Nelson W. Aldrich

Nelson W. Aldrich
United States Senator from Rhode Island
In office 1881–1911
Preceded by	Ambrose Burnside
Succeeded by	Henry F. Lippitt
Personal details
Born	Nelson Wilmarth Aldrich (1841-11-06)November 6, 1841 Foster, Rhode Island
Died	April 16, 1915(1915-04-16) (aged 73) New York, New York
Political party	Republican
Spouse(s)	Abigail Pearce Truman Chapman (m. 1866)
Alma mater	East Greenwich Academy
Profession	Businessman

Nelson Wilmarth Aldrich (November 6, 1841 — April 16, 1915) was a prominent American politician and a leader of the Republican Party in the Senate, where he served from 1881 to 1911.

Because of his impact on national politics and central position on the pivotal Senate Finance Committee, he was referred to by the press and public alike as the "General Manager of the Nation", dominating all tariff and monetary policies in the first decade of the 20th century. In a career that spanned three decades, Aldrich helped to create an extensive system of tariffs that protected American factories and farms from foreign competition, while driving the price of consumer goods artificially high. He was a party to the re-structuring of the American financial system through the institution of the federal income tax amendment, which he originally opposed^{[citation needed]}, and the Federal Reserve System. He stated that he believed these reforms would lead to greater efficiency. Aldrich became wealthy with insider investments in street railroads, sugar, rubber and banking.^{[citation needed]} His son Richard Steere Aldrich became a U.S. Representative, and his daughter, Abby, married John D. Rockefeller, Jr., the only son of John D. Rockefeller. Her son and his grandson Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller, served as Vice President of the United States under Gerald Ford.

Family background

Portrait of Senator Aldrich

Aldrich was born into a family descended from John Winthrop, William Wickenden, and Roger Williams.^[1][2] His branch passed through generations of declining circumstances. His father was Anan E. Aldrich, an industrial mill hand, and mother Abby Burgess. The first American Aldrich ancestor was George Aldrich, an immigrant who settled in Mendon, Massachusetts in the 17th century. The Aldrich Family Association was located in the neighboring community of Uxbridge, Massachusetts, once part of Mendon, on the Rhode Island border, home also of the family cemetery. It was in Rhode Island that Nelson Aldrich grew up and prospered. He attended public schools in East Killingly, Conn., (the easternmost portion of Connecticut) and the East Greenwich Academy a boarding school in Rhode Island.^[3] The Aldrich family has, since the advent of Nelson W., grown to become a political dynasty on the American landscape, with U.S. Senators, a Vice President, and various political figures in a number of states.

Political career

Aldrich's home in Providence, a National Historic Landmark

Aldrich's first job was clerking for the largest wholesale grocer in the state, where he worked his way up to become a partner in the firm. On October 9, 1866 he married Abigail Pearce Truman "Abby" Chapman, a wealthy woman with impressive antecedents. By 1877, Nelson had a major effect on state politics, even before his election to the United States Congress.^[4] He served as the president of the Providence city council and Speaker of the Rhode Island House of Representatives.

In 1878 the Republican bosses of Rhode Island endorsed him for the US House of Representatives; in 1881 he was elected to the U.S. Senate. He served in the Senate from 1881 to 1911 as an influential Republican, becoming chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.

In 1906 Aldrich sold his interest in the Rhode Island street railway system to the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, whose president, Charles Sanger Mellen, was Wall Street banker J. P. Morgan's loyal ally. Also in 1906 Aldrich and other American financiers invested heavily in mines and rubber in the Belgian Congo. They supported Belgium's King Leopold II, who had imposed slave labor conditions in the colony.^[5]

In 1907, J.P. Morgan published rumors that the Knickerbocker Trust Company was insolvent. Some later historians believe this was a deliberate act of market manipulation which precipitated the Panic of 1907, and consolidated the preeminence of the banks controlled by Morgan.^[6] The panic itself led to the passage of the Aldrich–Vreeland Act in 1908, which established the National Monetary Commission, sponsored and headed by Aldrich. After issuing a series of 30 reports, this commission drew up the Aldrich Plan, forming the basis for the Federal Reserve system.

As co-author of the Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act of 1909, Aldrich removed restrictive import duties on fine art, which enabled Americans to bring in very expensive European artworks that became the foundation of many leading museums.

In 1909, Aldrich introduced a constitutional amendment to establish an income tax, although he had declared a similar measure "communistic" a decade earlier. Aldrich was quite candid about his scheme to block the House bill that had been passed, declaring to the Senate: "I shall vote for the corporation tax as a means to defeat the income tax."

The compromise passed unanimously in the Senate and by a vote of 318 to 14 in the House. The corporate excise tax would be levied, and the income-tax constitutional amendment would be sent out to the states for ratification—which Taft and Aldrich thought was impossible.

The plan went awry. After 1909, the U.S. underwent a major political transformation. Democrats and progressive Teddy Roosevelt Republicans swept many state elections. Woodrow Wilson won the 1912 presidential election. Democrats controlled both houses of Congress. On Feb. 3, 1913, the legislatures in Delaware, New Mexico and Wyoming voted for the amendment, pushing the total to the required 36 states. The 16th Amendment was officially adopted on Feb. 25, three and a half years after the Taft-Aldrich compromise had supposedly been relegated the income tax to the dust bin.

Taft tries to get progressive ideas into Aldrich

Aldrich also served as chairman of the Senate Republican Conference. During his Senate tenure he chaired the committees on Finance, Transportation Routes to the Seaboard, Rules, and the Select Committee on Corporations Organized in the District of Columbia.

Federal Reserve Act

Following the Panic of 1907, Aldrich was named chairman of the Congressionally established National Monetary Commission. An ostensible proponent of Progressive Era themes of Efficiency and scientific expertise, he led a team of experts to study the European national banks. After his trip, he came to believe that Britain, Germany and France had much superior central banking systems.^[7] He worked with several key bankers and economists, including Paul Warburg, Abram Andrew and Henry Davison, to design a plan for an American central bank in 1911. A key meeting that shaped the Federal Reserve Act was held in secret in November, 1910, at the Jekyll Island Club on Jekyll Island, Georgia. Aldrich and J.P. Morgan were both members of the Jekyll Island Club (also known as The Millionaires Club). In 1913 Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act patterned after Aldrich's vision into law.

Family Prominence

His daughter Abigail Greene "Abby" Aldrich was a philanthropist who married philanthropist John Davison Rockefeller, Jr., and their second son Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller was a four-term Governor of New York who campaigned for the Republican presidential nomination in 1960, 1964, and 1968, and was named Vice President of the United States under President Gerald Ford by the Congress in 1974. Aldrich's son Winthrop Williams Aldrich served as chairman of the Chase National Bank).

Aldrich was very active in the Freemasons and was Treasurer of the Grand Lodge of Rhode Island. He died on April 16, 1915, in New York City, and was buried in Swan Point Cemetery in Providence, Rhode Island. The Nelson W. Aldrich House on 110 Benevolent Street in Providence serves as the headquarters for the Rhode Island Historical Society.

Congressional committee assignments

Further reading

• Kert, Bernice. Abby Aldrich Rockefeller: The Woman in the Family. New York: Random House, 1993.
• Phillips, David Graham, "The Treason of the Senate: Aldrich, The Head of It All," Cosmopolitan, March 1906.
• Steffens, Lincoln, "Rhode Island: A State For Sale," McClure's Magazine, February 1904, 337 - 353.
• Stephenson, Nathaniel W. Nelson W. Aldrich: A Leader In American Politics. 1930.
• Sternstein, Jerome L. "Corruption in the Gilded Age Senate: Nelson W. Aldrich and the Sugar Trust," Capitol Studies 6 (Spring 1978): pp. 13–37.
• Wicker, Elmus. The Great Debate on Banking Reform: Nelson Aldrich and the Origins of the Fed, Ohio State University Press, 2005.
• Griffin, G. Edward Creature from Jekyll Island: A second look at the federal reserve, American Media, July 1994.

Notes

Aldrich Jr., Nelson W., Old Money: The Mythology of America's Upper Class, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. 1988

External links

• Nelson W. Aldrich at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress

v t e United States Senators from Rhode Island Class 1 Foster Potter Howland Malbone Champlin Hunter De Wolf Robbins Dixon I Sprague III Francis A. Greene James Simmons Arnold Sprague IV Burnside Aldrich Lippitt Gerry Hebert Gerry McGrath Leahy Pastore J. Chafee L. Chafee Whitehouse Class 2 Stanton Bradford R. Greene Ellery Fenner Mathewson Howell Burrill Knight Simmons Clarke Allen Anthony Sheffield Chace Dixon III Wetmore Colt Metcalf Green Pell Reed

v t e Chairmen of the United States Senate Committee on Rules and Administration Committee on Rules 1870–1947 Ferry Blaine Morgan Frye Aldrich Blackburn Aldrich Spooner Knox Crane Overman Knox Curtis Moses Copeland Neely Byrd Committee on Rules and Administration 1947– Brooks Hayden Jenner Green Hennings Mansfield Jordan Cannon Pell Mathias Ford Stevens Warner McConnell Dodd McConnell Dodd Lott Feinstein Schumer

v t e Chairmen of the United States Senate Committee on Finance Campbell Eppes Sanford Holmes Lowrie Smith Webster Wright Clay Evans Woodbury Calhoun Lewis Atherton Dickinson Hunter Pearce Fessenden Sherman Fessenden Sherman Morrill Bayard Morrill Voorhees Morrill Aldrich Penrose Simmons Penrose McCumber Smoot Harrison George Millikin George Millikin Byrd Long Dole Packwood Bentsen Moynihan Packwood Roth Baucus Grassley Baucus Grassley Baucus