Marriner Eccles

Marriner Eccles was born in Logan, Utah, on September 9, 1890, to David Eccles, a leading Utah entrepreneur, and his second wife, Ellen Stoddard; he was the oldest of their nine children.⁠[1][2]

He worked in his father’s businesses as a child and attended Brigham Young College in Logan, which functioned more as a high school, leaving in June 1909 and ending his formal education.⁠[1][2]

From 1910 to 1912 Eccles served a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Glasgow, Scotland. After his father died in 1912, he took over the family’s business interests.⁠[2][1]

Eccles organized the Eccles Investment Company in 1916. By the mid-1920s he, his brother George and the Browning family controlled seventeen banks in Utah, IdahoIdahoIdaho is a state in the northwestern United States, often classed as a Mountain state and also considered part of the Pacific Northwest; its capital and largest city is Boise. It was admitted to the Union on July 3, 1890, as the 43rd state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 1,839,106.Open the full entry and WyomingWyomingWyoming is a U.S. state, the ninth largest by area, with its capital at Cheyenne. Wyoming was admitted to the Union on July 10, 1890, as the 44th state, and the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted 576,851 residents.Open the full entry, and in 1928 they formed First Security Corporation, with him as president; it is believed to have been the first multibank holding company in the United StatesUnited StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry.⁠[1][2][3]

He also held leading roles in Utah Construction and Amalgamated Sugar, serving as chairman of the board in the 1940s.⁠[1]

In 1933 Eccles testified before Congress on the Depression and proposed a five-point program, which the Federal Reserve History biography describes as forming the basis of the New Deal.⁠[2]

In February 1934 he joined the Franklin D. RooseveltFranklin D. RooseveltFranklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) was an American politician who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 to 1945, the only president elected four times; he led the country through the Great Depression and World War II and greatly expanded the federal government’s role through the New Deal.Open the full entry administration as an assistant to Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr.⁠[1]

On November 15, 1934, Eccles, appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, took the oath of office as a member of the Federal Reserve Board and became its head with the title of Governor, representing the San Francisco Federal Reserve district. The Senate approved his appointment on April 25, 1935.⁠[4][2][1]

Eccles supervised the staff who drafted the initial Title II of the Banking Act of 1935 and testified in favor of the legislation, which President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed on August 23, 1935.⁠[5]

The act reconstituted the Federal Reserve Board as the Board of Governors with a chairman and vice chairman, gave members 14-year terms and the chairman and vice chairman four-year terms, ended the service of the Treasury secretary and the comptroller of the currency on the Board after 1936, and made the Federal Open Market Committee’s voting members the seven Board members, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and four other Reserve Bank presidents serving in rotation.⁠[5][2]

The Marriott Library’s finding aid notes that he has been credited as the architect of the Federal Housing Act of 1934 and the Banking Act of 1935.⁠[1]

On February 1, 1936, Eccles became Chairman of the reconstituted Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System; he was reappointed to the Board in 1936, 1940 and 1944. In February 1944 Franklin D. Roosevelt reappointed him to a 14-year term as governor and a four-year term as chairman.⁠[4][6]

Richard H. Timberlake’s article published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis describes Eccles as a “fiscalist” who held that the Depression stemmed from inadequate aggregate spending and that monetary policy should keep interest rates low so the Treasury could finance expansionary spending.⁠[6]

Eccles served as a U.S. delegate to the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference.⁠[2]

After World War II Eccles opposed continuing cheap money after V-J Day and favored fighting inflation. President Harry S. TrumanHarry S. TrumanHarry S. Truman (1884–1972) was an American politician who served as a U.S. senator from Missouri and as vice president in 1945, succeeding Franklin D. Roosevelt on his death that year and serving as the 33rd president of the United States from 1945 to 1953, a period spanning the end of World War II and the early Cold War.Open the full entry did not reappoint him as chairman; he left the chairmanship on January 31, 1948, and remained on the Board as a regular member.⁠[6][2][4]

After Treasury Secretary John Snyder claimed that the Federal Open Market Committee had agreed to maintain the interest-rate peg indefinitely, Eccles publicly refuted the claim and, acting without the support of other members, released the minutes of the committee’s meeting with the White House to The New York Times. The Treasury–Fed Accord of March 1951 ended the Fed’s obligation to peg interest rates.⁠[6][2]

Timberlake’s article judges that Eccles had little to do with the accord of March 3, 1951, itself but was “the hero of that conflict” that preceded it. Eccles resigned from the Board on July 14, 1951, and published his autobiography, “Beckoning Frontiers,” the same year.⁠[6][4][1]

After leaving the Fed, Eccles returned to banking in Utah. In 1971 he became honorary chairman of Utah International, formerly Utah Construction and Mining, and in 1975 his brother George became chairman of First Security Corporation.⁠[2][1]

Eccles died in Salt Lake City, Utah, on December 18, 1977.⁠[1]

Eccles married May Campbell Young (Maysie) in 1913; they had three surviving children, Campbell, Eleanor and John, and a fourth child who died young, and they divorced in 1950. In 1951 he married Sara (Sallie) Madison Glassie.⁠[1]

In 1982 the Federal Reserve Board’s building in Washington, D.C., was renamed in his honor.⁠[2]

The Utah Historical Society’s History To Go describes him as a reforming chairman for 13 years and one of the architects of the New Deal’s efforts to end the Great Depression. Timberlake’s article notes the view of the Chicago economist Lloyd Mints, who, while disagreeing with Eccles’s theories and policies, praised his courage in stating his convictions.⁠[3][6]

Federal Reserve System: Official website: https://www.federalreserve.gov/ (opens in a new window).⁠[4]