US Presidency
1913

I should be recreant to my deepest convictions of public obligation did I not press it upon you with solemn and urgent insistence. The principles upon which we should act are also clear. The country has sought and seen its path in this matter within the last few years, sees it more clearly now than it ever saw it before, much more clearly than when the last legislative proposals on the subject were made. We must have a currency, not rigid as now, but readily, elastically responsive to sound credit, the expanding and contracting credits of everyday transactions, the normal ebb and flow of personal and corporate dealings. Our banking laws must mobilize reserves; must not permit the concentration anywhere in a few hands of the monetary resources of the country or their use for speculative purposes in such volume as to hinder or impede or stand in the way of other more legitimate, more fruitful uses.