Marriner Stoddard Eccles was an American banker, industrialist and chairman of the Federal Reserve System.
Background
Marriner Stoddard Eccles was born on September 9, 1890 in in Logan, Utah, United States. He was the oldest of nine children of David Eccles and Ellen Stoddard. His father, a Scottish immigrant, made a fortune in the northwest lumber business and founded fifty-four banking and industrial enterprises in Oregon, Idaho, and Utah.
Education
He graduated from the high school level of Brigham Young College in Logan in 1909 and then served a proselytizing mission for the Mormon Church in Scotland.
Career
As a youth, Marriner worked in his father's railroads, lumber mills, and banks.
Upon the death of his father in 1912, Marriner assumed control of several of his father's business enterprises, formed the Eccles Investment Company, a family holding company, and managed Ogden First National Bank, Ogden Savings Bank, Utah Construction Company, Amalgamated Sugar Company, Mountain States Implement Company, Sego Milk Products Company, the Eccles Hotel, and two lumber companies. In 1925 he joined with the Browning family of Ogden to form the Eccles-Browning Affiliated Banks and acquired several western country banks.
On June 15, 1928, he and his brother George Eccles, Marriner Browning, and E. G. Bennett of Idaho Falls organized the First Security Corporation, the first multibank holding company in the United States. During the early years of the Great Depression, faced with bank ruins and failing businesses, Eccles realized the need for a compensatory federal fiscal and monetary policy that would permit enhanced creation of credit (through lower interest rates and relaxed reserve requirements for banks) in depressed years and tighter controls in inflationary times.
His talks to banking and business groups on this theme led to an invitation to testify before the Senate Finance Committee. He advocated federal deficit financing to take care of the destitute, to finance public works programs, and to refinance farm mortgages, and he suggested national economic planning. Eccles helped write the Emergency Banking Act of 1933 and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Appointed assistant secretary of the Treasury in February 1934, he helped inaugurate the Federal Housing Act and revisions in the operation of the Federal Reserve banks. Eccles was nominated to the governorship of the Federal Reserve System and was approved by the Senate in February 1935.
In 1936 he was appointed chairman of the Board of Governors of the revamped Federal Reserve System. He was reappointed to the board in 1944. In 1935 the stock market started a yearlong climb and Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr. , responding to "sound money" advocates, advocated a return to a balanced budget. Eccles, however, saw no reason to retrench. Unemployment was still high, the nation's industrial capacity was still underutilized, and the carrying charges on the debt were less than 1 percent of the national income.
During the recession of 1937-1938, a major economic downturn, Eccles persuaded President Franklin D. Roosevelt to embark on a deliberate policy of increased public spending. Programs of public construction, social welfare, cultural development, and military preparedness were expanded. A slow recovery followed. During World War II, Eccles was a principal adviser to President Roosevelt on economic programs. He was an active participant in the Bretton Woods Conference that worked out the agreements creating the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
He was also the leading spokesman in obtaining approval for the $3. 5 billion loan to Great Britain in 1946.
Back in Utah and San Francisco, Eccles resumed active participation in the family's businesses, serving as chairman of the board of First Security Corporation, Amalgamated Sugar Company, and Utah Construction Company (then based in San Francisco). As the nation's monetary inflation continued and minerals became more valuable, Eccles directed Utah Construction into purchasing and working minerals. Operating worldwide, the company made substantial profits, as did other companies in which Eccles was involved.
Utah Construction and Mining became Utah International in 1971 and merged with General Electric Corporation in 1976 in the largest corporate merger in United States history to that time. In the 1960's, Eccles became active in speaking and writing about overpopulation, the Vietnam War (which he vigorously opposed), and the necessity of American recognition of the People's Republic of China.
He served on the board of the American Assembly sponsored by Columbia University, founded the Marriner S. Eccles Library of Political Economy and the Marriner S. Eccles Graduate Fellowship in Political Economy at the University of Utah, and created the Marriner S. Eccles Foundation, which funded various cultural, scientific, and educational organizations, particularly in Utah. In 1973 he established the Marriner S. Eccles Professorship of Public and Private Management at the Stanford University School of Business. Eccles died in Salt Lake City. In 1982 the Federal Reserve Building in Washington, D. C. , was named in his honor.
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Politics
Similarly, he was a strong advocate of the Marshall Plan of 1948-1949, which helped to rebuild war-torn Europe. After the war Eccles argued without much success for an anti-inflationary fiscal and monetary policy.
When President Harry Truman failed to reappoint him as chairman of the Board of Governors in 1948, he remained on the board as vice-chairman and spoke out strongly against administration measures he regarded as fiscally harmful. Under his influence the Federal Reserve was able to free itself from domination by the Treasury in 1951. Eccles retired from the board the same year.
Views
Quotations:
"As mass production has to be accompanied by mass consumption, mass consumption, in turn, implies a distribution of wealth . .. to provide men with buying power. . .. Instead of achieving that kind of distribution, a giant suction pump had by 1929-30 drawn into a few hands an increasing portion of currently produced wealth. . .. The other fellows could stay in the game only by borrowing. When their credit ran out, the game stopped. "
Connections
He married May Campbell ("Maisie") Young in July 1913. They had four children.
In 1950, Eccles was divorced from Maisie. He then married Sara (Sallie) Maddison Glassie, a socially prominent Washington, D. C. , resident, on December 29, 1951.