GLASS, CARTER
Carter Glass sponsored important banking laws of the twentieth century, among them the GLASS-STEAGALL ACTS of 1932 and 1933 (48 Stat. 162). He wrote and sponsored the legislation that established the FEDERAL RESERVE System in 1913. He was also a key player in making amendments to the system during the decades following its establishment. A Virginia Democrat, he served as secretary of the treasury under WOODROW WILSON and was a member of the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Glass was born January 4, 1858, in Lynch-
burg, Virginia, the youngest of twelve children.
His mother, Augusta Christian Glass, died when
he was two years old, and Glass was raised by a
sister ten years older than he. His father, Robert
H. Glass, was the editor of the Daily Republic.
Following the Civil War, Glass’s father turned
down an offer of reappointment to his old posi-
tion as postmaster general, because he did not
want to be on the payroll of the nation he had
just fought. Having lived through a financially
strapped childhood during the Reconstruction
period, Glass would as an adult consistently
oppose strong centralized control by the federal
government except in emergencies.
Glass left school at age fourteen to begin a
printer’s apprenticeship at his father’s paper. He
completed his apprenticeship in 1876 when the
family moved to Petersburg, Virginia. Glass soon
moved back to Lynchburg to work as an auditor
for the railroad. In 1880 he became the city editor,
and then the editor, of the Lynchburg News.With
savings and the financial backing of friends, he
purchased that newspaper in 1888. The same year
he married Aurelia McDearmon Caldwell, a
teacher. In the early 1890s, Glass bought and con-
solidated other Lynchburg newspapers.
In 1899 Glass was elected to the Virginia state
senate, where he was put on the committee of
finance and banking. During his career as a state
legislator, he was an active debater on suffrage for
African Americans, the subject of the Fourteenth
and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitu-
tion. He supported restricting VOTING RIGHTS
for illiterate former slaves on the theory that
these votes were used by those in power to main-
tain their power.He also argued in defense of the
EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT, prohibiting the sale
