OF PREFACE Almost a generation of discussion and agitation, with fully ten years of earnest effort to devise a system of banking legislation, produced the Federal Reserve Act. The working of the measure under the stimulus of war conditions and subsequent changes in trade and finance, has transformed the entire structure of banking and business. Today the federal reserve system stands as the very foundation of American commerce, more powerful in resources than any banking system in human history, with a record of unsurpassed service to the nation in time of unique trial. And yet the reserve system is today sharply under attack, both in and out of Congress. There are many who would either disestablish it or radically modify its constitution; others who would turn its resources and powers to the uses of politics in the narrower sense of the term. In many ways, the system seems to be on the point of repeating the history of the Second Bank of the United States, with perhaps a final experience quite as unsatisfactory even if different in detail. This state of things would seem to show that there has in some respect surely been error or misjudgment on the part of its managers. If the federal reserve system is to render the service for which it was originally designed, it must overcome the prejudice and misunderstanding that are now evidently gathering. about it. If it is to fulfil its entire function as a genuine central banking system, it must retrace its steps in some particulars and evolve a more effective and general type of service. It is already a commanding, rich, serviceable and powerful system of central co-operative banking. Events have given it 528500 |