Basic Information
Name: Eugene Isaac Meyer
Nickname: Gene, Head of the Fed
Born: October 31st, 1875
Died: July 17th, 1959
Nationality: U.S.A.
Hometown: San Francisco, California
WORK & EDUCATION
Occupation: Chair of the Federal Reserve
Education: University of California, Berkeley; Yale University
FAMILY & FRIENDS
Parents: Marc Eugene Meyer, Harriet Newmark
Siblings: Seven of 'em. That was a full house.
Spouse: Agnes Ernst
Children: N/A
Friends: Herbert Hoover
Foes: Franklin D. Roosevelt
Analysis
Eugene Meyer plays a small but consequential role in the story of "First Fireside Chat"—he was the leader ("chair") of the Federal Reserve at the time of Roosevelt's speech on the bank crisis.
And you better believe that the #1 money-man in the US of A played a pretty vital behind-the-scenes role.
What's the Federal Reserve, you ask? It's the central bank of the United States, and its job is to get money into circulation, and to adjust the interest rates for borrowing or loaning out money.
Basically, the Federal Reserve is like the boss of all the banks in the country. At the time of FDR's speech, it was behind the bank holiday and the resupplying of money to America's banks.
As savvy Shmoopers may remember, President Roosevelt closed the banks in order to stop the rush of withdrawals and to restock the banks with currency. In "First Fireside Chat" he tells the American people that "the new law allows the twelve Federal Reserve banks to issue additional currency on good assets and thus the banks that reopen will be able to meet every legitimate call" (26).
Eugene Meyer was the "head of the Fed" as it were, so he would have been in close communication with FDR about this new arrangement. Closing the nations banks is a pretty rare move for the federal government, so the two men would have had to be pretty certain about this decision.
It's worth noting that FDR and Meyer probably didn't get along so well. A few months after the bank holiday, Meyer stepped down as Fed chair and Roosevelt replaced him.
The moral of this story? Don't get in the way of FDR's bank holiday plans, or you might find yourself on a permanent holiday…