The Jekyll Island Expedition
One evening in early November 1910, Warburg and a small party of men from New York quietly boarded Sen. Aldrich's private railway car, ostensibly for a trip south to an exclusive hunting club on an island off the coast of Georgia.
In addition to Warburg and Aldrich, the others, all highly regarded in the New York banking community, were: Frank Vanderlip, president of National City Bank; Harry P. Davison, a J.P. Morgan partner; Benjamin Strong, vice president of Banker's Trust Co.; and A. Piatt Andrew, former secretary of the National Monetary Commission and now assistant secretary of the Treasury. The real purpose of this historic "duck hunt" was to formulate a plan for US banking and currency reform that Aldrich could present to Congress.
Even Warburg at first questioned the motives of this gathering, not knowing if he was included because the group knew what he preached and was interested in what he had to offer, or if he was to be involved as a conspirator in order to be muzzled. He soon saw that the Jekyll Island conference was pulled together because, as Warburg later wrote, Aldrich was "bewildered at all that he had absorbed abroad and he was faced with the difficult task of writing a highly technical bill while being harassed by the daily grind of his parliamentary duties."