Glass claimed that the proposed Federal Advisory Council would force the Federal Reserve Board of Governors to act in the best interest of the people.

Senator Root raised the problem of inflation, claiming that under the Federal Reserve Act, note circulation would always expand indefinitely, causing great inflation. However, the later history of the Federal Reserve

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System showed that it not only caused inflation, but that the issue of notes could also be restricted, causing deflation, as occurred from 1929 to 1939.

One of the critics of the proposed "decentralized" system was a lawyer from Cleveland, Ohio, Alfred Crozier: Crozier was called to testify for the Senate Committee because he had written a provocative book in 1912, U.S. Money vs. Corporation Currency.* He attacked the Aldrich-Vreeland Act of 1908 as a Wall Street instrument, and he pointed out that when our government had to issue money based on privately owned securities, we were no longer a free nation.

Crozier testified before the Senate Committee that, "It should prohibit the granting or calling in

Of loans for the purpose of influencing quotation prices of securities and the contracting of loans

Or increasing interest rates in concert by the banks to influence public opinion or the action of

Any legislative body. Within recent months, William McAdoo, Secretary of the Treasury of the

United States was reported in the open press as charging specifically that there was a conspiracy

Among certain of the large banking interests to put a contraction upon the currency and to raise

Interest rates for the sake of making the public force Congress into passing currency legislation

Desired by those interests. The so-called administration currency bill grants just what Wall Street

And the big banks for twenty-five years have been striving for, that is, PRIVATE INSTEAD OF

PUBLIC CONTROL OF CURRENCY. It does this as completely as the Aldrich Bill. Both

Measures rob the government and the people of all effective control over the public’s money, and

Vest in the banks exclusively the dangerous power to make money among the people scarce or

Plenty. The Aldrich Bill puts this power in one central bank. The Administration Bill puts it in

Twelve regional central banks, all owned exclusively by the identical private interests that would

Have owned and operated the Aldrich Bank. President Garfield shortly before his assassination

Declared that whoever controls the supply of currency would control the business and activities of

The people. Thomas Jefferson warned us a hundred years ago that a private central bank issuing

the public currency was a greater menace to the liberties of the people than a standing army."

It is interesting to note how many assassinations of Presidents of the United States follow their concern with the issuing of public currency; Lincoln with his Greenback, non-interest-bearing notes, and Garfield, making a pronouncement on currency problems just before he was assassinated.

We now begin to understand why such a lengthy campaign of planned deception was necessary, from the secret conference at Jekyll Island to the identical "reform" plans proposed by the Democratic and

__________________________

* Crozier’s book exposed the financiers plan to substitute "corporation currency" for the lawful money of the U.S. as guaranteed by Article I, Sec. 8 Para. 5, of the Constitution.

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Republican parties under different names. The bankers could not wrest control of the issuance of money from the citizens of the United States, to whom it had been designated through its Congress by the Constitution, until the Congress granted them their monopoly for a central bank. Therefore, much of the influence exerted to get the Federal Reserve Act passed was done behind the scenes, principally by two shadowy, non-elected persons: The German immigrant, Paul Warburg, and Colonel Edward Mandell House of Texas.

Paul Warburg made an appearance before the House Banking and Currency Committee in 1913, in which he briefly stated his background: "I am a member of the banking house of Kuhn, Loeb Company. I came over to this country in 1902, having been born and educated in the banking business in Hamburg, Germany, and studied banking in London and Paris, and have gone all around the world. In the Panic of 1907, the first suggestion I made was ‘Let us get a national clearing house.’ The Aldrich Plan contains some things which are simply fundamental rules of banking. Your aim in this plan (the Owen-Glass bill) must be the same--centralizing of reserves, mobilizing commercial credit, and getting an elastic note issue."

Warburg’s phrase, "mobilization of credit" was an important one, because the First World War was due to begin shortly, and the first task of the Federal Reserve System would be to finance the World War. The European nations were already bankrupt, because they had maintained large standing armies for almost fifty years, a situation created by their own central banks, and therefore they could not finance a war. A central bank always imposes a tremendous burden on the nation for "rearmament" and "defense", in order to create inextinguishable debt, simultaneously creating a military dictatorship and enslaving the people to pay the "interest" on the debt which the bankers have artificially created.

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