In my view, it is of the utmost importance that the Government should be relieved from the burden of providing all the gold required for exchanges and export.  This responsibility is alone borne by the Government, without any of the usual and necessary banking powers to help itself.  The banks do not feel the strain of gold redemption.  The whole strain rests upon the Government, and the size of the gold reserve in the Treasury has come to be, with or without reason, the signal of danger or of security.  This ought to be stopped.

If we are to have an era of prosperity in the country, with sufficient receipts for the expenses of the Government, we may feel no immediate embarrassment from our present currency; but the danger still exists, and will be ever present, menacing us so long as the existing system continues.  And, besides, it is in times of adequate revenues and business tranquillity that the Government should prepare for the worst.  We cannot avoid, without serious consequences, the wise consideration and prompt solution of this question.

The Secretary of the Treasury has outlined a plan, in great detail, for the purpose of removing the threatened recurrence of a depleted gold reserve and save us from future embarrassment on that account.  To this plan I invite your careful consideration.

I concur with the Secretary of the Treasury in his recommendation that National banks be allowed to issue notes to the face value of the bonds which they have deposited for circulation, and that the tax on circulating notes secured by deposit of such bonds be reduced to one-half of one per cent per annum.  I also join him in recommending that authority be given for the establishment of National banks with a minimum capital of $25,000.  This will enable the smaller villages and agricultural regions of the country to be supplied with currency to meet their needs.

I recommend that the issue of National bank notes be restricted to the denomination of ten dollars and upwards.  If the suggestions I have herein made shall have the approval of Congress, then I would recommend that National banks be required to redeem their notes in gold.

The most important problem with which this Government is now called upon to deal pertaining to its foreign relations concerns its duty toward Spain and the Cuban insurrection.  Problems and conditions more or less in common with those now existing have confronted this Government at various times in the past.  The story of Cuba for many years has been one of unrest, growing discontent, an effort toward a larger enjoyment of liberty and self-control, of organized resistance to the mother country, of depression after distress and warfare, and of ineffectual settlement to be followed by renewed revolt.  For no enduring period since the enfranchisement of the continental possessions of Spain in the Western Continent has the condition of Cuba or the policy of Spain toward Cuba not caused concern to the United States.