In 1913, as Chair of the House Banking Committee, Rep. Glass worked to pass the Glass-Owen Federal Reserve Act, which created the Federal Reserve System. He was appointed Secretary of the Treasury by President Wilson and later left that post to become a
In 1934, the Securities Exchange Act was moving through Congress, the Administration favored retaining the FTC (named as federal securities regulator in the 1933 Act) as regulator. But Senator Carter Glass preferred a new agency solely dedicated to securities regulation. (see Crisis, Scandal and Financial Reform during the New Deal, Professor Michael Perino,
Senator Glass offered an amendment to the legislation to create the SEC. (see 431 Days, Joseph P. Kennedy and the Creation of the SEC, SEC Historical Society). Professor Perino notes that the Glass Amendment was a compromise in that SEC Commissioners would be selected by the President, with the advice and consent of the Senate, and there would be no industry representatives on the Commission as had originally been proposed.
The SEC Historical Society paper notes that the compromise turned out for the better since securities and exchange regulatory power held by the FTC would have been just one of many concerns of that agency and not the tightly focused agency that was envisioned.
An interesting note is that Carter Glass was born in