Omaha daily bee., 1909-11-17
ROBERTS FOR CENTRAL BANK
Chicago Banker Says Adverse Argu-
ments Miss Mark.
SPEAKS AT KANSAS CITY
Says America Is LaEEing Behind All
Other Countries I'm Matter of
Currency Issue-CIenrinE
House n Model.

KANSAS CITY, Nov. 16.-"N,ae-tenths Of
all the objections now beng offered to the
central bank plan miss the mark; they do
not apply at all to the kind Of a central
bank that is proposed" declared George e.
Roberts, president of the Commercial Ma
tional bank Of Chicago and former director
OF the mint, in an address delivered at a
meeting Of the Kansas City Clearing House
association in this city today.
THE central bank Of issue offers a more
comprehensive treatment Of the currency
problem than any other plan" continued
Mr.. Roberts. 1T provides abundant elastic
lty under responsible control 1t pro-
vides a fiscal agency for the gov
eminent through which its enor-
nous collections and disbursements may be
handled with the least disturbance to the
money market. II would give unity and
cohesion and elasticity to our entire bank
ing system which could be given in no
other way.
And we are not pioneers in the move
ment. We are tagging behind all the rest
of the world. There is not a country in
Europe but has delegated the issuance Of
its paper currency to a central bank and
made II the depository of the public funds.
The Japanese are as alert and enter
prising as any people in the world, they
have made a study of administrative meth
DDS the world over. They began the Or
ganization of their banking system back
in 1872 by copying our system Of national
banks, with notes based upon the public
debt, but in the course Of ten years they
discovered that they had not copied the
best system in the world. Then they abol-
ished 1t and established the Bank Of Japan,
a semi-official institution modelled after
the Imperial Bank of Germany.
Modelled After Clearing House.
I'm the cities the banks, under the pres
sure Of emergencies, have learned to come
together and assume, without any legal
sanction, some of the function of a central
bank. We saw the clearing house in l9O
receive the ordinary commercial assets OF
their members and issue an impromptu
currency upon them ana that currency
passed into circulation and served the pur
pose Of money. The only trouble with /
was that 1t had no legal status, the publ,
was familiar with 1t and it was in itsel
a symptom of disorder, but the principl
upon which those issues were based is tn
principle Of the central bank.
"And what those OF us who favor a cen
trail bank are now advocating is not an in
dependent, competing institution like tn
old Bank of the United States, not a grea
/. overshadowing institution, that will gathe
deposits from all over the country-in fact
we do not want it to take deposits at all
> but a central organization Of the existin
banks. call it a central bank or a centra
clearing house, or central agency, or wha
you like, that will do for all the banks, un
der the authority Of law, what the clearin
house did for their members in 1907; a
r organization hat will end certain ser
l vices to the government and to the bank
and to the public, which the indiv.dua
, banks are not SO well qualified to pei
form" .r1.tr