In the first week of May, 1922, the loans and discounts of the New York Federal Reserve Bank amounted to $89,956,248, and it must have a $17,000,000 building and equipment to handle its activities. On the same date the loans and discounts of the National City Bank of New York amounted to $506,840,494, and its bank buildings to but $6,060,000. On the same date the loans and discounts of the National Bank of Commerce of New York amounted to $259,165,930, and its bank building to but $4,000,000. Figure it for yourself. It makes some difference whose money is being spent, doesn't it? Private business is one thing, and public business is another thing, when it comes to housing it, isn't it? Compare the volume of the loans of these banks, compare their building costs and draw your own conclusions. In addition to veined marble and polished brass and in addition to a mass of luxurious equipment the New York Federal Reserve Bank has, or will have on completion, a beautiful auditorium, a gymnasium, a club room for men, a club room for women, and a restaurant. It will doubtless gratify farmers on the prairies, workmen all over the land, merchants, and manufacturers and professional men to know that their toil, their efforts and their earnings are in effect being levied upon to provide this modern palace equipped with an auditorium, a gymnasium, two clubs and a restaurant. It will doubtless gratify the stockholders in National Banks, whose money is commandeered to capitalize this leviathan, to know that their money, or its proceeds, or its earnings, is being used to erect and equip a veritable Temple of Mammon with all these attendant luxuries--which they themselves cannot afford in their places of business! If you, who read these lines, could commandeer over a hundred millions of dollars for capital at 6 per cent and could conscript over $1,800,000,000 of deposits at no per cent you could transact your business in a palace in the heart of New York with an auditorium and club rooms and a gymnasium and a restaurant, couldn't you? But as you can't commandeer your neighbor's capital nor conscript for nothing the deposits of the public, you find yourselves compelled to work and to provide the wherewithal for those who can! You can measure these lavish expenditures for buildings and equipments and luxuries by any known measure, by volume of business, or by like buildings for like purposes and it is as clear as day that these Federal Reserve Palaces are a monument of needless extravagance and of wanton wastage--pulled off by the ukase of enthroned bureaucracy spending "other people's money!" That's all you can make of the Monster's Palaces. CHAPTER XI THE MONSTER'S EXPENSES