people to have proved the most beneficial institution ever established, the Constitution only excepted."

Even a chronological account of the hours of McAdoo's days in those months of his office could not adequately narrate the labors involved in his work for the passage of the Act. He received and read tens of thousands of letters and telegrams from every point in the country. No point was too small to merit his consideration, no caller too humble to be denied. He held sessions with Members of Congress and with Senators. He conferred with the President almost nightly, a reason for the lack of correspondence between them except on minor points of executive procedure. Anything but a recluse, he was keeping up the duties of his official position in the social activities involved, but he never allowed it, either by time encroachment or by more subtle moral encroachment, to impinge upon his essential duty of securing the currency reform for which the people of the nation were waiting. He made for and distributed ammunition to the Senators and Representatives on the firing lines. His letters to them are among the clearest and most definite contributions to the history of finance, for he had a way of clearing the woods when he swung in upon a problem. His memoranda for use against the specious arguments of the opposition drive straight to the points at issue. In them he exhibited that quality of foresight which was to distinguish so much of his official service. Tirelessly he piled up the stones of the wall which was designed to hold off the attacking force when in December the Owen-Glass Bill came for final consideration to the Capitol.

On the thirteenth of December the attack on the measure culminated with the speech made by Elihu

Root. The speech, by no means one of Root's ablest, nevertheless concentrated within its outlines the high points of opposition to the Federal Reserve Act. With a certain swift plausibility he set forth his arguments, forging toward their crux, insistence that the Act substituted a paternalism of government for self-depend

With a cleverness not the less brilliant for its speciousness he swung entirely away from the main issue the substitution of twelve district banks for one central bank and the power of a board of seven men for the power of one man-and construed the act as a subversion of the Jeffersonian principle that the best government was the one which governed least. He presented an array of figures, purporting to be facts, and it was upon these, even more than upon his platitudes of misconstruction, that McAdoo directed

answer.

In his review of Senator Root's attack-contained in a letter sent to Senator Owen the following day-the Secretary riddled the most important statements of the Senator from New York. He showed the falsity of the premises, breaking down thereby the whole line of attack. Senator Owen, leading the administration forces in the Senate on succeeding days, blazed away at the Root assertions while McAdoo, watching the battle from headquarters, sallied forth time and again to strengthen, wherever possible, the wings of the army. Day and night the conflict waged beneath the Dome which has covered so many great party combats. Day and night the struggle for supremacy between the elected forces of the American people and the selected forces of plutocracy went on until the day of final battle arrived. Then, as wars so often do, it ended almost abruptly. On the twenty-third of December,

1913, the Federal Reserve Act, taking power of financial supremacy from the great interests of Wall Street and returning them to the hands of the people at large, was passed by the Senate and House of Representatives. On the twenty-seventh of December President Wilson wrote to McAdoo from Pass Christian:

"My dear McAdoo:

"All here join in sending the warmest holiday greetings to you and yours.

"Your letter of December twenty-third was very generous and gives me a great deal larger share of the credit for the currency legislation than is at all due me. In looking back upon those months of struggle, I realize how absolutely indispensable and invaluable the part was which you, yourself, played. I think that Owen and Glass would agree with me that without your constant guidance and mediation the task would have been well-nigh impossible, and I am sure they would join with me in the warm and deep admiration and gratitude which I feel for the part which you, yourself, played. I am sure they would also feel as I do an immense satisfaction that the organization of the new system is to be so largely in your hands.

"With warmest regard, always,

"Cordially and faithfully yours,

(Signed) "WOODROW WILSON."

On January 1, 1914, Bryan wrote:

"My dear Mr. McAdoo:

"May the New Year bring you as much happiness as the year just closed. I could not wish you more,

for since March you have covered yourself with glory and filled your friends with pride. It has been a delight to be associated with you, my dear fellow, and my wife joins me in hearty good wishes for yourself and all your family.

"Affectionately yours,

(Signed) "W. J. BRYAN."

The constant and watchful efforts of the Secretary had not ended at the gateway of progress. As if in prescience of that wave of war which was to sweep across the world he had secured a provision from Congress for the extension until June, 1915, of operation of the Aldrich-Vreeland Act, which was due to expire in June, 1914. The Federal Reserve Banks were not to go into operation until October, 1914, and had it not been for McAdoo's forethought the beginning of the great war in Europe would have found the United States unprepared for the emergency. Unknowing the danger, he had built the dike, even at the moment of winning the first great struggle of his public office. The flood was to come, but not to inundate.

CHAPTER VI

MOVING THE NATION'S CROPS

T is a strange thing," McAdoo wrote more than

“I'

two years after he had left office, "that throughout American history so little constructive and comprehensive work has been done to conserve the agricultural industry of the country. This industry is absolutely vital to the existence and prosperity of the people. Farmers as a class do not want superior advantages or benefits conferred upon them by legislation. They do want equal opportunity, and to get that equal opportunity they must have sufficient credit. facilities at all times, and these must be available to them on as reasonable terms and at as low rates of interest as are allowed to our business men and manufacturers, due regard being had, of course, for the security offered and to the conditions applicable to each. In other words, agricultural credit should be as available as commercial credit, and upon equally favorable terms, all things considered."

The pronouncement set forth as introduction to A. C. Wiprud's The Federal Farm Loan System in Operation incorporates the political philosophy which the Secretary of the Treasury brought to the subject when he assumed the post, and which he found no reason to change in his experience there. The circumstances of his childhood had brought him in such close touch with the problem of the farmer who was debarred from equal economic opportunity by credit restriction that the thought of the difficulties of the agricultural group lay in his heart as well as on his brain, and he took up the problem, as it touched upon his department, with