Carter Glass

Carter Glass lived from 1858 to 1946 and was an American newspaper publisher and Democratic politician from Lynchburg, Virginia, who represented Virginia in both houses of Congress and served as United States Secretary of the Treasury under President Woodrow Wilson. He played a major role in establishing the United States financial regulatory system, helping create the Federal Reserve System and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. He was elected to the Senate of Virginia in 1899 and was a delegate to the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1902, where he was an influential advocate for segregationist policies, later described by a historian as making him the architect of disenfranchisement in Virginia. Elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1902, Glass became chairman of the House Committee on Banking and Currency in 1913 and worked with President Wilson to pass the Federal Reserve Act. After serving as Treasury Secretary from 1918 to 1920 he was appointed to the Senate, where he served until his death in 1946, co-sponsoring the 1933 Banking Act, known as the Glass-Steagall Act, which created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and separated investment banking from commercial banking.