ABSTRACT
In the end, the Aldrich Plan had few friends. Its political support rested on a fragile coalition between La Salle Street and Wall Street that collapsed in 1912. The public identified Aldrich so closely with Wall Street that the Jekyll Island “conspiracy” fooled no one concerning the plan's origin. In August 1911, Woodrow Wilson stated what everyone assumed when he speculated that the Aldrich Plan “must have been drawn in the offices of the few men who … control the banking and industrial activities of the country.” 1 Main Street Republicans led an attack on the Aldrich Plan that heightened the party's sectional and ideological divisions and that contributed to the rupture at the national Republican convention in 1912.
