MR. BANKER: Precisely so. Why should not a bank act just like any other merchant or trader, and adjust its stock of goods to the ever-changing conditions of its business? Of course I am fully aware that there is one element entering into a bank's business that is not common to other mercantile houses, and that is the question of its credit. It must keep itself in such a position at all times as to preclude the chance of suspicion arising about its ability to meet its demand obligations. This point brings me squarely up to the matter of a central reserve. A bank that is known to be under the supervision of a Board of Control, which can and ought to know its actual condition, and which has the power to compel it to so conduct its business, as to be entitled to consideration and accommodation, whenever it asks for it, and actually needs it, will certainly have the confidence of the public to an unbounded degree. Of course, I am assuming that the public are aware of the fact that the Board of Control in turn has access to the great central reserve of one billion two hundred and fifty million dollars ($1,250,000,000). You can imagine that the public under such circumstances would have absolute confidence in a bank. Indeed, I am of the opinion that as soon as this organization is effected, bank failures would be a thing of the past, because the public would soon come to appreciate this, and look upon every bank in the system as safe beyond the peradventure of a doubt. MR. FARMER: There would be every reason for confidence in such an institution because of its great strength; and yet, if I understand your plan, as outlined, every one of these individual zones would be as independent of every other zone as if it were a foreign country. It would be like a great bank standing alone, of which every bank within the zone was an integral part, for the purpose of the defense of the credit of each. Then again, every individual bank would remain just as independent as it is today, while at the same time it enjoyed the full confidence which the larger institution would be naturally entitled to. MR. BANKER: That is precisely the result this coöperative reserve fund of one billion two hundred and fifty million dollars ($1,250,000,000) would produce. MR. LAWYER: _Then, as I understand it, beyond the individual independent bank, and beyond and behind the individual independent zone, would be "The American Reserve Bank," standing guard over the commercial interests of the whole United States, ready at any time to meet any possible contingency that might arise in any section of the country, with practically unlimited power to release, hold, or recall gold from the four quarters of the globe, because it can place a price upon the use of gold in the form of interest, and so conserve the general welfare of American commerce and American labor._