In a study of the congressional vote on the
McFadden Act of 1927, which sought to boost competition in lending, Rodney Ramcharan of the US Federal Reserve and I found that legislators from districts with a highly unequal distribution of land holdings - farming was the primary source of income in many districts then - tended to vote against the act.
Until the 1980s, banks were limited to "traditional" banking operations due to restrictions dating to the
McFadden Act of 1927 (prohibitions on interstate banking) and the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 (investment/ commercial banking restrictions).
The
McFadden Act of 1927, which was a part of the National Bank Act, affected the ability of nationally chartered banks to branch either intrastate or interstate.