"It is unextinguished credit which produces those terrible monetary cataclysms which scatter ruin and desolation among nations. It is by the excessive creation of credit that overproduction is brought about, which causes those terrible catastrophes, called 'commercial crises,' and the inability of credit-shops to extinguish the credit they have created, commonly called the failures of banks, is the cause of the most terrible social calamities of modern times." MR. LAWYER: Now, we have the other side of the picture. On the one hand, we have Daniel Webster painting the possibilities of human achievements through credit--its tremendous power for good, when under control, and, on the other hand, the words of MacLeod pointing out the awful danger, the tragical consequences of credit beyond control. The years of 1873, 1893 and 1907 are illustrations of what happens when credit has passed the boundaries of control. MR. BANKER: Precisely so, and what we want to do is to prevent the recurrence of those commercial tragedies which interrupt the currents of prosperity, spreading desolation and death throughout the length and breadth of the land. MR. LABORINGMAN: It is to be hoped that we can do it, for no class suffers so much as the working masses during these periods of disaster, depression and distress. Don't you see that if any one of us has succeeded in laying aside by painful saving a little nest egg, in some savings bank, that it is wiped out, and he has to begin all over again? And if one of us fellows has accumulated enough to start some little business of his own, ninety-nine times out of one hundred he is cleaned out, and through no fault whatever of his own. MR. FARMER: In this very connection I want to call your attention to another thing, and that's this. These men who have the intelligence, ambition, perseverance and moral courage to pinch and save, even if they have to starve to get a start for themselves, constitute the true and the greatest ultimate source of wealth of this nation. They are the chaps that make two blades of grass grow where only one grew before. You don't want to forget that. They are not only the hope of every community in which they live, but they are a constant inspiration to the young. MR. MANUFACTURER: Now, gentlemen, you are talking sense. If we can devise some scheme to keep business from running away with us, and running off the track, and down the embankment every few years, and plumb over the precipice, we'll be doing something worth while. In a word, what we want, it seems to me, is to keep business on a more even keel, if possible; and if we could only get control of credit, and keep it within reasonable limits, always subject to a current gold test, we will be in a fair way to accomplish it. MR. BANKER: That is just what we are after; to find some way to keep credit within reasonable limits. You have struck the keynote of this whole question.