[Nelson Wilmarth]. American politician, born at Foster, RI, on the 6th of November 1841. His first political service was as a member (1869–1875) and president (1871–1872) of the Providence common council. He was a member of the lower house of the Rhode Island legislature in 1875 and 1876, and speaker in the latter year. By this time he had become a power in Republican state politics, and in 1878 and 1880 was elected to Congress. Early in his second term he was chosen United States senator, and was re-elected in 1886, 1892, 1898 and 1905. In the Senate he was looked upon as the special representative of the high protective industries and moneyed interests, and he took a prominent part in all legislation dealing with the tariff, banking and the merchant marine. While chairman of the National Monetary Commission, he proposed, in 1911, far-reaching changes in the banking laws of the United States with a view to the creation of central reserves, a system afterwards adopted in the Federal Reserve banks. He retired from the U.S. Senate in 1911, after thirty years’ service. He died in New York on the 16th of April 1915.
