Having served as head of the Farm Credit Administration in 1933, Henry Morganthau (1891-1967) was appointed Secretary of the Treasury by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1934, continuing briefly under Harry Truman. As Roosevelt's Secretary, Monganthau was instrumental in setting up the Works Progress Administration and the Public Works of Art Project in the 1930s. To finance World War II, Morganthau initiated an elaborate system of marketing war bonds. He arranged that the Federal Reserve would support Treasury borrowing and would purchase bonds not bought by the public at an agreed rate.
Morganthau made his most significant contribution as chairman of the conference at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944. This conference, the keystone of postwar international finance, established the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank) and pegged all international currencies to the dollar, which was in turn pegged to gold. Morganthau resigned shortly after the accession of Truman to the presidency.
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