There wasn't to be any "Central Bank" you understand. The sponsors of this monster abhorred the idea of a "Central Bank." It was the furthest possible from their pure thoughts of altruistic finance! They were going to have twelve banks, each one established in a center of industry and catering to and upbuilding the industries in its regional zone. Each one was going to be a separate and distinct corporation absolutely disconnected from its eleven brethren. This idea was advertised, adulated, and saccharinely paeanized until America was lulled to sleep. For month after month this cone of chloroform was held over American citizens until the anesthetic took effect. Then came forth what was known as the Glass-Owen bill. The smoothness of its head sponsors' name was symbolic. The ground had been prepared for its reception. Propaganda seed had been diligently sown. Years of the most astute scheming and plotting of the brainiest schemers who ever schemed bore its fruit in the Glass-Owen bill. On rails greased by years of propaganda it slid into the legislative hopper, came through in an oil bath and went to President Wilson. Whether he was the deceived or the deceiver none but himself knows. But he painted the Federal Reserve System with his most magnificent verbal rainbow colors, prated of it as "the emancipator of credit," signed it in the midst of a coterie of sycophantic Pecksniffs and the pen whose strokes made it a law was religiously preserved! Its real authors--who had spent years in weaving its phrases and scores of thousands of dollars in propagandizing for its passage--winked, smiled in their sleeves and prepared for pillage. The Federal Reserve System was born with a caul--concealing its grin of greed--and was brought into being by the most astute coterie of legislative accoucheurs who ever delivered a babe of legislation. Here and now read just two of the sample promises made by the Money Masters at the birth of their monster. They told you that the Federal Reserve System would "prevent unfair and undue constriction of credits with its consequent paralyzing effect on business and on the productive energies of the nation." They told you that "men will not be thrown out of employment wholesale throughout the country by the fright of financial and commercial panic, but finance and commerce will be steady. Hundreds and thousands of men will not suddenly be thrown out of employment during these national waves of depression nor undue feverish buoyancy." Peg these specious promises in your brainery and compare them later on with the actual performances of this monster of depression with the Federal Reserve Board at Washington really functioning as a Central Bank. CHAPTER III THE FRAMEWORK OF THE MONSTER