Under the present system of society the linking together of the various parts of the economic world is a private matter. Mines, factories and mills use the railroads as a means of transporting their products. The intermediary in this as in other transactions between the various branches of the economic world is the bank. Thus the banker, who provides the credit, and through whose private institution financial transactions take place, becomes the arbiter of economic destiny, rendering decisions upon which the well-being of the masses or producers depends, yet wholly irresponsible for the results that follow on these decisions. Using the people's money, possessed of vast authority over the jobs and the property of the producers, the banker is answerable only to other financiers who have a similar power and who enjoy a similar freedom from social restraint. Within the scope of the law prohibiting fraud and theft, and subject to the limitations of conscience the bankers and their confreres follow the dictates of their own inclinations. Quite naturally, under the circumstances, they have grown rich, and powerful far beyond the extent of their riches, since their control of the credit--upon which the whole business community depends--and their easy access to other people's money in the form of insurance premiums and savings bank deposits, place them in a strategic position which permits them to dominate and to dictate outside the boundaries of their ownership. The power now exercised by the bankers will, in a producers' society, be under the control of public servants whose business it will be to link up the various lines of activity within the economic machine. At one stage in the development of the world's economic life it was necessary to take out of the hands of private individuals the right to issue money, and to make of money issue a public function. To-day no one questions the desirability of having money issued by public authority, and the right to issue money is recognized as one of the important attributes of sovereignty. Meanwhile there has been a change in the character of the medium of exchange. Credit and not money is employed to adjust most of the relations between economic groups. In 1920, for example, the total amount of money in circulation in the United States, including gold, silver, and all forms of paper money was only 6,088 millions of dollars, while the bank-clearings--that is, the exchange of checks between banks--totaled 462,920 millions of dollars. If to these figures are added the volume of checks drawn and accepted on the same bank, the amount of commercial paper discounted, etc., some idea may be obtained of the importance of credit transactions as compared with the use of cash under the present system. Nevertheless, while the right to issue money has become a public function, the right to issue credit remains in the hands of private bankers.