Arsène Paulin Pujo (December 16, 1861 – December 31, 1939) was a member of the

United States House of Representatives The United States House of Representatives is a chamber of the Bicameralism, bicameral United States Congress; it is the lower house, with the U.S. Senate being the upper house. Together, the House and Senate have the authority under Artic ...

best known for chairing the " Pujo Committee", which sought to expose an anticompetitive conspiracy among some of the nation's most powerful financial interests (trusts).

Biography

Pujo was born in Calcasieu Parish near

Lake Charles, Louisiana Lake Charles is the List of municipalities in Louisiana, fifth-most populous city in the U.S. state of Louisiana, and the county seat, parish seat of Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana, Calcasieu Parish, located on Lake Charles (Louisiana), Lake Char ...

to a French-born father. He practiced law in Lake Charles and was a delegate to the state constitutional convention in 1898 before he was elected as a Democrat in 1902. In 1908, he became a member of the

National Monetary Commission The National Monetary Commission was a U.S. congressional commission created by the Aldrich–Vreeland Act of 1908. After the Panic of 1907, the Commission studied the banking laws of the United States, and the leading countries of Europe. The ...

, a body which sought to study foreign banking systems in search of ways to better the domestic banking system. In 1911, he was appointed to chair the House Committee on Banking and Currency. In 1912, he left the National Monetary Commission and obtained congressional authorization to form a separate committee, which came to be called the Pujo Committee, to investigate the " money trust". The Pujo Committee found that a cabal of financial leaders were abusing their public trust to consolidate control over many industries. Although Pujo left Congress in 1913, the findings of the committee inspired public support for ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913, passage of the

Federal Reserve Act The Federal Reserve Act was passed by the 63rd United States Congress and signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson on December 23, 1913. The law created the Federal Reserve System, the central banking system of the United States. After Dem ...

that same year, and passage of the

Clayton Antitrust Act The Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 (, codified at , ), is a part of United States antitrust law with the goal of adding further substance to the U.S. antitrust law regime; the Clayton Act seeks to prevent anticompetitive practices in their inci ...

in 1914. They were also widely publicized in the

Louis Brandeis Louis Dembitz Brandeis ( ; November 13, 1856 – October 5, 1941) was an American lawyer who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, associate justice on the Supreme Court of the United States from 1916 to ...

book, ''

Other People's Money and How the Bankers Use It ''Other People's Money And How the Bankers Use It'' (1914) is a collection of essays written by Louis Brandeis first published as a book in 1914, and reissued in 1933. This book is critical of banks and insurance companies. Contents All the cha ...

''. While still a Congressman, Pujo worked as a lumber company lawyer and helped suppress an

Industrial Workers of the World The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), whose members are nicknamed "Wobblies", is an international labor union founded in Chicago, United States in 1905. The nickname's origin is uncertain. Its ideology combines general unionism with indu ...

(IWW) timber workers strike in 1912, which culminated in the Grabow riot. Although the coroner charged the Galloway Lumber Company of Grabow, Louisiana with murder for shooting and killing three union strikers on July 7, 1912, the grand jury refused to indict and instead charged 58 union members with first-degree murder. Pujo helped prosecute 9 but the jury returned a dismissal after 1 hour of deliberation and the remaining defendants were released. (Perlman and Taft, p. 246)

References

Sources

*Perlman, Selig and Philip Taft. History of Labor in the United States, 1896-1932. Volume IV Labor Movements. MacMillan: NY, 1935. 683 pp. *The American Pageant 11th Edition by Thomas A. Bailey, David M. Kennedy, and Lizabeth Cohen; copyright 1998 {{DEFAULTSORT:Pujo, Arsene 1861 births 1939 deaths American people of French descent National Monetary Commission Louisiana lawyers Democratic Party members of the United States House of Representatives from Louisiana Politicians from Lake Charles, Louisiana 20th-century members of the United States House of Representatives