Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. IV.djvu/270

228 LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS the field of credit. We know that. Shall we not act upon the knowledge? Do we not know how to act upon it? If a man cannot make his assets available at pleasure, his assets of capacity and character and resource, what satisfaction is it to him to see opportunity beckoning to him on every hand, when others have the keys of credit in their pockets and treat them as all but their ow r n private pos session?" It is imperative, therefore, to act immediately and upon clear principles. "The country has sought and seen its path in this matter within the last few years sees it more clearly now than it ever saw it before much more clearly than when the last legislative proposals on the subject were made. We must have a currency, not rigid as now, but readily, elastically responsive to sound credit, the expanding and contracting credits of everyday transactions, the normal ebb and flow of personal and corporate dealings. Our banking laws must mobilize reserves; must not permit the concentra tion anywhere in a few hands of the monetary re sources of the country or their use for speculative purposes in such volume as to hinder or impede or stand in the way of other more legitimate, more fruitful uses. And the control of the system of banking and of issue which our new laws are to set up must be public, not private, must be vested in the Government itself, so that the banks may be