hand for many years. There is absolute necessity for a change and reform in the administration in the patent laws.

Mr. REYNOLDS, of Scranton.-Showing how vitally it touches a great many interests in this country, while it may not appear to you if you are not an inventor, as being of any particular interest, I would like to say that in my own experience, representing a little corporation called the Menzies Knitting Company, they adopted a device for knitting socks. The company spent a lot of money for machinery and then proceeded to the manufacture of stockings. The company ran awhile, until one day it was notified that it was using machines that had been pronounced an infringement in another Circuit Court jurisdiction. It went along until finally the complainant, who established its right in the court, notified the Menzies Knitting Company that it must cease to use those machines, which it did. The whole thing was sold at sheriff's sale.

That case dragged itself along through the slow process of the courts in the various jurisdictions, until finally the Menzies Knitting Company was ruined. It was an entire loss.

So I say it touches the manufacturer particularly.

Mr. HAMLIN, of Boston.-I move the adoption of the report.

The report of the committee was adopted.

The PRESIDENT.-Our Secretary and President will get up that memorial in proper form and it will be sent as you ask.

Mr. HAMLIN.-I move that Mr. FISH be requested to present the memorial during our meeting.

Mr. FISH.-If you will send me the memorial I will present it. Send it to my address.

LETTER FROM HON. JOHN BARRETT.

The PRESIDENT.-Before we adjourn the Chair has one or two things to present to the meeting.

In the first place, here is a very kind letter which the Chair thinks Pittsburg will be very much interested in:MY DEAR MR. PRESIDENT:

Upon my return to-day, after an absence of nearly a month for my health, I find your kind note of January 9th, enclosing a copy of the resolution of the Pittsburg Chamber of Commerce in regard to the promotion of trade with Latin America, the Pan-American Union, and myself. I thank you for letting me see this, for I appreciate it very highly. Yours very cordially,

JOHN BARRETT,

Director,

Pan-American Union.

Thereupon, at 10.45 P. M., on motion of Mr. HITCHCOCK, the convention adjourned until to-morrow, January 18th, at 10.30 o'clock A. M.

SECOND DAY.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 18, 1911.

THE BUSINESS MEN'S MONETARY CONFERENCE

Held Under the Auspices of

THE NATIONAL BOARD OF TRADE.

The PRESIDENT.-At our last convention resolutions were adopted favoring a very active campaign among the various organizations making up this National Board of Trade in the interest of a better currency law. This Board has recognized and appreciated in the highest degree the great work that the National Monetary Commission has been doing, and, in interviews with the Chairman, Senator Aldrich, Congressman VREELAND and others, they have approved of the work that this Board has been engaged in, and since then Senator Aldrich has spoken to your President in the highest terms of the widespread work this Board has done through its constituent members and others.

Following the desire of the National Monetary Commission, we have placed a most valuable man on that work, and we have been in correspondence not only with our own constituent members, but with 125 of the great Chambers of Commerce of our country. Appreciating the very hard task of the Monetary Commission and following the desire of that Commission, as well as every business man and every business organization in the country, we have put our shoulders to the wheel to assist the good cause of bringing about an early solution of this very important question.

Only recently in New York, at a very important conference at the Academy of Political Science, I had the pleasure of listening to several speakers, all of whom thought

it was a very essential part of our business to help as much as we could to get a consensus of opinion of the best men of our business organizations. In consequence, by the authority of our Board of Managers, I have called this convention together. There are men here representing the most powerful interests of the country, who are deeply interested in what we are doing. We want it known that this joint meeting of the National Monetary Conference with the National Board of Trade is held for the purpose of concentrating the views of the people of America, and for that purpose I have thought it better that I should ask a very distinguished author on finance to preside at this conference to-day; so, with your consent, and I know it will meet with the approval of the entire conference, I have asked the Hon. C. STUART PATTERSON, who was President of the Indianapolis Monetary Conference, to preside to-day. I now have the pleasure of introducing Mr. PATTERSON. [Great applause.]

Mr. C. STUART PATTERSON took the Chair as presiding officer and Mr. A. T. ANDERSON acted as Secretary.

The PRESIDING OFFICER.-Mr. President and gentlemen, I thank you for the very great honor you have done to me in asking me to preside over your deliberations to-day.

It is a great pleasure to me to meet again many of my friends of the National Board of Trade, whom I have not had the pleasure of seeing for many years, as it is also a great pleasure to me to meet the other gentlemen who are here to-day.

I do not intend to inflict upon you a long speech. Your presence here attests your interest in the subject.

We all know that the currency of this country is not in a condition which is creditable to the legislation of the country. We ought to have the very best currency, whereas we have a currency that is very far from the very best. We have a currency of too many different kinds-a currency composed partly of Government obligations in the shape of legal tender notes and partly in the shape of silver dollars, which are nothing more than Government obliga

tions.

A currency of that sort does not fulfil the functions of any proper system of currency. It does not expand and contract in accordance with the demands of the business of the country. It expands only when and as the Government makes payments; it contracts when and as money is paid in to the Government. We have a National bank currency which is perfectly safe, but which is open to the same criticism. It does not respond to the demands of trade. It is not only that the currency system is defective. The financial system is defective. The National banks are bound by a rigid rule to the maintenance of reserves, violations of which rule have been winked at by the Comptroller of the Currency, and the reserves do not fulfil the proper aim and object of reserves.

The system is also defective in that there is not with us, as there is in every other civilized country doing a large commercial business, any regulative force controlling the rate of interest and maintaining the integrity of the re

serves.

These defects are not the defects of to-day nor of yesterday; they have existed for a long time, and, as I said before, it is not creditable to us that these difficulties have not been properly met and mastered. But I think we can all feel that the skies are brightening, that there is hope before us.

Under the lead of Senator Aldrich a campaign of education has begun which has certainly enlightened much ignorance, and it is to-day the paramount duty of the business men of the country to do everything in their power to hold up the hands of the Aldrich Commission, to aid them in spreading throughout the country a proper and intelligent undertanding of this question, and thus bring into play the force of public opinion which will mould and control legislation.

I am now ready to hear anything that may be offered. [Great applause.]

Mr. PAUL WARBURG.-Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, I do not think we could have met at a more psychological moment than to-day, when Senator Aldrich has for the first time