a cause of considerable apprehension to the authorities of the United States Federal Reserve Board. They were already embarrassed by the great mass of gold which they had accumulated during the war and by the enormous possibilities of credit expansion which their system allowed to be built up upon this basis. Indeed, it may be said that since the war the Federal Reserve Board has been chiefly anxious to prevent America's huge holding of gold from having its natural economic effect, by producing an enormous expansion of credit and currency and so turning the exchanges of the world against America and driving some of the gold out.
Given a mountain of gold and the American temperament, an outburst of Gargantuan consumption indulged in by the latter might soon be relied on to disperse the former, unless artificial checks had been applied, and such an outburst might have been best in the long run for all parties concerned. But the Federal Reserve authorities working an untried machine along an unknown road, with an extremely suspicious and critical public ready to pelt them if they made a mistake, were not at all inclined to take risks. And big risks would have been involved if they had allowed their gold to work its own cure, through an expansion of credit
