Narrator: The year was 1934, Marriner S. Eccles had just been named Chairman of the Federal Reserve.

He was 44 years old.

The country was in the grip of The Great Depression.

Time magazine wrote, "A good many people believe Marriner Eccles is the only thing standing between the United States and disaster."

A feisty, business-educated entrepreneur from Utah came to the attention of a president who dared to implement his shared ideas.

His name was Marriner Eccles.

♪ This program is made possible in part by: Ben Bernanke: The modern Fed that we know today which is a very effective institution and one that operates without short-term political intervention but long-term accountability, that institutional structure is a large part to the credit of Marriner Eccles.

Robert Reich: If you were asked who is the single most important economic influence on thinking of America in the post-war era, other than theorists like John Maynard Keynes, you have to include Marriner Eccles.

Narrator: Marriner Eccles was a banker and businessman who'd never attended college.

At first, he was not well-known outside of his home state of Utah.

Orrin Hatch: He was one of the truly great financial geniuses in this country.

When you start to think about it, he didn't have to have a Ph.D. and a whole bunch of other Ivy League credentials to do what he did.

Narrator: The Federal Reserve Act created a new central financial governing body in 1913.

The Federal Reserve system, the Fed, is the Central Bank of the United States with 12 regional banks.

Ben Bernanke: Well, the Fed's broad job is to try to help keep the economy and the financial system on a stable path.

It has basically two sets of tools for that.

The first is monetary policy, which is basely setting interest rates.

So when the economy is in recession and very sluggish, the Fed can cut interest rates that provides some stimulus to the economy, helps it grow more quickly.

But if the economy is overheating and inflation is becoming a problem, the Fed raise interest rates that slows the economy.

So it's a little bit like an accelerator/brake kind of tool that the Fed has.

The other broad set of tools have to do with its oversight of the financial system.

The Fed is a bank regulator, for example, trying to make sure that banks are safe and sound and trying to address the situation if there is a financial crisis like there was in 2007, 2008.

Narrator: The Federal Reserve Board building in Washington, D.C. is named for Marriner Eccles.

His statue holding the Banking Act of 1935 serves as a constant reminder of his innovation.

The Banking Act established the independence of the Federal Reserve which is central to its mission today.

Marriner Eccles was its architect.

Randal Quarles: It's a sobering experience to come into work everyday in a building that's named for Marriner Eccles.

He was one of the most consequential public servants in the history of the country.

Narrator: Marriner Eccles was an upstart from Utah.

His speeches on the economy were getting attention.

He's considered one of the voices of President Roosevelt's New Deal.

The New Deal's economic principles guided America through a global economic crisis known as The Great Depression.

The country fell into the deepest abyss in 1929.

The nation was soon in the worst economic depression of its history.

Marriner gave a speech in Utah titled Reconstructing Economic Thinking.

He said, "What is an economic system for but to give men who are able, worthy, and willing to work, the opportunity to work, and to guarantee to them sustenance for their families and protection against want and destitution."

Orrin Hatch: The country was losing confidence in itself.

25% of the people didn't have a job.

Narrator: Franklin Delano Roosevelt ran for president on a balanced budget philosophy in 1933.

The Great Depression forced him to look for new and bold ideas.

Marriner Eccles was an experienced and innovative businessman from Utah.

He came to FDR's attention at exactly the time that the president was open to new ways of thinking.

The Great Depression was the signature event in the government life of Federal Reserve Chairman Marriner Eccles.

The economic philosophy he would embrace was his response to it.

Mark Nelson: In the collective memory of the country and especially people Marriner's age, there was no understanding of a deep-seated what we now call Depression.

Narrator: The Great Depression officially started with the stock market crash on October 29, 1929 known as Black Tuesday.

Robert Reich: So that the crash of 1929 came as a complete shock.

People were in disbelief.

How could it possibly be that it was this good and then suddenly became this bad?

Mark Nelson: We say that The Depression began in the summer of 1929.

For American farmers it began in 1921, the Dust Bowl magnifying a problem that was already there and that is the tremendous plunge in farm commodity prices.

Narrator: Large segments of the population were unemployed by the 1930s.

The country was in a state of desperation.

David Kennedy: It took more than 25 years to recover the Dow Jones average to where it has been in 1929.

Of course, the human face of this is unemployment.

25% of the workforce went unemployed between 1929 and 1933.

Narrator: Marriner's Utah businesses were affected when The Great Depression struck in 1929.

His diversified businesses had included banking, sugar, construction, lumber, and milk.

He wrote in his autobiography, Beckoning Frontiers , "I awoke to find myself at the bottom of a pit without any known means of scaling its sheer sides."

Spencer Eccles: We've entered into The Great Depression and The Great Depression wiped out the rural banks.

Narrator: Marriner sought solutions to this crisis, which was overwhelming the country.

He gave speeches resulting in his own increased fame.

Ben Bernanke: Marriner Eccles had an epiphany.

Prior to 1930 or so, he was a conservative republican banker from Utah who subscribed to all the independent free market principles that you would expect.

But then The Depression came and he had a terrifically hard time keeping his own banks from failing.

He had a revelation that he thought that maybe instead of relying purely on the market that maybe the government had to do something to help restore the economy and the Depression.

Narrator: Marriner Eccles was the president of First Security Corporation of Ogden, Utah.

He received an invitation to speak before congress in 1933.

Marriner said, "It is recognized by everyone that our most urgent and acute problem today is to immediately provide adequate relief to the millions of our people who are destitute and unemployed in every corner of our nation."

Mark Nelson: And he was also saying that Americans had, by virtue of being Americans, had social rights as well as political rights, which included the right to security in old age, the right to a decent wage, the right to a decent home, the right to educational opportunities, the right to adequate medical care.

It was the government's job to translate these from platitudes to a living reality.

Once they had done that, they would have salvaged democracy and capitalism both.

He was willing to get into anybody's face who wanted to argue otherwise.

Narrator: Powerful people were beginning to notice and ask, "Who is this Marriner Eccles?"

♪ Narrator: It is August 1863, some 200 people leave Florence, Nebraska.

They're bound for another life in the promised land of Utah.

They include Marriner's grandparents, William and Sarah Eccles.

Their young family totals 10 members.

Oxen pulled the family's wagons.

Marriner's family origins began much earlier in Scotland.

His grandparents lived in the slums of Paisley near Glasgow.

The countryside of Scotland with its verdant landscapes belies stories of hardship.

Spencer Eccles: William Eccles was a Scotsman, a patient but firm Scotsman, but he had cataracts on both eyes.

Narrator: Marriner's father, David, became resourceful at an early age.

Marriner C. Eccles: David Eccles would sometimes leave for a couple of weeks at a time, away from the family in Glasgow, you know, selling wares that his father had made.

Narrator: A new religion offered promise of a better life, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints provided immigration to America.

The William Eccles family traveled to the Port City of Liverpool, England.

They boarded the sailing ship Cynosure The family arrived in New York in July 1863.

They traveled on to Nebraska by train.

Spencer Eccles: That started a long trip, trek, walk because they had to walk all the way.

There was no riding per se in the wagons.

Narrator: The wagons eventually came to the welcoming sight of Emigration Canyon.

It led to the Salt Lake Valley.

The first few years were as challenging as those left behind in Scotland.

Spencer Eccles: They went right up on Ogden Canyon to the mountains, 10,000 foot peaks up in Ogden Valley.

If they thought it was poverty in Scotland, this was really poverty in the cold.

David is, once again, the sole source of income and William would make the utensils and David would go down Ogden Canyon same as he was doing in Glasgow and Paisley, and that was the income that they had.

Narrator: David showed business acumen at an early age.

He soon learned that his own entrepreneurial ability could make profitable businesses of his own.

Spencer Eccles: He had nothing but hard times.

Those all fed into his ability to believe in himself.

Narrator: David Eccles eventually became the wealthiest man in Utah at the time.

He founded 54 businesses, from lumber to banks.

Hard work and self-reliance was his ethic.

Stephen Francis: The railroad comes in to Ogden and in many ways, the lumber industry, he just followed where the railroad went, and recognized that that would benefit that industry.

So he's smart enough to recognize that that's kind of the future of America and he can profit from that.

Narrator: Polygamy was common in the era.

David married Bertha Marie Jensen in 1875.

He married Marriner's mother, Ellen Stoddard, in 1885.

Marriner was born in 1890.

Marriner is seen with the children of his ward when he was five years old.

Randal Quarles: Marriner Eccles' early years were an interesting combination.

By the time Marriner was born, his father was already one of the richest people between Denver and San Francisco, certainly the richest person in Utah.

When he was a teenager, they had built the grandest house in Logan, Utah.

But his day-to-day activity, he worked in his father's businesses.

He worked hard from a very young age, and he absorbed from his father the importance of work, free enterprise, the building of capital.

He was, what he absorbed from his father was traditional American capitalism.

Mark Nelson: His father, I think, had a lot to do with Marriner learning various businesses from the ground up.

I mean at the age of 22, his father had him supervising a major construction site.

At the age of 10, he was working at his father's lumber company, and then would go on to run a lumber company as an adult.

So he had a hands-on understanding Narrator: David's life was cut short on December 6, 1912 in Salt Lake City.

He died of a suspected heart attack while running for a train.

David was 63 years old.

It was a dramatic turning point for Marriner and the Eccles family.

Spencer Eccles: Upon meeting his mother, she said, "Father's gone.

I support you in everything you do.

You have to step forward."

Now at 22, it's exactly what he did do.

Narrator: David died without a will.

Utah's inheritance laws were adopted to punish polygamy as part of admission to statehood.

Second wife, Ellen, was not legally entitled to any part of David's estate.

Marriner and his Logan siblings received only two-sevenths of the estate.

The Ogden family received five-sevenths.

Randal Quarles: Marriner's side of the family was less provided for than the other side of the family and created some significant issues for the family as a whole.

Narrator: Marriner was corresponding with May Campbell Young after returning to the states.

He met her on his mission to Scotland.

Most of what he knew about her were from these letters.

He proposed marriage, which took place in Logan in 1913.

He was 23 years old.

Marriner and Maysie had five children: Campbell, Marion, Eleanore, John, and Maysie.

Marion died in infancy.

Maysie died of an infection at age three in August 1932.

Stephen Francis: Marriner, even though he's young, has had this experience of being in control in many ways over his family's ventures.

So that when his father dies, even though he's young, I think he finds it quite normal for him to oversee that.

Narrator: The Logan family flourished under Marriner's leadership.

28 banks in Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming were acquired.

First Security became the nation's first multi-state bank operating holding company.

David Kennedy: In Marriner Eccles' own memoir of his time in the 1930s, it's called Beckoning Frontiers, there's an absolute marvelous passage where he describes his attempt to keep his bank in Utah open during a bank run when depositors were coming and demanding that their ... What they did, they closed their accounts and get their cash out before the bank ran out of money.

He instructed the tellers to slow down, make sure that they dotted every I and crossed every T and deliberately slowed things down so that not every single depositor could come in and withdraw their money.

So, that was a huge lesson for him that there were moments when the financial system was simply incapable of sustaining itself and it needed some intervention of some kind in order to stabilize the system and prevent it from collapsing.

Stephen Francis: I think Marriner understood the mentality of The Depression.

When I say that I mean that it is a personal thing.

You're dealing with human beings.

And he recognized that panics happened because of that collective psychology.

Narrator: Marriner also became president of the Utah Construction Company.

Utah Construction built 58 dams in the period from 1916 to 1969.

The Hoover Dam Project was the largest construction project in the nation at that time.

Robert Reich: He was one of those rare tycoons who understood the economy from the ground up.

He saw after the great crash of 1929 what had really happened.

He understood what needed to be done.

Stephen Francis: Marriner understood that things had to change with the times.

That having been said, it's hard to go against your childhood upbringing.

His father, David Eccles, had this very Victorian vision of you just needed hard work and you could succeed.

Mark Nelson: It's really interesting that Marriner began the very first sentence of his memoir, what he called his autobiography in economics by mentioning the name Adam Smith.

It's in the very first sentence.

He goes on to tell us that Adam Smith titled his book The Wealth of Nations because he felt it was the paramount standard by which to judge the success of an economy, by the wealth of the nation, not the wealth of individual men.

Spencer Eccles: Well, it was called compensatory fiscal policy.

You must have surpluses in good times, and you have deficits in bad times, and you have to have, the only entity in the country that could help in this regard was not the city, the county, the state.

It was not the private enterprise.

They weren't big enough to do it.

Only the federal government was big enough because they created money and they were the responsible party to direct the economy of the country.

Marriner Eccles: I found that I had practically no followers in 1931 and '32.

It seemed that most bankers would prefer to go broke rather than have the government do anything about it.

Mark Nelson: But he never lost his faith in market capitalism.

I think that was an inheritance from his father who has a remarkable rags to riches story.

Narrator: The British economist John Maynard Keynes reached similar conclusions regarding government stimulus.

Keynes amplified this in his 1936 book General Theory .

Paul Volcker: Marriner, in practice, put Keynesian policy before there was Keynes.

That was quite a distinct accomplishment.

Narrator: Marriner Eccles testified before the senate finance committee in February 1933.

Ben Bernanke: So in this very famous testimony he made at the congress he argued for unemployment insurance, helping people who didn't have work, more government intervention in the economy.

It's sort of what we would call today a Keynesian perspective, a more fiscal activism.

He was influential on the new president FDR who became president in 1933.

He was looking for ideas.

Eccles' ideas were one of the contributing sources to Roosevelt's decisions to undertake the Works Projects Administration and other fiscal programs to try to put people back to work.

Randal Quarles: But people who were hearing this were really not prepared for a banker from Utah to be proposing ideas that were really without precedent in the academic world and certainly in the policy world.

Narrator: Marriner agreed to accept the job in the Roosevelt administration as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Henry Morgenthau.

The Federal Housing Administration was created in 1934 to secure home mortgages.

Marriner had advocated for the FHA.

Robert Reich: Marriner Eccles taught us that income inequality matters.

That if income and wealth inequality becomes too extreme, the entire economy suffers.

That a healthy economy has a large and growing middle class capable of buying all the goods and services that it is capable of generating.

That if you don't have that, if your middle class starts hollowing out, you are in potential trouble.

Narrator: The appointment at Treasury ultimately led to Marriner Eccles being named Chairman of the Federal Reserve.

Ben Bernanke: But Eccles was certainly influential.

His ideas were influential.

That testimony to congress in 1933 did have an effect on how people saw the government's response to The Depression and again, FDR thought enough of him that even though he had ... Eccles had very little government experience, FDR appointed him to be the chairman of the Federal Reserve.

Narrator: Biographer Sidney Hyman wrote, "On November 10, Roosevelt announced Marriner's appointment as Governor of the Federal Reserve Board, making him the first westerner ever to hold the post.

Marriner would accept the chairman's job only if the Fed could be reorganized.

This became the Banking Act of 1935.

The act defined the modern Federal Reserve and its independence.

The Banking Act also created the Federal Open Market Committee concerning interest rates and monetary policy.

Democratic senator Carter Glass from Virginia had been instrumental in the creation of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.

Senator Glass resented an unknown businessman from Utah encroaching on his territory.

Randal Quarles: He had been the legislative engine that pushed through the original structure of the Federal Reserve.

He regarded that structure as his intellectual baby.

He viewed it as both an intellectual error and aesthetic affront that this banker from Utah would arrive and propose to completely change its structure without coordination with him.

So he was a very vigorous and effective opponent of Marriner's efforts to change the structure of the Fed.

Stephen Francis: Glass wasn't kept in the loop, took this as a personal affront and strove very harshly to try to stop this legislation.

Here's an example of where maybe if Eccles had attempted a little bit of politicking he might have been able to get that through more easily.

But in the end it was passed, the Banking Act of 1935.

♪ Narrator: President Roosevelt promised to wage war on The Depression with the same dedication as a military enemy.

President Roosevelt: That the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

Mark Nelson: The New Deal was going to bring us not to some forward time where we're going to redistribute wealth.

It's going to take us back to the American roots when the country was founded.

One of the things the Founding Fathers thought most impressive about America was there was no imbalance of wealth.

Jefferson, who was clearly FDR's favorite president, it's no accident that the Jefferson Memorial was built when he was president.

But Jefferson had talked about that we have no real poverty here and we have no massive riches here.

Robert Reich: I think Eccles' ideas were very important to the New Deal.

Because everything he said in 1933 before even Roosevelt became president, became part of the New Deal.

Narrator: It would be the start of rivalries with balanced budget proponents.

They included FDR's Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau.

Mark Nelson: They didn't like each other personally right off the bat.

They didn't share policy goals, because the Secretary of the Treasury wanted to balance the budget and Marriner certainly did not.

Narrator: Harry Byrd was the junior senator from Virginia.

He also criticized Eccles.

He felt deficit spending and the lack of a balanced budget could drive the nation toward inflation and ruin.

Marriner disagreed.

He wrote to FDR on December 28th, 1935, "No one objected in the last war to unbalancing the budget to the tune of $9 billion in one year and $13 billion the next in order to protect our citizens against a foreign foe.

By what logic can it be held that the same citizens should not be protected likewise against the equally deadly ravages of Depression?"

Randal Quarles: History tells us that Marriner Eccles was a very vigorous proponent of ideas in which he believed.

He was not afraid of combat.

I would say he probably enjoyed combat.

Narrator: At the heart of the debate were deeply held opposing viewpoints about economic policy and the role of the Fed.

Eccles advocated for central banking and regulatory independence.

Mark Nelson: So this was the template for the first five years of the New Deal.

FDR consistently and earnestly trying to balance the budget coming into constant conflict with dire need.

And dire need would often win.

Narrator: The Civil Works Administration was created by executive order in 1933.

The CWA put some four million Americans to work by Christmas and nearly 4.3 million by mid-January of 1934.

Unemployment insurance, medical plans for the elderly, and adequate healthcare were part of the agenda.

Marriner Eccles, FDR's New Deal and compensatory economics had loud critics.

Republican Representative Jesse Sumner from Illinois said, "You just love socialism, don't you?"

♪ Ben Bernanke: Most financial people of the 1930s were very uncomfortable with the New Deal.

They were afraid that it was moving too far towards socialism.

That was too much government intervention.

They were worried about fiscal deficits and the like.

So Eccles' point of view, which flipped very much, you know, towards a much more interventionist's perspective, clearly made a lot of people in the financial community uncomfortable.

Narrator: Marriner was frustrated with President Roosevelt.

He felt FDR would not spend enough to guarantee full employment.

Marriner thought it was the key to recovery.

Stephen Francis: Even though he was technically a Republican, he's much more interested in ideas and innovation than party line.

Narrator: FDR won reelection by a landslide in 1936 even though millions of workers were unemployed.

Mark Nelson: FDR won the State of Utah, Marriner's own state, by 70%.

Touch less than 70%.

70% of the vote in Utah, right?

So what did FDR do with this massive political victory?

He tried to balance the budget.

David Kennedy: Guess what?

The economy shrank accordingly.

That's frequently been called, that moment, the Roosevelt Recession.

It's a Depression within the greater Depression.

Mark Nelson: From 1937 to 1938, in the Great Recession I call it the New Deal recession, it was the steepest decline in industrial production in all of American history.

[plane engines] Narrator: The United States' military fleet was attacked by Japanese forces on December 7th, 1941 at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

Ben Bernanke: The war acted in some ways as a massive fiscal program, huge amount of spending on military rearmament.

By 1943 or so, the unemployment rate was pretty close to zero.

Narrator: Marriner wrote about FDR after the 1944 election.

He wrote in his autobiography, Beckoning Frontiers, "He was haggard and drawn.

His eyes lacked their familiar sparkle.

He did not speak with his usual ease, he seemed to find some difficulty in his articulation.

More often than not, his mind seemed to wander off into secret recesses, as if to escape from the pounding of the words it heard."

President Roosevelt died of a brain hemorrhage at his retreat in Warm Springs, Georgia on April 12th, 1945.

He was 63 years old.

David Kennedy: There's a famous story about his funeral.

When a gentleman was weeping at the curb side as Roosevelt's funeral cortège went down the street, many people were, as a matter of fact, and somebody asked this gentleman who was weeping more extravagantly than people around him.

Somebody said, "Well, sir, you seem particularly agitated by the president's death.

Did you know him?"

He said, "No, but he know me."

Narrator: Vice President Harry Truman was summoned to the White House, he was informed that he was now President of the United States.

World War II officially ended on September 2nd, 1945.

The nation's economy changed after the war, thousands of GIs returned.

Inflation was the new worry.

David Kennedy: People thought we had to brace ourselves for the return of the Great Depression in 1945.

That's not what happened.

Robert Reich: After the war, there were many political forces in America that did not want a large government, did not want the government to be the spender of last resort, wanted to go back, really to pre-1930s, to before the New Deal in terms of economic policy.

Randal Quarles: Marriner's view was that the government should be a strong support for the economy in times of stress, and then it should pull back once the economy healed.

It was clear that as the economy became stronger after World War II that that is politically a very difficult thing to do when you have put support measures into place, you can't just turn them off.

Narrator: Marriner Eccles was not reappointed by President Truman as Chairman of the Federal Reserve in February, 1948.

Stephen Francis: I think the two kind of clash because in many ways, they were very similar.

They were these no blustering kind of men that were willing to, or wanted to express their ideas in a very clear way.

The two clashed and they just didn't see things the same way.

Truman then was willing to get rid of people that didn't see things his way.

Randal Quarles: I think the change came when he was promised by Truman to be reappointed chair and then Truman didn't do that.

There is a great deal of evidence that the reason Truman didn't do that was that Giannini from the Bank of America and California had a significant problem with the policies that Marriner Eccles had been pursuing.

Truman did not ever explain that to Marriner, simply didn't reappoint him.

He did say that he would appoint him vice chair and then he didn't do that.

Narrator: Marriner wrote in his autobiography, Beckoning Frontiers , "The most unsettling factor in the affair was my complete inability to account for what happened."

Randal Quarles: I think that must have been a very sobering experience for him.

He had sacrificed a great deal personally for his public service.

He'd spent a long time away from his family, he admitted in his biography that he did not feel he'd been the best father he could have to his children.

When you've made those sorts of sacrifices for an institution, and then for reasons that you think are purely political and nothing to do with the contribution that you've made, you're not reappointed, that affects a person.

Narrator: Marriner agreed to stay on the board of governors to serve out his remaining term.

He was no longer chairman of the Federal Reserve.

Spencer Eccles: He picked up his briefcase and walked down the hall to the first available office and he went back in there and continued to stay on as a governor of the Fed.

Narrator: Marriner now served on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.

They found themselves in conflict with President Harry Truman.

The debate concerned interest rates and the independence of the Federal Reserve from the executive branch.

This conflict led to one of the most dramatic moments in the history of the Federal Reserve.

Interest rates were pegged or fixed as a wartime necessity.

This kept the cost of government financing and war bonds low.

The goal was to help the war effort.

After the war, the Federal Reserve wanted to break the peg.

Marriner Eccles was its most vocal member.

Ben Bernanke: Now, I think Mariner Eccles probably had more to do with making the Fed the independent organization it is now than almost anyone else.

Narrator: The Fed believed that continuing this practice in the peacetime economy would ignite inflation.

President Truman and Secretary of the Treasury John Snyder wanted to continue the easy money policy of a fixed rate.

The war effort took precedence over the Fed's independence.

With the war over, the Federal Reserve now sought to assert that independence.

Randal Quarles: The main function of the Federal Reserve is to promote stable prices and full employment.

The independence of a central bank we've learned over time is absolutely critical to a central bank's ability to do that job.

If monetary policy becomes politicized, it's almost inevitable that you will lose control of one or another of the levers that you need to be able to pull in order to fulfill both of those objectives.

Narrator: It was a winter day in Washington on January 31st, 1951.

President Truman summoned the Federal Open Market Committee to a meeting in the Oval Office.

It was an unprecedented move before or since.

The discussion concerned maintaining fixed interest rates.

President Truman issued a statement after the meeting in the Oval Office.

He said the committee had essentially agreed to keep fixed interest rates.

Marriner released minutes of the meeting to an inquiring press.

The committee had not agreed with the president.

Marriner contradicted the president.

Conflict between the president, Treasury, and the Fed was now a public concern that had to be resolved.

Marriner, Fed Chairman Thomas McCabe, and the New York Fed's Allan Sproul, among others, precipitated the debate.

Secretary John Snyder and Assistant Secretary William McChesney Martin negotiated for Treasury.

After all the drama, a simple statement was issued on March 4th, 1951.

This negotiated resolution is known as the 1951 Treasury and Federal Reserve Accord.

Paul Volcker: Federal Reserve won because the case was quite clear and the great accord was with some concessions to the Treasury, that were temporary, that the Federal Reserve should conduct monetary policy independently as they saw fit.

Very important.

Narrator: President Dwight Eisenhower said in 1956, "The Federal Reserve Board is set up as a separate agency of government.

It would be a mistake to make it directly responsible to the political Head of State."

Randal Quarles: Marriner was absolutely critical in precipitating the conflict that established the independence of the Federal Reserve in the years following World War Two during the Truman administration.

♪ ♪ Narrator: Marriner's wife, Maysie, had little affection for Washington life.

Marriner C. Eccles: It was tough.

They didn't have a present father that actually came back during the evenings and have dinner with them.

So that was not to be the case.

Mark Nelson: He was clearly a workaholic.

One of the few things he talks about in the beginning of his book is that he neglected his family.

He does mention this.

There are very few personal details in there.

But you have people calling the Federal Reserve at 7:30 on a Friday night and he's there, you know.

I mean, that's what ...

He was intense.

There's a wonderful photograph of him talking to the chairman of the Finance Committee and he's got him cornered and Marriner's got his fingers out.

He's just knocking off one thing after another.

Intense is the word most people use about him.

Judy Kretz: He is writing these letters to his three children.

In those letters, he's telling them how much he misses them, "I'm working long hours and I can't spend the time I want with you."

Narrator: Marriner's commitment to public service led to his divorce from Maysie.

Maysie left Washington in 1941 and never returned.

Biographer Sidney Hyman wrote, "In a legal sense, the pair were husband and wife for three and one half decades.

But in reality, the marriage succumbed to a lingering death until it was terminated by divorce in 1948."

Marriner met Sarah Madison Glassie as they left a Washington dinner party in November, 1950.

She was a Mount Holyoke College graduate known as Sally.

Biography Sidney Hyman described her bright personality as a marked contrast to Marriner's.

They married in New York City on December 29th, 1951.

Sallie Griffith: My mother had a saying, I remember somebody asked her, he was late to something, how she felt about something.

She said, "Well, in our family, Marriner does the standing and I stand for Marriner."

That's sort of the way I feel.

♪ Male Announcer: Our distinguished guest this evening is Mr. Marriner S. Eccles.

Marriner Eccles: When I quit, I had been the governor or chairman for 16 and a half years.

Narrator: Marriner returned to Utah in 1951.

He had spent 17 years in Washington.

He was 61 years old.

Marriner once said that everything pales in comparison after a life of public service.

Marriner decided to run for United States senator from Utah in 1952.

He faced a formidable task, he ran against popular Republican Arthur Watkins.

Stephen Francis: He took on the incumbent and believed that he could succeed.

Some have believed that maybe he even thought that if he lost the election, that he would still come to Eisenhower's attention and that perhaps he might then be appointed to Eisenhower's cabinet.

So there might have been some belief that even if he didn't win the election, he could still get back into politics.

Unfortunately, Eisenhower didn't choose him to be in his cabinet and I think that kind of turned him off and we see that from then on, Eccles never attempts again public office.

Narrator: Marriner lost in the primary.

Randal Quarles: I would imagine that Marriner was surprised and disappointed at the way that he was perceived when he came back to Utah to run for the Senate.

He ran as a Republican, he had always been a Republican.

His slogan was, "Eccles and Ike think alike."

But his long association with FDR and his intellectual and heartfelt association with the ideas of compensatory economics created deep suspicion among people that he really felt, again, in a very deep way were his people.

I think that would have been very disappointing to him.

Narrator: The Washington years and his dedication to public service took a toll on Marriner.

Stephen Francis: Marriner says in his autobiography that his service took away his innocence.

He's never quite clear on what that means.

I think in a way, it's that his life as a young man was about business.

His father was about teaching this ethics.

So he had to grow up quickly.

I think in a way, then, Washington with all of its politics, that took away an innocence as well.

He's never quite clear on what he means by that but you can see that maybe it forced him to get involved in things that he hadn't planned on.

That he had to make these bigger decisions, that he had to take the weight more on himself.

Maybe that robs innocence when you have to take that kind of burden.

One in your family as a young man and then later, he really felt, I think, the burden of the country on him.

Narrator: Marriner's oldest son, Campbell, died suddenly in Utah in 1960.

It was a landmark event in the life of Marriner Eccles.

Campbell is described as a loving man with a great sense of humor.

He managed the Ben Lomond Hotel in Ogden, Utah until his death.

Marriner C. Eccles: Everyone was unprepared to have this happen.

He was 46 years old, he had a massive heart attack.

Granddad wasn't ready for this to happen.

In fact, he was back in Washington with the monetary and credit commission back at that point.

We had just come back from Sun Valley, Idaho on vacation.

It just hit us all out of the blue.

It hit him especially hard again because he felt, I think, that even though he was very, very close to his son, I mean, he couldn't be there day after day.

Narrator: Marriner was devastated by the loss of his son.

Biographer Sidney Hyman wrote, "In his lone morning, he seemed to his friends to be beyond consolation.

He persisted in assailing himself for having spent so little time with Campbell.

Indeed for having failed to grasp his emotional needs, saying that he had sacrificed the possibility of a healthy father-son relationship to the demands of business and public affairs."

Marriner spent more time with his family.

He became the surrogate father to the children left behind after Campbell's death.

Marriner walked Campbell's daughter Judy down the aisle at her wedding.

Judy Kretz: He was another father, a father, because I was only 18 when my father died.

He stepped in and he became the father, my father, more than a grandfather.

Narrator: Marriner traveled from residences and business interests in San Francisco and Salt Lake City.

He had a home near Coit Tower in San Francisco.

Marriner's step-daughter, Sallie, saw a side of him rarely revealed to his business associates.

Sallie Griffith: He wanted his mother to look nice and feel good about herself.

She would not spend a dime that wasn't necessary.

So he went to ZCMI, at that point it was the only store there, and he said, "Whatever my mother wants, you just tell her it cost $19.95 and send me the bill."

So for every Christmas or Thanksgiving or big event, when she needed a new dress, she was dressed gloriously.

I mean, you know, dripping sequins.

She said, "I got it from ZCMI for $19.95."

The bill went to Marriner and she was wearing designer clothes that weren't $19.95.

He would do anything to take care of his mother.

Narrator: Over time, Marriner returned to his business endeavors.

They included banking and philanthropy.

First Security flourished.

First Security eventually merged with Wells Fargo.

Utah Construction became Utah International.

It was acquired by General Electric in 1976.

The merger was the nation's largest at that time.

Marriner is now seen as an elder statesman and mentor.

Spencer Eccles: Well, I think it's important, in my opinion of him as an American patriot, he was the first businessman of repute in the United States to step forward and take issue with the fact of the Vietnam crisis.

Randal Quarles: It took a lot of courage.

The circumstances in which he expressed those views to LBJ were in a room full of, you know, important people, none of whom were expressing those views, all of whom were telling LBJ that he was on the right path, which was clearly what LBJ wanted to hear.

Eccles stood up and said, "This is all wrong."

It was not just intellectually hard to do.

It was, you know, as a social matter, for anyone else would have been quite hard to do.

It's just exactly the sort of thing that he would have done.

Marriner C. Eccles: I remember him telling me that, I think it was Bill Moyers was on the side, I think he may have been a spokesperson for Lyndon Johnson at that time.

He was sweating.

McNamara was upset.

Everyone that was there, this was supposed to be the dog and pony show about getting us into the war, a lot more than we had engaged before.

So this was supposed to be nothing but positive reviews about Vietnam.

Marriner Eccles came along and shot all that to heck.

Stephen Francis: We also see these one of the earliest proponents of opening up relations with Communist China, which also was very unpopular at the time.

But we've seen that in both cases, his ideas were validated.

♪ Narrator: Marriner was now approaching his later years.

He had played a role in and witnessed some of the most dramatic events of the 20th century.

Marriner continued to advise until his death from advancing age.

Marriner died on December 18th, 1977 in Salt Lake City.

He was 87 years old.

Spencer Eccles: I loved him for what he was and for the impact he had on me, my career, and just my learning as to what a real live, big picture human being, how he thinks and what he tries to accomplish.

Narrator: The Salt Lake Tribune Newspaper wrote, "He left a permanent impact on the economic and moral landscape, and the nation's better for that.

He will not be forgotten."

David Kennedy: It's what makes the New Deal such an important turning point in American institutional and policy and political history.

Marriner Eccles is associated with that and I think he needs to be remembered for that kind of thinking and for understanding the legitimacy and indeed, the necessity of federal initiative when the free market fails, especially when it fails as spectacularly as it did in the 1930s and darn near did again in 2008, 2009.

Orrin Hatch: Well, I think he helped pull this country out of the Depression and out of the financial distress that it was in.

I also think that he's one of the reasons why we were able to win World War II, because it took a lot of money to do that.

Now he didn't do it by himself and certainly FDR deserves an awful lot of the credit but FDR couldn't have done half of what he did without people like Marriner Eccles advising him and helping him.

I think if FDR were here today, he would admit that.

Narrator: Marriner's legacy continues with the Eccles family philanthropy.

Randal Quarles: So I think the most important thing to remember about Marriner Eccles and to learn from the life of Marriner Eccles is that what really counts, what will always really matter is thinking deeply about a problem and then acting on the conclusions that you come to after deep and careful reflection on a problem without concern about what the political consequences are going to be for you.

Marriner C. Eccles: He was the one that took over the job of raising an 11-year old kid who had just lost his father, who had a lot of growing up to do.

He meant a lot.

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