 The panic might have deepened if not for the intervention of financier J. P. Morgan , who pledged large sums of his own money , and convinced other New York bankers to do the same , to shore up the banking system . At the time , the United States did not have a central bank to inject liquidity back into the market . By November , the financial contagion had largely ended , only to be replaced by a further crisis . This was due to the heavy borrowing of a large brokerage firm that used the stock of Tennessee Coal , Iron and Railroad Company ( TC & I ) as collateral . Collapse of TC & I 's stock price was averted by an emergency takeover by Morgan 's U.S. Steel Corporation — a move approved by anti @-@ monopolist president Theodore Roosevelt . The following year , Senator Nelson W. Aldrich , father @-@ in @-@ law of John D. Rockefeller , Jr . , established and chaired a commission to investigate the crisis and propose future solutions , leading to the creation of the Federal Reserve System . 
