Pujo Committee

The Pujo Committee was a United States congressional subcommittee in 1912–1913 that was formed to investigate the so-called "money trust", a community of Wall Street bankers and financiers that exerted powerful control over the nation's finances.

This led to a breaking point in July 1911, when Congressman Charles August Lindbergh asserted that a banking trust existed within the United States and that it should be investigated.

[1] A move to create an investigation was then made on February 7, 1912, when the democratic Money Trust Caucus decided to pass House Resolution 405.

[2] Not long after this resolution's passage, amendments followed placing the investigation of the Money Trusts into the hands of then-chairman of the Banking and Currency Committee, Arsène Paulin Pujo of Louisiana.

Despite the fact that lead attorney Samuel Untermyer had predetermined that no money trust would be found as part of the Investigation because “There is no agreement existing among these men that is in violation of the law”,[6] and despite the refusal of aid by the Comptroller of the Currency, the failure of the Senate to pass the bill to amend section 5241 of the Revised Statutes, and the lack of any authoritative decision by the courts sustaining the committee's right to access the books of the national banks, the Pujo Committee Report concluded in 1913 that a community of influential financial leaders had gained control of major manufacturing, transportation, mining, telecommunications and financial markets of the United States.

[clarification needed] The report revealed that at least eighteen different major financial corporations were under the control of a cartel led by J. P. Morgan, George F. Baker and James Stillman.

The report revealed that a handful of men held manipulative control of the New York Stock Exchange and attempted to evade interstate trade laws.