
Andrew de Molay.
Andrew de Molay was the head of the New York Bankers Association in the 1890s. He was highly critical of Julius Nelson's tenure as Administrator of the National Financial Administration. Nelson had been appointed in 1889 by Governor-General Ezra Gallivan to oversee Gallivan's Fifth Point program, offering N.F.A. loans to startup businesses. De Molay complained that Nelson was "stealing business from commercial banks, and not serving the purpose for which he has been named to office. Almost every N.F.A. financing could have been handled by a member bank of this Association, but the borrowers went to Nelson instead, since by law his rates are lower than ours. This is not creating new business; it is taking money from one pocket and putting it in the other."
Andrew de Molay does not have an entry in Sobel's index. He is mentioned on page 267 of For Want of a Nail ....
Sobel's source for Andrew de Molay's criticism of Nelson is Marshall Perkins' Behind the Mask: The Life and Works of Julius Nelson (New York, 1920).