US Presidency
1911

I can not, therefore, do much more at this time than commend the immense importance of monetary reform, urge prompt consideration and action when the commission's report is received, and express my satisfaction that the plan to be proposed promises to embrace main features that, having met the approval of a great preponderance of the practical and professional opinion of the country, are likely to meet equal approval in Congress. It is exceedingly fortunate that the wise and undisputed policy of maintaining unchanged the main features of our banking system rendered it at once impossible to introduce a central bank; for a central bank would certainly have been resisted, and a plan into which it could have been introduced would probably have been defeated. But as a central bank could not be a part of the only plan discussed or considered, that troublesome question is eliminated. And ingenious and novel as the proposed National Reserve Association appears, it simply is a logical outgrowth of what is best in our present system, and is, in fact, the fulfillment of that system.