38 Facts About Carter Glass

Carter Glass was an American newspaper publisher and Democratic politician from Lynchburg, Virginia.

Carter Glass represented Virginia in both houses of Congress and served as the United States Secretary of the Treasury under President Woodrow Wilson.

Carter Glass played a major role in the establishment of the US financial regulatory system, helping to establish the Federal Reserve System and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

Carter Glass was a delegate to the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1902, where he was an influential advocate for segregationist policies.

Carter Glass won election to the United States House of Representatives in 1902 and became Chairman of the House Committee on Banking and Currency in 1913.

Carter Glass served as Secretary of the Treasury from 1918 until 1920, when he accepted an appointment to represent Virginia in the United States Senate.

Carter Glass was a favorite son candidate for the presidential nomination at the 1920 Democratic National Convention.

Carter Glass served in the Senate from 1920 until his death in 1946, becoming Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee in 1933.

Carter Glass served as president pro tempore of the Senate from 1941 to 1945.

An ardent supporter of states' rights, Glass opposed much of the New Deal and clashed with President Franklin D Roosevelt over the control of federal appointments in Virginia.

Carter Glass was born on January 4,1858, in Lynchburg, Virginia, the last child born to Robert Henry Glass and his first wife, the former Augusta Elizabeth Christian.

Carter Glass's mother died on January 15,1860, when Carter was only two years old, so his sister Nannie, ten years older, became his surrogate mother.

In poverty-stricken Virginia during the post-War period, Glass received only a basic education at a private school run by one-legged former Confederate Henry L Daviess.

Carter Glass became an apprentice printer to his father when he was 13 years old, and continued his education through reading Plato, Edmund Burke and William Shakespeare, among others who stimulated his lifelong intellectual interest.

Carter Glass thought that Shakespeare's works were not written by William Shakespeare, refusing to accept that their author could have risen from humble origins.

In 1876, Major Glass accepted an offer to edit the Petersburg News, and Carter joined him as a journeyman printer.

Not long afterward, Major Glass accepted the editorship of the Danville Post, but Carter did not join him, instead returning to Lynchburg.

When Carter Glass was 19 years old, he moved with his father to Petersburg.

Carter Glass was a clerk in the auditor's office at the railroad's headquarters.

However, by then Carter Glass had found the newspaper job he initially wanted.

At the age of 22, Carter Glass finally became a reporter, a job he had long sought, for the Lynchburg News.

Carter Glass rose to become the morning newspaper's editor by 1887.

Desperate to find financial backing, Carter Glass received the unexpected assistance from a relative who loaned him enough for a $100 down payment on the $13,000 deal.

Free to write and publish whatever he wished, Carter Glass wrote bold editorials and encouraged tougher reporting in the morning paper, which increased sales.

Soon, Carter Glass was able to acquire the afternoon Daily Advance, then to buy out the competing Daily Republican.

In 1896, the same year his father died, Carter Glass attended the Democratic National Convention as a delegate, and heard William Jennings Bryan speak.

Carter Glass was one of the most influential members of the convention, which instituted measures associated with the Progressive movement, such as the establishment of the State Corporation Commission to regulate railroads and other corporations, replacing the former Virginia Board of Public Works.

Carter Glass remained one of the strongest advocates of segregation and continued to dedicate much of his political career to the perpetuation of Jim Crow laws in the South.

Carter Glass was elected to the United States House of Representatives as a Democrat in 1902, to fill a vacancy.

At the 1920 Democratic National Convention Carter Glass was nominated for President as a favorite son candidate from Virginia.

Carter Glass served at the Treasury until 1920, when he was appointed to the United States Senate to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Virginia's senior senator, Thomas Staples Martin.

Carter Glass served in the US Senate for the remainder of his life, turning down the offer of a new appointment as Secretary of the Treasury from President Roosevelt in 1933.

Carter Glass was President pro tempore from 1941 to 1945, being succeeded as such by Kenneth McKellar at the start of the custom of giving that post to the senior senator of the majority party.

When he was twenty-eight, Carter Glass married Aurelia McDearmon Caldwell, a school teacher.

Carter Glass cannot have many years of active service before him.

Carter Glass died of congestive heart failure in Washington, DC, on May 28,1946.

Carter Glass is interred at Spring Hill Cemetery in Lynchburg.

Carter Glass is one of the few Americans to appear on a US coin during his lifetime.