With the exceptions of these three items, the estimates show a reduction this year below the total estimates for 1913 of more than $5,000,000.

The estimates for Panama Canal construction for 1914 are $17,000,000 less than for 1913.

OUR BANKING AND CURRENCY SYSTEM

A time when panics seem far removed is the best time for us to prepare our financial system to withstand a storm.  The most crying need this country has is a proper banking and currency system.  The existing one is inadequate, and everyone who has studied the question admits it.

It is the business of the National Government to provide a medium, automatically contracting and expanding in volume, to meet the needs of trade.  Our present system lacks the indispensable quality of elasticity.

The only part of our monetary medium that has elasticity is the bank-note currency.  The peculiar provisions of the law requiring national banks to maintain reserves to meet the call of the depositors operates to increase the money stringency when it arises rather than to expand the supply of currency and relieve it.  It operates upon each bank and furnishes a motive for the withdrawal of currency from the channels of trade by each bank to save itself, and offers no inducement whatever for the use of the reserve to expand the supply of currency to meet the exceptional demand.

After the panic of 1907 Congress realized that the present system was not adapted to the country’s needs and that under it panics were possible that might properly be avoided by legislative provision.  Accordingly a monetary commission was appointed which made a report in February, 1912.  The system which they recommended involved a National Reserve Association, which was, in certain of its faculties and functions, a bank, and which was given through its governing authorities the power, by issuing circulating notes for approved commercial paper, by fixing discounts, and by other methods of transfer of currency, to expand the supply of the monetary medium where it was most needed to prevent the export or hoarding of gold and generally to exercise such supervision over the supply of money in every part of the country as to prevent a stringency and a panic.  The stock in this association was to be distributed to the banks of the whole United States, State and National, in a mixed proportion to bank units and to capital stock paid in.  The control of the association was vested in a board of directors to be elected by representatives of the banks, except certain ex-officio directors, three Cabinet officers, and the Comptroller of the Currency.  The President was to appoint the governor of the association from three persons to be selected by the directors, while the two deputy governors were to be elected by the board of directors.  The details of the plan were worked out with great care and ability, and the plan in general seems to me to furnish the basis