MR. MERCHANT: That seems to describe the situation somewhat graphically and impressively, but I must say truthfully. We are undoubtedly "up against it" as the boys say. Only the other day I was talking with a president of one of the largest national banks in the country, and he told me that unless something was done very soon, he would get out of the business, because he could not stand the strain; but the bankers' troubles are no worse than those of every business man, and it seems to me as though we were on a perpetual strain, and living in a sort of terror of what may happen at almost any time. The business atmosphere is unnatural. Certainly this cannot be necessary. MR. LABORINGMAN: Well, I don't see anything very strange or unnatural about this thing, if it is as you have already stated that there have been no changes in your banking laws worth speaking of, since 1863. Look at your railroad development. Fifty years ago the locomotive that weighed thirty-five tons was a whopper, but now they turn them out weighing one hundred and thirty-five tons. We used to have thirty-five and fifty-pound rails, and our ties forty inches apart. Now we have a hundred-pound rail, yes, one-hundred-and-fifteen-pound rail, with the ties twenty-five inches apart. The other day, I counted one hundred cars with one hundred thousand pounds capacity each, every one loaded full in a single train. Now, what would you think of running a hundred-ton engine, and that kind of a train of cars over a railroad built fifty years ago? Ties only eight inches thick and forty inches apart, on a corresponding road-bed. Why, men, I can tell you we don't want a single-track railroad of that character now, with a switch out every ten miles to let trains pass; but we want a four-track road, with twelve to fifteen-inch ties, only twenty-five inches apart, and equipped with signal and block systems of the latest type, and most perfect automatic operation. UNCLE SAM: Gentlemen, when it comes to getting down to brass tacks, and hitting the thing plump square between the eyes, Mr. Laboringman gets away with all of you. Now, can you beat that as an illustration of our financial and banking needs? If you will construct a banking system up-to-date, and just add to these domestic requirements the necessary provisions growing out of the fact that I am now a world power, I should have said, I am the world power, and prepare an international financial and banking system, we shall meet the demands of this new century; but otherwise I shall find myself wholly incapable of protecting the very foundation of commercial credit, my gold reserves, when the test comes.