ECCLES, MARRINER
Marriner Eccles (September 9, 1890–December 18, 1977) was born in Logan Utah. He was a high school graduate of Brigham Young College in 1909 and shortly afterwards left for Scotland, where he worked for just over two years as a Mormon missionary. The Eccles family had extensive business interests and Eccles became fully engaged in them on his return from Scotland. His family responsibilities increased after the death of his father in 1912, but he thrived on challenges and effectively managed the family enterprises through the Eccles Investment Company. In 1913 he married Mary Campbell Young, whom he had met while in Scotland.
During the 1920s Eccles built up a formidable reputation as a banker and achieved considerable personal wealth. During the period from 1930 to 1933 U.S. banks in general, and Utah banks in particular, exhibited high failure rates. During this time, Eccles presided over a number of banks which demonstrated such resilience in the face of adversity that he was invited to testify before the Senate Finance Committee in February 1933.
The shock of the Depression had a profound influence upon Eccles's political philosophy. He believed that the economic crisis had been caused by underconsumption and that this trend should be corrected by a variety of government funded initiatives. Because Eccles's views were unorthodox by bankers' standards, and because he was willing, especially after the recession of 1937 and 1938, to contemplate budget deficits, he has been described as a Keynesian. In fact Eccles developed his views independently and they were the product of commonsense observation not high-level economic theory. Perhaps his lack of formal education enabled Eccles to free himself from old ideas when it was clear that they were not working.
Eccles chose to work in Washington, initially as special assistant on monetary and credit issues to Henry Morgenthau, Jr., who recommended him to Roosevelt as someone who would make a very effective head of the Federal Reserve Board. Eccles agreed to accept this post on condition that legislative changes would move power over money and credit matters away from the Federal Reserve Banks towards a newly constituted Board. Eccles was to the fore in drafting and lobbying for the Banking Act of 1935, which centralized monetary policy and gave formidable powers to the Board. The fact that
he was not a Wall Street banker endeared him to many New Dealers. Although Eccles was a strong supporter of government intervention to ameliorate the effects of depression, the restrictive monetary policies pursued by the Fed played a significant role in causing the serious economic contraction of 1937–1938.
Eccles served as chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System until 1948 and remained a board member until 1951. He died on December 18, 1977.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Burns, Helen, M. The American Banking Community and New Deal Banking Reforms 1933–1935. 1974.
Eccles, Marriner, S. Beckoning Frontiers. Public and Personal Recollections. 1951.
