There is not one man in a hundred, indeed I do not believe that there is one man in a thousand, taking the business men, farmers, working men, and bankers all together, who can solve the riddle, and tell how it is done. Such a mystery could not have just happened. It must necessarily have been the product of a purpose.
Simplicity, publicity and direct methods are the guaranties of common honesty. Intricacy, secrecy and indirect methods are invariably used to hide uncommon dishonesty. I do not mean petty larceny, taking a few pennies, or a loaf of bread; but the absorption of hundreds of millions, without returning anything to the world in exchange for them.
Should the United States have been so unfortunate as to have been bound hand and foot for fifty years, the life of the proposed charter, by the trammels and intricacies of the National Reserve Association under control of an executive committee, consisting of only nine men who had been the evolutionary product of a preconceived purpose and well-defined plan, can anyone doubt what the result would have been? Can anyone doubt that all of their banks and all of their business interests would have gotten all the money they wanted all the time?
The advanced information from week to week and, at times, possibly, a month ahead, of what the discount rate would be—a very natural way for some member of that executive committee to show his or their proper appreciation of his or their promotion to their positions—would have been worth more every year, during the fifty-year grant, than all the wealth that the American people could produce during any twelve months; for this advanced information about the discount rate would have made profits a mathematical certainty upon the billions and billions of stocks and bonds that are quoted upon the Stock Exchange, the fertile field of the man who knows that he has a sure thing.
Mr. Manufacturer: Mr. Lawyer, that smells pretty bad.
Mr. Lawyer: Yes, I admit it; but does it smell any worse than oil has been smelling for more than twenty years? Than certain United States senators have been made to smell? Than robbing rebates smell? Is it not the natural sequel to this train of abuses to which the country has been treated?
This whole situation was so graphically depicted, precisely as it has developed, two years before Mr. Aldrich gave birth to this conception, that I want to read it to you:
"A central bank could easily be so organized as to sap the commercial blood of this country at every turn and direct the silent and unseen currents of advantage into the channels of favored institutions, and all these favored institutions might turn out, upon investigation, to be, in the end, one institution.
"And if, unfortunately, the subterranean connection could not be detected, and even if detected, could not be broken, what a power for evil and injustice such an organization would prove in the life of this Nation.
"This is not only regarded as possible, but as probable; indeed, it is charged that it is the preconceived, cunning design of the advocates of a central bank to accomplish this purpose.