Louis T. McFadden's Speech
In the House of Representatives
10 June 1932
It is well enough that the people of the nation do
not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe
there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning. -- Henry Ford
Mr. Chairman, at the present session of Congress we have been dealing
with emergency situations. We have been dealing with the effect of things
rather than with the cause of things. In this particular discussion I shall
deal with some of the causes that lead up to these proposals. There are
underlying principles which are responsible for conditions such as we have
at the present time and I shall deal with one of these in particular which
is tremendously important in the consideration that you are now giving
to this bill.
Mr. Chairman, we have
in this country one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever
known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks.
The Federal Reserve Board, a Government board, has cheated the Government
of the United States and the people of the United States out of enough
money to pay the national debt. The depredations and iniquities of the
Federal Reserve Board has cost this country enough money to pay the national
debt several times over. This evil institution has impoverished and ruined
the people of the United States, has bankrupted itself, and has practically
bankrupted our Government. It has done this through the defects of the
law under which it operates, through the maladministration of that law
by the Federal Reserve Board, and through the corrupt practices of the
moneyed vultures who control it.
Some people think
the Federal Reserve banks are United States Government institutions. They
are not Government institutions. They are private credit monopolies which
prey upon the people of the United States for the benefit of themselves
and their foreign customers; foreign and domestic speculators and swindlers;
and rich and predatory money lenders. In that dark crew of financial pirates
there are those who would cut a man's throat to get a dollar out of his
pocket; there are those who send money into States to buy votes to control
our legislation; and there are those who maintain international propaganda
for the purpose of deceiving us and of wheedling us into the granting of
new concessions which will permit them to cover up their past misdeeds
and set again in motion their gigantic train of crime.
These twelve private
credit monopolies were deceitfully and disloyally foisted upon this country
by the bankers who came here from Europe and repaid us for our hospitality
by undermining our American institutions. Those bankers took money out
of this country to finance Japan in a war against Russia. They created
a reign of terror in Russia with our money in order to help that war along.
They instigated the separate peace between Germany and Russia and thus
drove a wedge between the Allies in the World War. They financed Trotsky's
passage from New York to Russia so that he might assist in the destruction
of the Russian Empire. They fomented and instigated the Russian revolution
and they placed a large fund of American dollars at Trotsky's disposal
in one of their branch banks in Sweden so that through him Russian homes
might be thoroughly broken up and Russian children flung far and wide from
their natural protectors. They have since begun the breaking up of American
homes and the dispersal of American children.
It has been said that
President Wilson was deceived by the attentions of these bankers and by
the philanthropic poses they assumed. It has been said that when he discovered
the manner in which he had been misled by Colonel House, he turned against
that busybody, that "holy monk" of the financial empire, and showed him
the door. He had the grace to do that, and in my opinion he deserves great
credit for it.
President Wilson died
a victim of deception. When he came to the Presidency, he had certain qualities
of mind and heart which entitled him to a high place in the councils of
this Nation; but there was one thing he was not and which he never aspired
to be; he was not a banker. He said that he knew very little about banking.
It was, therefore, on the advice of others that the iniquitous Federal
Reserve act, the death warrant of American liberty, became law in his administration.
Mr. Chairman, there
should be no partisanship in matters concerning the banking and currency
affairs of this country, and I do not speak with any.
In 1912 the National
Monetary Association, under the chairmanship of the late Senator Nelson
W. Aldrich, made a report and presented a vicious bill called the National
Reserve Association bill. This bill is usually spoken of as the Aldrich
bill. Senator Aldrich did not write the Aldrich bill. He was the tool,
but not the accomplice, of the European-born bankers who for nearly twenty
years had been scheming to set up a central bank in this country and who
in 1912 had spent and were continuing to spend vast sums of money to accomplish
their purpose.
The Aldrich bill was
condemned in the platform upon which Theodore Roosevelt was nominated in
the year 1912, and in that same year, when Woodrow Wilson was nominated,
the Democratic platform, as adopted at the Baltimore convention, expressly
stated: "We are opposed to the Aldrich plan for a central bank." This was
plain language. The men who ruled the Democratic Party then promised the
people that if they were returned to power there would be no central bank
established here while they held the reigns of government. Thirteen months
later that promise was broken, and the Wilson administration, under the
tutelage of those sinister Wall Street figures who stood behind Colonel
House, established here in our free country the worm-eaten monarchical
institution of the "king's bank" to control us from the top downward, and
to shackle us from the cradle to the grave. The Federal Reserve act destroyed
our old and characteristic way of doing business; it discriminated against
our one-name commercial paper, the finest in the world; it set up the antiquated
two-name paper, which is the present curse of this country, and which wrecked
every country which has ever given it scope; it fastened down upon this
country the very tyranny from which the framers of the Constitution
sought to save us.
One of the greatest
battles for the preservation of this Republic was fought out here in Jackson's
day, when the Second Bank of the United States, which was founded upon
the same false principles as those which are here exemplified in the Federal
Reserve act, was hurled out of existence. After the downfall of the Second
Bank of the United States in 1837, the country was warned against the dangers
that might ensue if the predatory interests, after being cast out, should
come back in disguise and unite themselves to the Executive, and through
him acquire control of the Government. That is what the predatory interests
did when they came back in the livery of hypocrisy and under false pretenses
obtained the passage of the Federal Reserve act.
The danger that the
country was warned against came upon us and is shown in the long train
of horrors attendant upon the affairs of the traitorous and dishonest Federal
Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks are fully liable. This is an
era of financed crime and in the financing of crime, the Federal Reserve
Board does not play the part of a disinterested spectator.
It has been said that
the draughtsman who was employed to write the text of the Federal Reserve
bill used a text of the Aldrich bill for his purpose. It has been said
that the language of the Aldrich bill was used because the Aldrich bill
had been drawn up by expert lawyers and seemed to be appropriate. It was
indeed drawn up by lawyers. The Aldrich bill was created by acceptance
bankers of European origin in New York City. It was a copy and in general
a translation of the statutes of the Reichsbank and other European central
banks.
Half a million dollars
was spent one part of the propaganda organized by those same European bankers
for the purpose of misleading public opinion in regard to it, and for the
purpose of giving Congress the impression that there was an overwhelming
popular demand for that kind of banking legislation and the kind of currency
that goes with it, namely, an asset currency based on human debts and obligations
instead of an honest currency based on gold and silver values. Dr. H. Parker
Willis had been employed by the Wall Street bankers and propagandists and
when the Aldrich measure came to naught and he obtained employment with
Carter Glass to assist in drawing a banking bill for the Wilson administration,
he appropriated the text of the Aldrich bill for his purpose. There is
no secret about it. The text of the Federal Reserve act was tainted from
the beginning.
Not all of the Democratic
Members of the Sixty-third Congress voted for this great deception. Some
of them remembered the teachings of Jefferson; and, through the years,
there had been no criticisms of the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal
Reserve banks so honest, so out-spoken, and so unsparingly as those which
have been voiced here by Democrats. Again, although a number of Republicans
voted for the Federal Reserve act, the wisest and most conservative members
of the Republican Party would have nothing to do with it and voted against
it. A few days before the bill came to a vote, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge,
of Massachusetts, wrote to Senator John W. Weeks as follows:
New York
City, December 17, 1913
My Dear Senator Weeks:
Throughout my public
life I have supported all measures designed to take the Government out
of the banking business.... This bill puts the Government into the banking
business as never before in our history and makes, as I understand it,
all notes Government notes when they should be bank notes.
The powers vested in the Federal Reserve Board seem to me highly dangerous,
especially where there is political control of the Board. I should be sorry
to hold stock in a bank subject to such domination. The bill as it stands
seems to me to open the way to a vast inflation of the currency. There
is no necessity of dwelling upon this point after the remarkable and most
powerful argument of the senior Senator from New York. I can be content
here to follow the example of the English candidate for Parliament who
thought it enough "to say ditto to Mr. Burke." I will merely add that I
do not like to think that any law can be passed which will make it possible
to submerge the gold standard in a flood of irredeemable paper currency.
I had hoped to support this bill, but I can not vote for it as it stands,
because it seems to me to contain features and to rest upon principles
in the highest degree menacing to our prosperity, to stability in business,
and to the general welfare of the people of the United States.
Very sincerely
yours,
Henry Cabot
Lodge
In eighteen years that have passed since Senator Lodge wrote that letter
of warning all of his predictions have come true. The Government is in
the banking business as never before. Against its will it has been made
the backer of horsethieves and card sharps, bootleggers, smugglers, speculators,
and swindlers in all parts of the world. Through the Federal Reserve Board
and the Federal Reserve banks the riffraff of every country is operating
on the public credit of this United States Government. Meanwhile, and on
account of it, we ourselves are in the midst of the greatest depression
we have ever known. Thus the menace to our prosperity, so feared by Senator
Lodge, has indeed struck home. From the Atlantic to the Pacific our country
has been ravaged and laid waste by the evil practices of the Federal Reserve
Board and the Federal Reserve banks and the interests which control them.
At no time in our history has the general welfare of the people of the
United States been at a lower level or the mind of the people so filled
with despair.
Recently in one of
our States 60,000 dwelling houses and farms were brought under the hammer
in a single day. According to the Rev. Father Charles E. Coughlin, who
has lately testified before a committee of this House, 71,000 houses and
farms in Oakland County, Michigan, have been sold and their erstwhile owners
dispossessed. Similar occurrences have probably taken place in every county
in the United States. The people who have thus been driven out are the
wastage of the Federal Reserve act. They are the victims of the dishonest
and unscrupulous Federal Reserve Board and Federal Reserve banks. Their
children are the new slaves of the auction blocks in the revival here of
the institution of human slavery.
In 1913, before the
Senate Banking and Currency Committee, Mr. Alexander Lassen made the following
statement:
But the whole
scheme of the Federal Reserve bank with its commercial-paper basis is an
impractical, cumbersome machinery, is simply a cover, to find a way to
secure the privilege of issuing money and to evade payment of as much tax
upon circulation as possible, and then control the issue and maintain,
instead of reduce, interest rates. It is a system that, if inaugurated,
will prove to the advantage of the few and the detriment of the people
of the United States. It will mean continued shortage of actual money and
further extension of credits; for when there is a lack of real money people
have to borrow credit to their cost.
A few days before the Federal Reserve act was passed Senator Elihu Root
denounced the Federal Reserve bill as an outrage on our liberties and made
the following prediction: "Long before we wake up from our dreams of prosperity
through an inflated currency, our gold, which alone could have kept us
from catastrophe, will have vanished and no rate of interest will tempt
it to return."
If ever a prophecy
came true, that one did. It was impossible, however, for those luminous
and instructed thinkers to control the course of events. On December 23,
1913, the Federal Reserve bill became law, and that night Colonel House
wrote to his hidden master in Wall Street as follows:
I want to say
a word of appreciation to you for the silent but no doubt effective work
you have done in the interest of currency legislation and to congratulate
you that the measure has finally been enacted into law. We all know that
an entirely perfect bill, satisfactory to everybody, would have been an
impossibility, and I feel quite certain that unless the President had stood
as firm as he did we should likely have had no legislation at all. The
bill is a good one in many respects; anyhow good enough to start with and
to let experience teach us in what direction it needs perfection, which
in due time we shall then get. In any event you have personally good reason
to feel gratified with what has been accomplished.
The words "unless the President had stood as firm as he did we should likely
have had no legislation at all," were a gentle reminder that it was Colonel
House himself, the "holy monk," who had kept the President firm.
The foregoing letter
affords striking evidence of the manner in which the predatory interests
then sought to control the Government of the United States by surrounding
the Executive with the personality and the influence of a financial Judas.
Left to itself and to the conduct of its own legislative functions without
pressure from the Executive, the Congress would not have passed the Federal
Reserve act. According to Colonel House, and since this was his report
to his master, we may believe it to be true, the Federal Reserve act was
passed because Wilson stood firm; in other words because Wilson was under
the guidance and control of the most ferocious usurers in New York through
their hireling, House. The Federal Reserve act became law the day before
Christmas Eve in the year 1913, and shortly afterwards the German international
bankers, Kuhn, Loeb and Co., sent one of their partners here to run it.
In 1913, when the
Federal Reserve bill was submitted to the Democratic caucus, there was
a discussion in regard to the form the proposed paper currency should take.
The proponents of the Federal Reserve act, in their determination to create
a new kind of paper money, had not needed to go outside of the Aldrich
bill for a model. By the terms of the Aldrich bill, bank notes were to
be issued by the National Reserve Association and were to be secured partly
by gold or lawful money and partly by circulating evidences of debt. The
first draft of the Federal Reserve bill presented the same general plan,
that is, for bank notes as opposed to Government notes, but with certain
differences of regulation.
When the provision
for the issuance of Federal Reserve notes was placed before President Wilson
he approved of it, but other Democrats were more mindful of Democratic
principles and a great protest greeted the plan. Foremost amongst those
who denounced it was William Jennings Bryan, the Secretary of State. Bryan
wished to have the Federal Reserve notes issued as Government obligations.
President Wilson had an interview with him and found him adamant. At the
conclusion of the interview Bryan left with the understanding that he would
resign if the notes were made bank notes. The President then sent for his
Secretary and explained the matter to him. Mr. Tumulty went to see Bryan
and Bryan took from his library shelves a book containing all the Democratic
platforms and read extracts from them bearing on the matter of the public
currency. Returning to the President, Mr. Tumulty told him what had happened
and ventured the opinion that Mr. Bryan was right and that Mr. Wilson was
wrong. The President then asked Mr. Tumulty to show him where the Democratic
Party in its national platforms had ever taken the view indicated by Bryan.
Mr. Tumulty gave him the book, which he had brought from Bryan's house,
and the President read very carefully plank after plank on the currency.
He then said, "I am convinced there is a great deal in what Mr. Bryan says,"
and thereupon it was arranged that Mr. Tumulty should see the proponents
of the Federal Reserve bill in an effort to bring about an adjustment of
the matter.
The remainder of this
story may be told in the words of Senator Glass. Concerning Bryan's opposition
to the plan of allowing the proposed Federal Reserve notes to take the
form of bank notes and the manner in which President Wilson and the proponents
of the Federal Reserve bill yielded to Bryan in return for his support
of the measure, Senator Glass makes the following statement:
The only other
feature of the currency bill around which a conflict raged at this time
was the note-issue provision. Long before I knew it, the President was
desperately worried over it. His economic good sense told him the notes
should be issued by the banks and not by the Government; but some of his
advisers told him Mr. Bryan could not be induced to give his support to
any bill that did not provide for a "Government note." There was in the
Senate and House a large Bryan following which, united with a naturally
adversary party vote, could prevent legislation. Certain overconfident
gentlemen proffered their services in the task of "managing Bryan." They
did not budge him.... When a decision could no longer be postponed the
President summoned me to the White House to say he wanted Federal Reserve
notes to "be obligations of the United States." I was for an instant speechless.
With all the earnestness of my being I remonstrated, pointing out the unscientific
nature of such a thing, as well as the evident inconsistency of it.
"There is not, in truth, any Government obligation here, Mr. President,"
I exclaimed. "It would be a pretense on its face. Was there ever a Government
note based primarily on the property of banking institutions? Was there
ever a Government issue not one dollar of which could be put out except
by demand of a bank? The suggested Government obligation is so remote it
could never be discerned," I concluded, out of breath.
"Exactly so, Glass," earnestly said the President. "Every word you say
is true; the Government liability is a mere thought. And so, if we can
hold to the substance of the thing and give the other fellow the shadow,
why not do it, if thereby we may save our bill?"
Shadow and substance! One can see from this how little President Wilson
knew about banking. Unknowingly, he gave the substance to the international
banker and the shadow to the common man. Thus was Bryan circumvented in
his efforts to uphold the Democratic doctrine of the rights of the people.
Thus the "unscientific blur" upon the bill was perpetrated. The "unscientific
blur," however, was not the fact that the United States Government, by
the terms of Bryan's edict, was obliged to assume as an obligation whatever
currency was issued. Mr. Bryan was right when he insisted that the United
States should preserve its sovereignty over the public currency. The "unscientific
blur" was the nature of the currency itself, a nature which makes it unfit
to be assumed as an obligation of the United States Government. It is the
worst currency and the most dangerous this country has ever known. When
the proponents of the act saw that the Democratic doctrine would not permit
them to let the proposed banks issue the new currency as bank notes, they
should have stopped at that. They should not have foisted that kind of
currency, namely, an asset currency, on the United States Government. They
should not have made the Government liable on the private debts of individuals
and corporations and, least of all, on the private debts of foreigners.
The Federal Reserve
note is essentially unsound. As Kemmerer says: "The Federal Reserve notes,
therefore, in form have some of the qualities of Government paper money,
but, in substance, are almost a pure asset currency possessing a Government
guaranty against which contingency the Government has made no provision
whatever." Hon. E.J. Hill, a former Member of the House, said, and truly:
"They are obligations of the Government for which the United States has
received nothing and for the payment of which at any time it assumes the
responsibility looking to the Federal Reserve to recoup itself."
If the United States
Government is to redeem the Federal Reserve notes when the general public
finds out what it costs to deliver this flood of paper money to the twelve
Federal Reserve banks, and if the Government has made no provision for
redeeming them, the first element of unsoundness is not far to seek.
Before the Banking
and Currency Committee, when the Federal Reserve bill was under discussion,
Mr. Crozier, of Cincinnati, said:
In other words,
the imperial power of elasticity of the public currency is wielded exclusively
by these central corporations owned by the banks. This is a life and death
power over all local banks and all business. It can be used to create or
destroy prosperity, to ward off or cause stringencies and panics. By making
money artificially scarce, interest rates throughout the country can be
arbitrarily raised and the bank tax on all business and cost of living
increased for the profit of the banks owning these regional central banks,
and without the slightest benefit to the people. These twelve corporations
together cover the whole country and monopolize and use for private gain
every dollar of the public currency and all public revenue of the United
States. Not a dollar can be put into circulation among the people by their
Government without the consent of and on terms fixed by these twelve private
money trusts.
In defiance of this and all other warnings, the proponents of the Federal
Reserve act created the twelve private credit corporations and gave them
an absolute monopoly of the currency of the United States, not of the Federal
Reserve notes alone, but of all the currency, the Federal Reserve act providing
ways by means of which the gold and general currency in the hands of the
American people could be obtained by the Federal Reserve banks in exchange
for Federal Reserve notes, which are not money, but merely promises to
pay money. Since the evil day when this was done the initial monopoly has
been extended by vicious amendments to the Federal Reserve act and by the
unlawful and treasonable practices of the Federal Reserve Board and the
Federal Reserve banks.
Mr. Chairman, when
a Chinese merchant sells human hair to a Paris wigmaker and bills him in
dollars, the Federal Reserve banks can buy his bill against the wigmaker
and then use that bill as collateral for the Federal Reserve notes. The
United States Government thus pays the Chinese merchant the debt of the
wigmaker and gets nothing in return except a shady title to the Chinese
hair.
Mr. Chairman, if a
Scottish distiller wishes to send a cargo of Scotch whiskey to the United
States, he can draw his bill against the purchasing bootlegger in dollars;
and after the bootlegger has accepted it by writing his name across the
face of it, the Scotch distiller can send that bill to the nefarious open
discount market in New York City, where the Federal Reserve Board and the
Federal Reserve banks will buy it and use it as collateral for a new issue
of Federal Reserve notes. Thus the Government of the United States pays
the Scotch distiller for the whiskey before it is shipped; and if it is
lost on the way, or if the Coast Guard seizes it and destroys it, the Federal
Reserve banks simply write off the loss and the Government never recovers
the money that was paid to the Scotch distiller. While we are attempting
to enforce prohibition here, the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal
Reserve banks are financing the distillery business in Europe and paying
bootleggers' bills with the public credit of the United States Government.
Mr. Chairman, if a
German brewer ships beer to this country or anywhere else in the world
and draws his bill for it in dollars, the Federal Reserve banks will buy
that bill and use it as collateral for Federal Reserve notes. Thus, they
compel our Government to pay the German brewer for his beer. Why should
the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks be permitted to
finance the brewing industry in Germany, either in this way or as they
do by compelling small and fearful United States banks to take stock in
the Isenbeck brewery and in the German bank for brewing industries?
Mr. Chairman, if Dynamit
Nobel of Germany wishes to sell dynamite to Japan to use in Manchuria or
elsewhere, it can draw its bill against the Japanese customers in dollars
and send that bill to the nefarious open discount market in New York City,
where the Federal Reserve Board and Federal Reserve banks will buy it and
use it as collateral for a new issue of Federal Reserve notes, while at
the same time the Federal Reserve Board will be helping Dynamit Nobel by
stuffing its stock into the United States banking system. Why should we
send our representatives to the disarmament conference at Geneva while
the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks are making our
Government pay Japanese debts to German munition makers?
Mr. Chairman, if a
bean grower of Chile wishes to raise a crop of beans and sell them to a
Japanese customer, he can draw a bill against his prospective Japanese
customer in dollars and have it purchased by the Federal Reserve Board
and Federal Reserve banks and get the money out of this country at the
expense of the American people before he has even planted the beans in
the ground.
Mr. Chairman, if a
German in Germany wishes to export goods to South America or anywhere else,
he can draw his bill against his customer and send it to the United States
and get the money out of this country before he ships or even manufactures
the goods.
Mr. Chairman, why
should the currency of the United States be issued on the strength of Chinese
human hair? Why should it be issued on the trade whims of a wigmaker? Why
should it be issued on the strength of German beer? Why should it be issued
on the crop of unplanted beans to be grown in Chile for Japanese consumption?
Why should the Government of the United States be compelled to issue many
billions of dollars every year to pay the debts of one foreigner to another
foreigner? Was it for this that our national-bank depositors had their
money taken out of our banks and shipped abroad? Was it for this that they
had to lose it? Why should the public credit of the United States Government
and likewise money belonging to our national-bank depositors be used to
support foreign brewers, narcotic drug vendors, whiskey distillers, wigmakers,
human-hair merchants, Chilean bean growers, and the like? Why should our
national-bank depositors and our Government be forced to finance the munition
factories of Germany and Soviet Russia?
Mr. Chairman, if a
German in Germany, wishes to sell wheelbarrows to another German, he can
draw a bill in dollars and get the money out of the Federal Reserve banks
before an American farmer could explain his request for a loan to move
his crop to market. In Germany, when credit instruments are being given,
the creditors say, "See you, it must be of a kind that I can cash at the
reserve." Other foreigners feel the same way. The reserve to which these
gentry refer is our reserve, which, as you know, is entirely made up of
money belonging to American bank depositors. I think foreigners should
cash their own trade paper and not send it over here to bankers who use
it to fish cash out of the pockets of the American people.
Mr. Chairman, there
is nothing like the Federal Reserve pool of confiscated bank deposits in
the world. It is a public trough of American wealth in which foreigners
claim rights equal to or greater than those of Americans. The Federal Reserve
banks are agents of the foreign central banks. They use our bank depositors'
money for the benefit of their foreign principals. They barter the public
credit of the United States Government and hire it out to foreigners at
a profit to themselves.
All this is done at
the expense of the United States Government, and at a sickening loss to
the American people. Only our great wealth enabled us to stand the drain
of it as long as we did.
I believe that the
nations of the world would have settled down after the World War more peacefully
if we had not had this standing temptation here -- this pool of our bank
depositors' money given to private interests and used by them in connection
with illimitable drafts upon the public credit of the United States Government.
The Federal Reserve Board invited the world to come in and to carry away
cash, credit, goods, and everything else of value that was movable. Values
amounting to many billions of dollars have been taken out of this country
by the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks for the benefit
of their foreign principals. The United States has been ransacked and pillaged.
Our structures have been gutted and only the walls are left standing. While
this crime was being perpetrated everything the world could rake up to
sell us was brought in here at our own expense by the Federal Reserve Board
and the Federal Reserve banks until our markets were swamped with unneeded
and unwanted imported goods priced far above their value and made to equal
the dollar volume of our honest exports and to kill or reduce our favorable
balance of trade. As agents of the foreign central banks, the Federal Reserve
Board and the Federal Reserve banks try by every means within their power
to reduce our favorable balance of trade. They act for their foreign principals
and they accept fees from foreigners for acting against the best interests
of the United States. Naturally there has been great competition among
foreigners for the favors of the Federal Reserve Board.
What we need to do
is to send the reserves of our national banks home to the people who earned
and produced them and who still own them and to the banks which were compelled
to surrender them to predatory interests. We need to destroy the Federal
Reserve pool, wherein our national-bank reserves are impounded for the
benefit of the foreigners. We need to make it very difficult for outlanders
to draw money away from us. We need to save America for Americans.
Mr. Chairman, when
you hold a $10 Federal Reserve note in your hand you are holding a piece
of paper which sooner or later is going to cost the United States Government
$10 in gold, unless the Government is obliged to give up the gold standard.
It is protected by a reserve of 40 per cent. or $4 in gold. It is based
on Limburger cheese, reputed to be in foreign warehouses; or on cans purported
to contain peas but which may contain salt water instead; or on horse meat;
illicit drugs; bootleggers' fancies; rags and bones from Soviet Russia
of which the United States imported over a million dollars' worth last
year; on wines, whiskey, natural gas, on goat or dog fur, garlic on the
string, or Bombay ducks. If you like to have paper money which is secured
by such commodities, you have it in the Federal Reserve note. If you desire
to obtain the thing of value upon which this paper currency is based --
that is, the Limburger cheese, the whiskey, the illicit drugs, or any of
the other staples -- you will have a very hard time finding them. Many
of these worshipful commodities are in foreign countries. Are you going
to Germany to inspect her warehouses to see if the specified things of
value are there? I think not. And what is more, I do not think you would
find them there if you did go.
Immense sums belonging
to our national-bank depositors have been given to Germany on no collateral
security whatever. The Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks
have issued United States currency on mere finance drafts drawn by Germans.
Billions upon billions of our money has been pumped into Germany and money
is still being pumped into Germany by the Federal Reserve Board and the
Federal Reserve banks. Her worthless paper is still being negotiated here
and renewed here on the public credit of the United States Government and
at the expense of the American people. On April 27, 1932, the Federal Reserve
outfit sent $750,000, belonging to American bank depositors, in gold to
Germany. A week later, another $300,000 in gold was shipped to Germany
in the same way. About the middle of May $12,000,000 in gold was shipped
to Germany by the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks.
Almost every week there is a shipment of gold to Germany. These shipments
are not made for profit on the exchange since the German marks are below
parity with the dollar.
Mr. Chairman, I believe
that the national-bank depositors of the United States are entitled to
know what the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks are doing
with their money. There are millions of national-bank depositors in this
country who do not know that a percentage of every dollar they deposit
in a member bank of the Federal Reserve system goes automatically to American
agents of the foreign banks and that all their deposits can be paid away
to foreigners without their knowledge or consent by the crooked machinery
of the Federal Reserve act and the questionable practices of the Federal
Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks. Mr. Chairman, the American
people should be told the truth by their servants in office.
In 1930 we had over
half a billion dollars outstanding daily to finance foreign goods stored
in or shipped between countries. In its yearly total, this item amounts
to several billion dollars. What goods are those on which the Federal Reserve
banks yearly pledge several billions of dollars of the public credit of
the United States? What goods are those which are hidden in European and
Asiatic storehouses and which have never been seen by any officer of this
Government, but which are being financed on the public credit of the United
States Government? What goods are those upon which the United States Government
is being obligated by the Federal Reserve banks to issue Federal Reserve
notes to the extent of several billions of dollars a year?
The Federal Reserve
Board and the Federal Reserve banks have been international bankers from
the beginning, with the United States Government as their enforced banker
and supplier of currency. But it is none the less extraordinary to see
those twelve private credit monopolies buying the debts of foreigners against
foreigners in all parts of the world and asking the Government of the United
States for new issues of Federal Reserve notes in exchange for them.
I see no reason why
the American taxpayers should be hewers of wood and drawers of water for
the European and Asiatic customers of the Federal Reserve banks. I see
no reason why a worthless acceptance drawn by a foreign swindler as a means
of getting gold out of this country should receive the lowest and choicest
rate from the Federal Reserve Board and be treated as better security than
the note of an American farmer living on American land.
The magnitude of the
acceptance racket, as it has been developed by the Federal Reserve banks,
their foreign correspondents, and the predatory European-born bankers who
set up the Federal Reserve institution here and taught our own brand of
pirates how to loot the people -- I say the magnitude of this racket is
estimated to be in the neighborhood of $9,000,000,000 a year. In the past
ten years it is said to have amounted to $90,000,000,000. In my opinion,
it has amounted to several times as much. Coupled with this you have, to
the extent of billions of dollars, the gambling in the United States securities,
which takes place in the same open discount market -- a gambling upon which
the Federal Reserve Board is now spending $100,000,000 per week.
Federal Reserve notes
are taken from the United States Government in unlimited quantities. Is
it strange that the burden of supplying these immense sums of money to
the gambling fraternity has at last proved too heavy for the American people
to endure? Would it not be a national calamity if the Federal Reserve Board
and the Federal Reserve banks should again bind this burden down on the
backs of the American people and, by means of the long rawhide whips of
the credit masters, compel them to enter another seventeen years of slavery?
They are trying to do that now. They are taking $100,000,000 of the public
credit of the United States Government every week in addition to all their
other seizures, and they are spending that money in the nefarious open
market in New York City in a desperate gamble to reestablish their graft
as a going concern.
They are putting the
United States Government in debt to the extent of $100,000,000 a week,
and with the money they are buying up our Government securities for themselves
and their foreign principals. Our people are disgusted with the experiments
of the Federal Reserve Board. The Federal Reserve Board is not producing
a loaf of bread, a yard of cloth, a bushel of corn, or a pile of cordwood
by its check-kiting operations in the money market.
A fortnight or so
ago great aid and comfort was given to Japan by the firm of A. Gerli &
Sons, of New York, an importing firm, which bought $16,000,000 worth of
raw silk from the Japanese Government. Federal Reserve notes will be issued
to pay that amount to the Japanese Government, and these notes will be
secured by money belonging to our national-bank depositors.
Why should United
States currency be issued on this debt? Why should United States currency
be issued to pay the debt of Gerli & Sons to the Japanese Government?
The Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks think more of the
silkworms of Japan than they do of American citizens. We do not need $16,000,000
work of silk in this country at the present time, not even to furnish work
to dyers and finishers. We need to wear home-grown and American-made clothes
and to use our own money for our own goods and staples. We could spend
$16,000,000 in the United States of America on American children and that
would be a better investment for us than Japanese silk purchased on the
public credit of the United States Government.
Mr. Speaker, on the
13th of January of this year I addressed the House on the subject of the
Reconstruction Finance Corporation. In the course of my remarks I made
the following statement:
In 1928 the
member banks of the Federal Reserve system borrowed $60,598,690,000 from
the Federal Reserve banks on their fifteen-day promissory notes. Think
of it! Sixty billion dollars payable upon demand in gold in the course
of one single year. The actual payment of such obligations calls for six
times as much monetary gold as there is in the entire world. Such transactions
represent a grant in the course of one single year of about $7,000,000
to every member bank of the Federal Reserve system. Is it any wonder that
there is a depression in this country? Is it any wonder that American labor,
which ultimately pays the cost of all banking operations of this country,
has at last proved unequal to the task of supplying this huge total of
cash and credit for the benefit of the stock-market manipulators and foreign
swindlers?
Mr. Chairman, some of my colleagues have asked for more specific information
concerning this stupendous graft, this frightful burden which has been
placed on the wage earners and taxpayers of the United States for the benefit
of the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks. They were surprised
to learn that member banks of the Federal Reserve system had received the
enormous sum of $60,598,690,000 from the Federal Reserve Board and the
Federal Reserve banks on their promissory notes in the course of one single
year, namely, 1928. Another Member of this House, Mr. Beedy, the honorable
gentleman from Maine, has questioned the accuracy of my statement and has
informed me that the Federal Reserve Board denies absolutely that these
figures are correct. This Member has said to me that the thing is unthinkable,
that it can not be, that it is beyond all reason to think that the Federal
Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks should have so subsidized and
endowed their favorite banks of the Federal Reserve system. This Member
is horrified at the thought of a graft so great, a bounty so detrimental
to the public welfare as sixty and a half billion dollars a year and more
shoveled out to favored banks of the Federal Reserve system.
In 1930, while the
speculating banks were getting out of the stock market at the expense of
the general public, the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks
advanced them $13,022,782,000. This shows that when the banks were gambling
on the public credit of the United States Government as represented by
the Federal Reserve currency, they were subsidized to any amount they required
by the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks. When the swindle
began to fall, the bankers knew it in advance and withdrew from the market.
They got out with whole skins and left the people of the United States
to pay the piper.
On November 2, 1931,
I addressed a letter to the Federal Reserve Board asking for the aggregate
total of member bank borrowing in the years 1928, 1929, 1930. In due course,
I received a reply from the Federal Reserve Board, dated November 9, 1931,
the pertinent part of which reads as follows:
My Dear Congressman:
In reply to your letter
of November 2, you are advised that the aggregate amount of fifteen-day
promissory notes of member banks during each of the past three calender
years has been as follows:
1928 . . . . . .
. . . . . . . $60,598,690,000
1929 . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . 58,046,697,000
1930 . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . 13,022,782,000
This will show the gentleman from Maine the accuracy of my statement. As
for the denial of these facts made to him by the Federal Reserve Board,
I can only say that it must have been prompted by fright, since hanging
is too good for a Government board which permitted such a misuse of Government
funds and credit.
My friend from Kansas,
Mr. McGugin, has stated that he thought the Federal Reserve Board and the
Federal Reserve banks lent money by rediscounting. So they do, but they
lend comparatively little that way. The real rediscounting that they do
has been called a mere penny in the slot business. It is too slow for genuine
high flyers. They discourage it. They prefer to subsidize their favorite
banks by making these $60,000,000,000 advances, and they prefer to acquire
acceptances in the notorious open discount market in New York, where they
can use them to control the prices of stocks and bonds on the exchanges.
For every dollar they advanced on rediscounts in 1928 they lent $33 to
their favorite banks for gambling purposes. In other words, their rediscounts
in 1928 amounted to $1,814,271,000, while their loans to member banks amounted
to $60,598,690,000. As for their open-market operations, these are on a
stupendous scale, and no tax is paid on the acceptances they handle; and
their foreign principals, for whom they do a business of several billion
dollars every year, pay no income tax on their profits to the United States
Government.
This is the John Law
swindle all over again. The theft of Teapot Dome was trifling compared
to it. What king ever robbed his subjects to such an extent as the Federal
Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks have robbed us? Is it any wonder
that there have lately been ninety cases of starvation in one of the New
York hospitals? Is there any wonder that the children of this country are
being dispersed and abandoned?
The Government and
the people of the United States have been swindled by swindlers deluxe
to whom the acquisition of American gold or a parcel of Federal Reserve
notes presented no more difficulty than the drawing up of a worthless acceptance
in a country not subject to the laws of the United States, by sharpers
not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States courts, sharpers with
a strong banking "fence" on this side of the water -- a "fence" acting
as a receiver of the worthless paper coming from abroad, endorsing it and
getting the currency out of the Federal Reserve banks for it as quickly
as possible, exchanging that currency for gold, and in turn transmitting
the gold to its foreign confederates.
Such were the exploits
of Ivar Kreuger, Mr. Hoover's friend, and his hidden Wall Street backers.
Every dollar of the billions Kreuger and his gang drew out of this country
on acceptances was drawn from the Government and the people of the United
States through the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks.
The credit of the United States Government was peddled to him by the Federal
Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks for their own private gain.
That is what the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks have
been doing for many years. They have been peddling the credit of this Government
and the signature of this Government to the swindlers and speculators of
all nations. That is what happens when a country forsakes its Constitution
and gives its sovereignty over the public currency to private interests.
Give them the flag and they will sell it.
The nature of Kreuger's
organized swindle and the bankrupt condition of Kreuger's combine was known
here last June when Hoover sought to exempt Kreuger's loan to Germany of
$125,000,000 from the operation of the Hoover moratorium. The bankrupt
condition of Kreuger's swindle was known here last summer when $30,000,000
was taken from the American taxpayers by certain bankers in New York for
the ostensible purpose of permitting Kreuger to make a loan to Colombia.
Colombia never saw that money. The nature of Kreuger's swindle and the
bankrupt condition of Kreuger was known here in January when he visited
his friend, Mr. Hoover, at the White House. It was known here in March
before he went to Paris and committed suicide there.
Mr. Chairman, I think
the people of the United States are entitled to know how many billions
of dollars were placed at the disposal of Kreuger and his gigantic combine
by the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks and to know
how much of our Government currency was issued and lost in the financing
of that great swindle in the years during which the Federal Reserve Board
and the Federal Reserve banks took care of Kreuger's requirements.
Mr. Chairman, I believe
there should be a congressional investigation of the operations of Kreuger
and Toll in the United States and that Swedish Match, International Match,
the Swedish-American Investment Corporation, and all related enterprises,
including the subsidiary companies of Kreuger and Toll, should be investigated
and that the issuance of United States currency in connection with those
enterprises and the use of our national-bank depositors' money for Kreuger's
benefit should be made known to the general public. I am referring, not
only to the securities which were floated and sold in this country, but
also to the commercial loans to Kreuger's enterprises and the mass financing
of Kreuger's companies by the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve
banks and the predatory institutions which the Federal Reserve Board and
the Federal Reserve banks shield and harbor.
A few days ago, the
President of the United States, with a white face and shaking hands, went
before the Senate on behalf of the moneyed interests and asked the Senate
to levy a tax on the people so that foreigners might know that the United
States would pay its debt to them. Most Americans thought it was the other
way around. What do the United States owe to foreigners? When and by whom
was the debt incurred? It was incurred by the Federal Reserve Board and
the Federal Reserve banks when they peddled the signature of this Government
to foreigners for a price. It is what the United States Government has
to pay to redeem the obligations of the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal
Reserve banks. Are you going to let those thieves get off scot free? Is
there one law for the looter who drives up to the door of the United States
Treasury in his limousine and another for the United States veterans who
are sleeping on the floor of a dilapidated house on the outskirts of Washington?
The Baltimore &
Ohio Railroad is here asking for a large loan from the people and the wage
earners and the taxpayers of the United States. It is begging for a hand-out
from the Government. It is standing, cap in hand, at the door of the Reconstruction
Finance Corporation, where all the other jackals have gathered to the feast.
It is asking for money that was raised from the people by taxation, and
wants this money of the poor for the benefit of Kuhn, Loeb, & Co.,
the German international bankers. Is there one law for the Baltimore &
Ohio Railroad and another for the needy veterans it threw off its freight
cars the other day? Is there one law for sleek and prosperous swindlers
who call themselves bankers and another law for the soldiers who defended
the United States flag?
Mr. Chairman, some
people are horrified because the collateral behind Kreuger and Toll debentures
was removed and worthless collateral substituted for it. What is this but
what is being done daily by the Federal Reserve banks? When the Federal
Reserve act was passed, the Federal Reserve banks were allowed to substitute
"other like collateral" for collateral behind Federal Reserve notes but
by an amendment obtained at the request of the corrupt and dishonest Federal
Reserve Board, the act was changed so that the word "like" was stricken
out. All that immense trouble was taken here in Congress so that the law
would permit the Federal Reserve banks to switch collateral. At the present
time behind the scenes in the Federal Reserve banks there is a night-and-day
movement of collateral. A visiting Englishman, leaving the United States
a few weeks ago, said that things would look better here after "they cleaned
up the mess at Washington." Cleaning up the mess consists in fooling the
people and making them pay a second time for the bad foreign investments
of the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks. It consists
in moving that heavy load of dubious and worthless foreign paper -- the
bills of wigmakers, brewers, distillers, narcotic-drug vendors, munition
makers, illegal finance drafts, and worthless foreign securities, out of
the banks and putting it on the back of American labor. That is what the
Reconstruction Finance Corporation is doing now. They talk about loans
to banks and railroads but they say very little about that other business
of theirs which consists in relieving the swindlers who promoted investment
trusts in this country and dumped worthless foreign securities into them
and then resold that mess of pottage to American investors under cover
of their own corporate titles. The Reconstruction Finance Corporation is
taking over those worthless securities from those investment trusts with
United States Treasury money at the expense of the American taxpayer and
the wage earner.
It will take us twenty
years to redeem our Government. Twenty years of penal servitude to pay
off the gambling debts of the traitorous Federal Reserve Board and the
Federal Reserve banks and to earn again that vast flood of American wages
and savings, bank deposits, and United States Government credit which the
Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks exported out of this
country to their foreign principals.
The Federal Reserve
Board and the Federal Reserve banks lately conducted an anti-hoarding campaign
here. Then they took that extra money which they had persuaded the American
people to put into the banks and they sent it to Europe along with the
rest. In the last several months, they have sent $1,300,000,000 in gold
to their foreign employers, their foreign masters, and every dollar of
that gold belonged to the people of the United States and was unlawfully
taken from them.
Is not it high time
that we had an audit of the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve
banks and an examination of all our Government bonds and securities and
public moneys instead of allowing the corrupt and dishonest Federal Reserve
Board and the Federal Reserve banks to speculate with those securities
and this cash in the notorious open discount market of New York City?
Mr. Chairman, within
the limits of the time allowed me, I can not enter into a particularized
discussion of the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks.
I have singled out the Federal Reserve currency for a few remarks because
there has lately been some talk here of "fiat money." What kind of money
is being pumped into the open discount market and through it into foreign
channels and stock exchanges? Mr. Mills of the Treasury has spoken here
of his horror of the printing presses and his horror of dishonest money.
He has no horror of dishonest money. If he had, he would be no party to
the present gambling of the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve
banks in the nefarious open discount market of New York, a market in which
the sellers are represented by ten great discount dealer corporations owned
and organized by the very banks which own and control the Federal Reserve
Board and the Federal Reserve banks. Fiat money, indeed!
After the several
raids on the Treasury Mr. Mills borrows the speech of those who protested
against those raids and speaks now with pretended horror of a raid on the
Treasury. Where was Mr. Mills last October when the United States Treasury
needed $598,000,000 of the taxpayers' money which was supposed to be in
the safe-keeping of Andrew W. Mellon in the designated depositories of
Treasury funds, and which was not in those depositories when the Treasury
needed it? Mr. Mills was the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury then,
and he was at Washington throughout October, with the exception of a very
significant week he spent at White Sulphur Springs closeted with international
bankers, while the Italian minister, Signor Grandi, was being entertained
-- and bargained with -- at Washington.
What Mr. Mills is
fighting for is the preservation whole and entire of the banker's monopoly
of all the currency of the United States Government. What Mr. Patman proposes
is that the Government shall exercise its sovereignty to the extent of
issuing some currency for itself. This conflict of opinion between Mr.
Mills as the spokesman of the bankers and Mr. Patman as the spokesman of
the people brings the currency situation here into the open. Mr. Patman
and the veterans are confronted by a stone wall -- the wall that fences
in the bankers with their special privileges. Thus, the issue is joined
between the host of democracy, of which the veterans are a part, and the
men of the king's bank, the would-be aristocrats, who deflated American
agriculture and robbed this country for the benefit of their foreign principals.
Mr. Chairman, last
December, I introduced a resolution here asking for an examination and
an audit of the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks and
all related matters. If the House sees fit to make such an investigation,
the people of the United States will obtain information of great value.
This is a Government of the people, by the people, for the people. Consequently,
nothing should be concealed from the people. The man who deceives the people
is a traitor to the United States. The man who knows or suspects that a
crime has been committed and who conceals or covers up that crime is an
accessory to it. Mr. Speaker, it is a monstrous thing for this great Nation
of people to have its destinies presided over by a traitorous Government
board acting in secret concert with international usurers. Every effort
has been made by the Federal Reserve Board to conceal its power but the
truth is the Federal Reserve Board has usurped the Government of the United
States. It controls everything here and it controls all our foreign relations.
It makes and breaks governments at will. No man and no body of men is more
entrenched in power than the arrogant credit monopoly which operates the
Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks. These evil-doers have
robbed this country of more than enough money to pay the national debt.
What the National Government has permitted the Federal Reserve Board to
steal from the people should now be restored to the people. The people
have a valid claim against the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve
banks. If that claim is enforced, Americans will not need to stand in the
breadlines or to suffer and die of starvation in the streets. Homes will
be saved, families will be kept together, and American children will not
be dispersed and abandoned. The Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve
banks owe the United States Government an immense sum of money. We ought
to find out the exact amount of the people's claim. We should know the
amount of the indebtedness of the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal
Reserve banks to the people and we should investigate this treacherous
and disloyal conduct of the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve
banks.
Here is a Federal
Reserve note. Immense numbers of these notes are now held abroad. I am
told that they amount to upwards of a billion dollars. They constitute
a claim against our Government and likewise a claim against the money our
people have deposited in the member banks of the Federal Reserve system.
Our people's money to the extent of $1,300,000,000 which has within the
last few months been shipped abroad to redeem Federal Reserve notes and
to pay other gambling debts of the traitorous Federal Reserve Board and
the Federal Reserve banks. The greater part of our monetary stock has been
shipped to foreigners. Why should we promise to pay the debts of foreigners
to foreigners? Why should our Government be put into the position of supplying
money to foreigners? Why should the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal
Reserve banks be permitted to finance our competitors in all parts of the
world? Do you know why the tariff was raised? It was raised to shut out
the flood of Federal Reserve goods pouring in here from every quarter of
the globe -- cheap goods, produced by cheaply paid foreign labor on unlimited
supplies of money and credit sent out of this country by the dishonest
and unscrupulous Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks. Go
out in Washington to buy an electric light bulb and you will probably be
offered one that was made in Japan on American money. Go out to buy a pair
of fabric gloves and inconspicuously written on the inside of the gloves
that will be offered to you will be found the words "made in Germany" and
that means "made on the public credit of the United States Government paid
to German firms in American gold taken from the confiscated bank deposits
of the American people."
The Federal Reserve
Board and the Federal Reserve banks are spending $100,000,000 a week buying
Government securities in the open market and are making a great bid for
foreign business. They are trying to make rates so attractive that the
human-hair merchants and distillers and other business entities in foreign
lands will come here and hire more of the public credit of the United States
Government and pay the Federal Reserve outfit for getting it for them.
Mr. Chairman, when
the Federal Reserve act was passed, the people of the United States did
not perceive that a world system was being set up here which would make
the savings of an American school-teacher available to a narcotic-drug
vendor in Macao. They did not perceive that the United States were to be
lowered to the position of a coolie country which has nothing but raw materials
and heavy goods for export; that Russia was destined to supply the man
power and that this country was to supply financial power to an international
superstate -- a superstate controlled by international bankers and international
industrialists acting together to enslave the world for their own pleasure.
The people of the
United States are being greatly wronged. If they are not, then I do not
know what "wronging the people" means. They have been driven from their
employments. They have been dispossessed of their homes. They have been
evicted from their rented quarters. They have lost their children. They
have been left to suffer and to die for lack of shelter, food, clothing,
and medicine.
The wealth of the
United States and the working capital of the United States has been taken
away from them and has either been locked in the vaults of certain banks
and the great corporations or exported to foreign countries for the benefit
of the foreign customers of those banks and corporations. So far as the
people of the United States are concerned, the cupboard is bare. It is
true that the warehouses and coal yards and grain elevators are full, but
the warehouses and coal yards and grain elevators are padlocked and the
great banks and corporations hold the keys. The sack of the United States
by the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks is the greatest
crime in history.
Mr. Chairman, a serious
situation confronts the House of Representatives to-day. We are trustees
of the people and the rights of the people are being taken away from them.
Through the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks, the people
are losing the rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution. Their
property has been taken from them without due process of law. Mr. Chairman,
common decency requires us to examine the public accounts of the Government
and see what crimes against the public welfare have and are being committed.
What is needed here
is a return to the Constitution of the United States. We need to
have a complete divorce of Bank and State. The old struggle that was fought
out here in Jackson's day must be fought over again. The independent United
States Treasury should be re-established and the Government should keep
its own money under lock and key in the building the people provided for
that purpose. Asset currency, the device of the swindler, should be done
away with. The Government should buy gold and issue United States currency
on it. The business of the independent bankers should be restored to them.
The State banking systems should be freed from coercion The Federal Reserve
districts should be abolished and the State boundaries should be respected.
Bank reserves should be kept within the borders of the States whose people
own them, and this reserve money of the people should be protected so that
the international bankers and acceptance bankers and discount dealers can
not draw it away from them. The exchanges should be closed while we are
putting our financial affairs in order. The Federal Reserve act should
be repealed and the Federal Reserve banks, having violated their charters,
should be liquidated immediately. Faithless Government officers who have
violated their oaths of office should be impeached and brought to trial.
Unless this is done by us, I predict that the American people, outraged,
robbed, pillaged, insulted, and betrayed as they are in their own land,
will rise in their wrath and send a President here who will sweep the money
changers out of the temple.
Facsimile of the Congressional Record, 1932, pages 12595 and 12596
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to An Astounding Exposure
Revised March 4, 2001