February I, 1912.] 



THE INDIA RUBBEai WORLD 



217 



needs of rubber manufacturers, and of dealers in not only 

 crude and reclaimed rubber, but manufactured goods. 



When one realizes that the total value of manufactured rub- 

 ber products in this country is very close to $200,000,000, and 

 that this country consumes appro.ximately 50 per cent, of the 

 total world's production of rubber, these facts deepen the 

 feeling of responsibility in the minds of your directors and 

 officers. 



There are many other functions which your directors can 

 assume for the good of this club, and it is the earnest belief 

 of your president that a club to be permanent must be useful. 



(Applause.) 



AMERICAN MONETARY PROBLEMS. 



THE Honorable J. W. Weel<s, who spoke on "The Work of 

 the Monetary Commission," was introduced by the presi- 

 dent as follows ; 



The pendulum of an old-fashioned clock steadies its internal 

 working; but if the pendulum is forced to swing too far one 

 way. it swings too far to the opposite side. 



The violent swinging of the financial pendulum of credit has 

 caused extravagant and fraudulent speculation on the one side, 

 and terrible sufferings and panics on the other. The old- 

 fashioned pendulum of credit should be modernized into a well 

 regulated balance wheel. This regulation and safeguarding of 

 credit and of finance has been the work of the Monetary Com- 

 mission. 



I have great pleasure in introducing to you Congressman 

 John W. Weeks, of Massachusetts. (Applause.) 



HoNOR.\BLE John W. Weeks, of Massachusetts : 



Mr. President and Gentlemen : I feel very much complimented 

 by your greeting. 



I think I received about the same amount of applause as did 

 Kelly when he appeared. (Applause.) And he is an extremely 

 popular man on all occasions. 



I am invited here to-night because I am trying to represent 

 in Congress — being a business man like the rest of you — the 

 president of your club and some of the other members who are 

 present tonight. 



Mr. Hood telegraphed me that he had never asked anything 

 of me during the seven years that T had represented the district, 

 and, therefore, he insisted that I come here to-night. That 

 means that probably he had exhausted his reserve to get other 

 public men from Washington, and I was the last choice. (Laugh- 

 ter, and cries of "No, Sir!" "Oh, no!" "Absolutely no!") But I 

 am so accustomed to being last rather than first in such matters 

 that that does not trouble me in the least. 



I am going to discuss a very dry subject, but I hope it will have 

 some bearing on the last paragraph in your president's address ; 

 that it may indicate something to you which will be useful, as 

 well as otherwise, in making this club perpetual. 



I shall talk to you, probably, until I see that you are tired of 

 hearing what I say. My speeches are not speeches at all. They 

 are talks. They can be cut off at any point, like a bologna sau- 



sage without in any respect breaking the continuity of the string, 

 or the effect of what has gone before, or what might come after. 

 (Laughter.) ■ j- i 



In 1907 you will all recall that we had one of our periodical 

 panics When Congress convened, a month or two after the 

 heio-ht of the panic, the first thing that was done was to appoint 

 the" Committee of Banking and Currency in the House, the 

 Finance Committee of the Senate, and set them to work trying 

 to frame a solution of our banking and currency problems. 



1 had been and was at that time, a member of the Banking 

 and Currencv Committee of the House. After working several 

 months we 'brought forth what was known as the Aldnch- 

 Vreeland Commission bill, a bill which everybody admits was 

 not perfect in any respect, and which has not been used anywhere 

 for any purpose, but which, in my judgment, would be extremely 

 useful if we had a panic before we got permanent legislation. 

 That bill provided for an issue of emergency currency, based on 

 commercial paper— the first recognition of the issuing of cur- 

 rencv on commercial paper which we have had in this country. 

 There are five hundred millions of circulation printed, stored in a 

 vault in shares which may be used by you and all other business 

 men if we happened to get into trouble and needed more circula- 

 tion than we have in the ordinary course of affairs. Uiat bill 

 also provided for what is known as the Monetary Commission, to 

 consist of nine members of the Senate and nine members of the' 

 House. We have been, as a result of that, at work for some 

 three and a half years trying to bring about a result which would 

 solve these great questions. 



In 1844, when presenting the Bank Act to the Commons, 

 Robert Peel used this language, which I will read: 



••There is no contract, public or private, no engagement, 

 national or individual, unaffected by it. The enterprise of com- 

 merce the profits of trade, the arrangements made in the do- 

 mestic relations of life, are all affected by this question submitted 

 to vou for your consideration." , , , . • 



That was' a proposition to change the method of note issuing 

 in Great Britain, We have undertaken not only that, but we 

 have undertaken the much larger problem of changmg our bank- 

 fn" methods, by establishing banks in foreign countries, of chang- 

 mo- the method of making paper, so that we may have bank 

 accepted bills, of changing the location of our reserves to some 

 extent and more than all, providing for a central organization 

 which will he supplemental to our present banking system. 



We found that there were many weaknesses in our system. 

 It is not the worst system in the world, as Mr. Carnegie said in 

 his rambling testimony vesterday before the Steel Investigation. 

 (Laughter) But it is a system which does not respond to the 

 needs" of business in critical times, and it does not permit our 

 extendin<f our operations as a world power, as a financial world 

 power so that we mav compete with our competitors success- 

 fully. And those are some of the questions which we have con- 

 sidered. ... , ■ , 



In the first place, there is no elasticity in our present circula- 

 tion We have something like a billion, six hundred nnllions in 

 o-old and gold certificates outstanding; something like five hun- 



Fr.\nk D. B,m.derston, Sfcrkt \ry. 



H.\R0Ln P. Fuller. Assist.»lNT Secret.^rv. 



J. FR.^NK Dunb.\r, Treasurer. 



