prominent American politician and a leader of the Republican Party in the United States Senate
1841 CE
to 1915 CE
Nelson Wilmarth Aldrich (November 6, 1841 – April 16, 1915) is a prominent American politician and a leader of the Republican Party in the United States Senate, where he serves from 1881 to 1911.
By the 1890s he is one of the "Big Four" key Republicans who largely control the major decisions of the Senate, along with Orville H. Platt, William B. Allison and John Coit Spooner.
Because of his impact on national politics and central position on the pivotal Senate Finance Committee, he is referred to by the press and public alike as the "general manager of the Nation", dominating tariff and monetary policy in the first decade of the twentieth century.
Born in Foster, Rhode Island, Aldrich serves in the Union Army during the American Civil War.
After the war, he becomes a partner in a large wholesale grocery firm and wisn election to the Rhode Island House of Representatives.
He serves a single term in the United States House of Representatives before winning election to the Senate
In the Senate, he helps to create an extensive system of tariffs that protected American factories and farms from foreign competition, and he is a cosponsor of the Payne–Aldrich Tariff Act.
He also helps win Senate approval of the 1898 Treaty of Paris, which ends the Spanish–American War.
Aldrich leads the passage of the Aldrich–Vreeland Act, which establishes the National Monetary Commission to study the causes of the Panic of 1907.
He serves as chair of that commission, which draws up the Aldrich Plan as a basis for a reform of the financial regulatory system.
The Aldrich Plan strongly influences the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, which establishes the Federal Reserve System.
Aldrich also sponsors the Sixteenth Amendment, which allows for a direct federal income tax.
Deeply committed to the efficiency model of the Progressive Era, he believes that his financial and trade policies will lead to greater efficiency.
Reformers, however, denounce him as representative of the evils of big business.
His daughter Abigail marries into the Rockefeller family, and his descendants, including namesake Nelson A. Rockefeller, will become powerful figures in American politics and banking.
