Mr. Merchant: Gentlemen, if you will achieve the results that you have outlined in the course of this evening's talk, you will accomplish all and precisely what Mr. MacVeagh, Secretary of the Treasury, recently described as the ends that must be attained if we are to bring about a complete financial and banking reform. These are his words:
"A relief measure reforming the banking and currency system must include, among its necessary features, provisions for never-failing reserves and never-failing currency, and for the perfect elasticity and flexibility of both; for the permanent organization and organized coöperation of the banks, which are now suffering and causing the nation to suffer by reason of their unorganized state; for a central agency, to represent and act for the organized and coöperative banks—this agency to be securely free from political or trust control, but with the Government having adequate and intimate supervision of it; for independent banking units—so independent that no one bank can be owned, controlled, or shared in in any degree, directly or indirectly, by any other bank; for the equality of all banks, National or State, both as to standards and as to functions—so that every requirement made of a National bank must be complied with equally by a State bank, and every function or privilege enjoyed by a State bank shall be enjoyed by a National bank; for the utilization and the fluidity of bank assets; for the scientific development of exchanges—domestic and foreign; for foreign banking as an adjunct of our foreign commerce, and for taking the Treasury Department out of the banking business."
Mr. Farmer: Well, you have forgotten the thing that interests me more, generally speaking, than all else, and that is the Land Credit Bank, which we went into last Wednesday night. Of course you intend to include this when you prepare your bill.
Uncle Sam: You bet they will, for I think it's about time that the corn raiser, cotton planter and grain producer and all the rest of the toilers of the turf, should be getting their money at as low rates as anybody else on first-class security for a long period of time, and I am determined to give the farmers of the country the benefit of my good name to aid them in this matter.
Mr. Banker: Of course we had all agreed to that, and shall include it in the draft of the bill.
Mr. Manufacturer: Uncle Sam, I move that Mr. Banker, Mr. Lawyer, and Mr. Farmer be a committee of three to prepare a bill to be submitted to us next Wednesday evening.
Mr. Merchant: I second the motion.
Uncle Sam: It's a go.
Good Night.