Carter Glass: Father of the Federal Reserve and Virginia's Poll Tax

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Carter Glass, born in Lynchburg, Virginia, in 1858, lost his mother at age two, was raised largely by his teenage sister and earned the nickname Pluck for fighting back against bullies. His father was the local postmaster and a newspaper publisher, and a rival publisher died in a duel with his father's editor over postal access. Glass became a printer's apprentice at 13, clerked in a railroad auditor's office, became a reporter at 22, borrowed $100 for a down payment on his own paper and eventually became Lynchburg's sole newspaper publisher. Elected to the Virginia Senate in 1899, he was a leading delegate to the 1901 to 1902 Virginia Constitutional Convention, where he helped create the State Corporation Commission to regulate railroads and pushed a $1.50 poll tax and literacy tests that he openly said were meant to eliminate Black voters.

In the U.S. House from 1902, he chaired the Banking and Currency Committee from 1913 and worked with President Woodrow Wilson to pass the Federal Reserve Act, creating a system of regional reserve banks. Wilson named him Secretary of the Treasury in 1918, and he entered the Senate in 1920, later chairing Appropriations and cosponsoring the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, which separated investment and commercial banking and created the FDIC despite his dislike of deposit insurance. With fellow Virginia Senator Harry Byrd he opposed much of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. From 1942 he was confined to his apartment at the Mayflower Hotel, yet he kept his seat and chairmanship until his death in 1946.

• After the convention, the number of qualified Black voters in Virginia fell from 147,000 to 21,000.
• He believed a commoner like Shakespeare could not have written the plays credited to him.
• In 1930 he sought a Senate resolution banning dial telephones from the chamber and was defeated.
• His signature appeared on the 1914 series of Federal Reserve notes.
• Harvard Business School removed his name from a campus building in 2020, citing his work to disenfranchise Black citizens.