Jekyll Island, 1910

Seven men, first names only, a private rail car, and a duck-hunting cover story.

November 1910, confirmed by every participant's later memoir: Senator Aldrich, Paul Warburg, Frank Vanderlip, Harry Davison, Piatt Andrew, and Benjamin Strong traveled under first names only to a private Georgia island club, drafted the central-banking plan, and kept the meeting secret for two decades because — Vanderlip wrote — public knowledge of its authorship would have killed the bill. The Aldrich Plan failed; its redraft passed in 1913 as the Federal Reserve Act. The secrecy was real, admitted, and strategic. Everything else in the Fed file argues about what follows from that.