Such is not the fact. The fact is that the Federal Reserve System is in truth a huge Central Bank, managed, manipulated, directed and operated from Washington by the Federal Reserve Board. There sits the spider and there the web is woven--spreading all over the U.S.A.--in which are enmeshed the victims. You can read--if you want to waste your time--oodles of language about how the Boards of Directors of these twelve Federal Reserve Banks are seated in office and how part of them are elected by member banks and how part of them are appointed by the Federal Reserve Board. You can--if you want to waste more of your time--absorb messes of artfully worded verbiage about the duties of the Boards of Directors. But it's all "gammon and spinach," it's all artful camouflage. _The real government of the Federal Reserve Banking System and of its twelve Federal Reserve Banks and branches is in the absolute dictatorial control of the Federal Reserve Board at Washington._ It is all contained in one little joker of just thirty words. Here it is. Read it. "_Any compensation that may be provided by Boards of Directors of Federal Reserve Banks for directors, officers or employees shall be subject to the approval of the Federal Reserve Board._" In every one of the twelve Federal Banks every director, every Governor, every one of the Deputy Governors, Federal Reserve Agents, Cashiers, Assistant Cashiers, Controllers, Secretary, Counsel, Assistant Counsel, Clerks, Stenographers, Messengers and Watchmen--in short, the whole horde of Federal Reserve bureaucratic parasites--are subject to the approval of the Federal Reserve Board at Washington because _their compensation is subject to the approval of the Federal Reserve Board_. You know that the hands that hold the money rule the enterprise. You know that approval or disapproval of compensation is in effect "hiring and firing." You know that "approval of compensation" is simply a euphonious bit of language or smoke screen behind which really sits an enthroned autocracy. No matter how many "conferences" are held between Governors of Federal Reserve Banks, between Federal Reserve Agents and with the Federal Advisory Council--"conferences" which during 1921 cost you $22,716--the Federal Reserve Board at Washington is the supreme and final dictator of the personnel and of the pay of its 10,313 employees and of its 231 officers. The Federal Reserve Board as to the compensation of this horde--and hence as to its personnel--is an absolute autocracy from whose order there is no appeal! It draws its expense account from a practically bottomless treasury without let, hindrance, supervision or veto! Kaiserdom and Czardom in their palmiest days drew from no such lake of liquid gold as draws the Federal Reserve Board at Washington. Set that down on your mental tablets and proceed to the next camouflage station.