Professor Quigley's

TRAGEDY AND HOPE
(A History Of The World In Our Time)

 Introduction:

Carroll Quigley was professor of History at the Foreign Service School of Georgetown University. He had formerly taught at Princeton and Harvard.  He is also the author of Evolution of Civilizations.
In writing Tragedy and Hope Dr. Quigley deliberately exposed one of the best kept secrets in the world with regard to the control of human affairs by a selected number of financiers who have as their goal the total control of the world finances and, in its awake, political supremacy in an one world super government.
As an "insider" he was aware of the power and the scope of influence of this small elite and he accepted and supported, by and large, its ultimate aims.  His main disagreement seems to be in the question of secrecy. He felt and says so in pages 979-980, of his 1300 page manuscript, that it is now too late for the little people to turn back the tide and, in a spirit of kindness towards the masses, urges them not to try and resist this process of globalization.  He is sure that those in control are well meaning individuals, benevolent, and with the best intentions of creating for all the people of the world a veritable man-made paradise of peace and prosperity and he constantly reminds the reader of the trust that should be placed on these individuals, whom he describes in such glowing terms. To him they are the saviours of the world who will rid mankind of wars and poverty.
The book shows clearly Dr. Quigley's immense self-esteem and he considers himself not only an "insider" but a member of the intellectual elite of the insiders.  He maintains that the forces that now control most of the world are sufficiently well entrenched that they can reveal their true identity without fear of being successfully resisted. He expresses contempt for mid class Americans who think that they can preserve their, he labels it "petty bourgeois" in page 1248, property and constitutional rights.
He also ridicules those who think that Communism was the center of the collectivist conspiracy (pages 950-956).
Although he admits that he is telling more than his 'comrades-in-arms' would care to disclose he thinks it is time people knew who was running the show.
 
 

Snippets from the Book

On his knowledge

"I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960's, to examine its papers and secret records. I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims and have, for much of my life, been close to it and to many of its instruments. I have objected, both in the past and recently, to a few of its policies ... but in general my chief difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain unknown, and I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known." (page 950)
 
 On the rising of Financial Dynasties

"In time they brought into their financial network the provincial banking centers, organized as commercial banks and savings banks, as well as insurances companies, to form all of these into a single financial system on an international scale which manipulated the quantity and flow of money so that they were able to influence, if not control, governments on one side and industries on the other.  The men who did this ... aspired to establish dynasties of international bankers and were at least as successful at this as were many of the dynastic political rulers." (page 51)
 
 On major banking family dynasties

"The greatest of these dynasties, of course, were the descendants of Meyer Amschel Rothschild (1743-1812) of Frankfort, whose male descendants, for at least two generations, generally married first cousins or even nieces. Rothschild's five sons, established at branches in Vienna, London, Naples, and Paris, as well as Frankfort, co-operated together in ways which other international banking dynasties copied but rarely excelled ... The names of some of these (other) banking families are familiar to all of us and should be more so.  They include Baring, Lazard, Erlanger, Warburg, Schoder, Selingman, the Speyers, Mirabaud, Mallet, Fould, and above all Rothschild and Morgan." (pages 51-52)
 
 On international bankers

"... they remained different from ordinary bankers in distinctive ways: (1) They were cosmopolitan and international;  (2) they were close to governments and were particular concerned with questions of government debts ...  (3) their interests were almost exclusively in bonds and very rarely in goods ...  (4) they were, accordingly, fanatical devotees of deflation ...  (5) they were almost equally devoted to secrecy and the secret use of financial influence in political life.  These bankers came to be called 'international bankers' and, more particular, were known as 'merchant bankers' in England, 'private bankers' in France, and 'investment bankers' in the United States.  In all countries they carried on various kinds of banking and exchange activities, but everywhere they were sharply distinguishable from other, more obvious, kind of banks, such as saving banks or commercial banks." (page 52)
 
 On how they kept their activities secret

"One of their less obvious characteristics was that they remained as private unincorporated firms, usually partnerships, until relatively recently, offering no shares, no reports, and usually no advertising to the public.  This risky status, which deprived them of limited liability, was retained, in most cases, until modern inheritance taxes made it essential to surround such family wealth with the immortality of corporate status for tax avoidance purposes.  This persistence as private firms continued because it ensured the maximum of anonymity and secrecy to persons of tremendous public power who dread public  knowledge of their activities as an evil almost as great as inflation.  As a consequence, ordinary people had no way of knowing the wealth or areas of operation of such firms, and often were somewhat hazy as to their membership.  Thus, people of considerable political knowledge might not associate the names of Walter Burns, Clinton Dawkins, Edward Grenfell, Willard Straight, Thomas Lamont, Dwight Morrow, Nelson Perkins, Russell Leffingwell, Elihu Root, John W. Davis, John Foster Dulles, and S. Parker Gilbert with the name 'Morgan', yet all these and many others were parts of the system of influence which centered on the J.P. Morgan office at 23 Wall Street.  This firm, like others of the international banking fraternity, constantly operated through corporations and governments ..." (pages 52-53)
 
 On how they kept governments from controlling their own money systems

"The influence of financial capitalism and of the international bankers who created it was exercised both on business and on governments, but could have done neither if it had not been able to persuade both of these to accept two 'axioms'  of its own ideology.  Both of these were based on the assumption that politicians were too weak and too subject to temporary popular pressures to be trusted with control of the money system ... To do this it was necessary to conceal, or even to mislead, both governments and people about the nature of money and its methods of operation." (page 53)
 
 On the setting up of the Bank of England and the creation of money out of nothing

"Credit has been known to the Italians and Netherlanders long before it became one of the instruments of English world supremacy.  Nevertheless, the founding of the Bank of England by William Paterson and his friends in 1694 is one of the great dates in world history.  For generations men had sought to avoid the one draw-back of gold, its heaviness, by using pieces of paper to represent specific pieces of gold.  Today we call such pieces of paper gold certificates.  Such a certificate entitles its bearer to exchange it for its piece of gold on demand, but in view of the convenience of paper, only a small fraction of certificate holders ever did make such demands.  It early became clear that gold need be held on hand only to the amount needed to cover the fraction of certificates likely to be presented for payment; accordingly, the rest of the gold could be used for business purposes, or, what amounts to the same thing, a volume of certificates could be issued greater than the volume of gold reserved for payment ... Such an excess volume of paper claims against reserves we now call bank notes.  In effect, this creation of paper claims greater than the reserves available means that bankers were creating money out of nothing.  The same thing could be done in another way ... Deposit bankers discovered that orders and checks drawn against deposits by depositors and given to a third person were often not cashed by the latter but were deposited to their own accounts.  Thus there were no actual movements of funds, and payments were made simply by bookkeeping transactions on the accounts.  Accordingly, it was necessary for the banker to keep on hand in actual money (gold, certificates, and notes) no more than the fraction of deposits likely to be drawn upon and cashed;  the rest could be used for loans, and if these loans were made by creating a deposit (account) for the borrower, who in turn would draw checks upon it rather than withdraw it in money, such 'created deposits' or loans could also be covered adequately by retaining reserves to only a fraction of their value.  Such created deposits also were a creation of money out of nothing, although bankers usually refused to express their actions, either note issuing or deposit lending, in these terms.  William Paterson, however, on obtaining the charter of the Bank of England in 1694, to use the moneys he had won in priveteering, said: 'The Bank hath benefit of interest on all moneys which it creates out of nothing'." (pages 48-49)
 
 On the Bank of England becoming the secret center of political power

"In government, the power of the Bank of England was a considerable restriction on political action as early as 1819 but an effort to break this power by a modification of the bank's charter in 1844 failed.  In 1852, Gladstone, then Chancellor of the Exchequer and later prime minister declared: 'The hinge of the whole situation was this - the government itself was not to be a substantive power in matters of Finance, but was to leave the Money Power supreme and unquestioned'.  This power of the Bank of England and of its governor was admitted by most qualified observers.  In January, 1924, Reginald McKenna, who had been Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1915-1916, as chairman of the board of the Midland Bank told its stock-holders: 'I am afraid the ordinary citizen will not like to be told that the banks can, and do, create money ... And they who control the credit of the nation direct the policy of Governments and hold in the hollow of their hands the destiny of the people'.  In that same year, Sir Drummond Fraser, vice-president of the Institute of Bankers, stated, 'The Governor of the Bank of England must be the autocrat who dictates the terms upon which alone the Government can obtain borrowed money'." (page 325)
 
 On the secret dynastic powers behind British financial life

"Although this situation is changing slowly, the inner circle of English financial life remains a matter of 'whom one knows', rather than 'what one knows'.  Jobs are still obtained by family, marriage, or school connections; character is considered far more important than knowledge or skill; and important positions, on this basis, are given to men who have no training, experience, or knowledge to qualify them.  As part of this system and at the core of English financial life have been seventeen private firms of 'merchant bankers' who find money for established and wealthy enterprises.  ...  These merchant bankers, with a total of less than a hundred active partners, include the firms of Baring Brothers, N.M. Rothschild, J. Henry Schoder, Morgan Grenfell, Hambros, and Lazard Brothers.  These merchant bankers in the period of financial capitalism had a dominant position with the Bank of England and, strangely enough, still have retained some of this, despite the nationalization of the bank by the Labour government in 1946.  As late as 1961 a Baring (Lord Cromer) was named governor of the bank, and his board of directors, called the 'Court' of the bank, included representatives of Lazard, of Hombros, and of Morgan Grenfell, as well as an industrial firm (English Electric) controlled by these." (pages 499-500)
 
 On the development of financial dynasties in the United States

"This period, 1884-1933, was the period of financial capitalism in which investment bankers moving into commercial banking and insurance on one side and into railroading and heavy industry on the other were able to mobilize enormous wealth and wield enormous economic, political and social power.  Popularly known as 'Society', or the '400', they lived a life of dazzling splendour.  Sailing the ocean in great private yachts or travelling on land by private trains, they moved in a ceremonious round between their spectacular estates and town houses in Palm Beach, Long Island, the Berkshires, Newport and Bar Harbor, assembling from their fortress-like New York residences to attend the Metropolitan Opera under the critical eye of Mrs. Astor; or gathering for business meetings of the highest strategic level in the awesome presence of J.P. Morgan himself.  The structure of financial controls created by the tycoons of 'Big Banking' and 'Big Business' in the period 1880-1033 was of extraordinary complexity, one business fief being built on another, both being allied with semi-independent associates, the whole rearing upward into two pinnacles of economic and financial power, of which one, centered in New York was headed by J.P. Morgan and company, and the other, in Ohio, was headed by the Rockefeller family.  When these two cooperated, as they generally did, they could influence the economic life of the country to a large degree and could almost control its political life, at least on the Federal level". (pages 71-72)
 
 On the monopoly of the American dynasties

"In the United States the number of billion-dollar corporations rose from one in 1909 (United States Steel controlled by Morgan) to fifteen in 1930.  The share of all corporation assets held by the 200 largest corporations rose from 32% in 1909 to 49% in 1930 and reached 57% in 1939.  By 1930 these 200 large corporations held 49,2 % of the assets of all 40.000 corporations in the country ($81 billion  out of $165 billion) ... In fact, in 1930, one corporation (American Telephone and Telegraph, controlled by Morgan) had greater assets than the total wealth in twenty-one States of the Union.  The influence of these business leaders was so great that the Morgan and Rockefeller groups acting together, or even Morgan acting alone, could have wrecked the economic system of the country ...". (page 72)