Island conference center commemorating the meeting’s centennial

Sources & Further Reading

• Lowenstein, Roger. America’s Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve. New York: Penguin Press, 2015.
• Griffin, G. Edward. The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve. Westlake Village: American Media, 1994.
• Vanderlip, Frank A. “From Farm Boy to Financier.” Saturday Evening Post, February 9, 1935.
• Warburg, Paul M. The Federal Reserve System: Its Origin and Growth. New York: Macmillan, 1930.
• Stephenson, Nathaniel Wright. Nelson W. Aldrich: A Leader in American Politics. New York: Scribner’s, 1930.
• Paul, Ron. End the Fed. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2009.
• Wicker, Elmus. The Great Debate on Banking Reform: Nelson Aldrich and the Origins of the Fed. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2005.
• Meltzer, Allan H. A History of the Federal Reserve, Volume 1: 1913-1951. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.