In August 1914, William P.G. Harding began his service to the Federal Reserve System with his appointment as a member of the newly created Federal Reserve Board of Governors in Washington, DC. On 10 August 1916, he was designated as the second governor (chairman). During this time he was also managing director of the War Finance Corporation from 1918 to 1919. When his term expired in 1922, at the request of the president of Cuba, he traveled to Cuba to advise the Cuban government on reorganizing its financial and accounting system. Before he left the Federal Reserve, in a 1921 Congressional inquiry, Harding admitted that the Federal Reserve was a private banking monopoly. He said:
“The Federal Reserve Bank is an institution owned by the stockholding member banks. The Government has not a dollar’s worth of stock in it.”
