Americus times-recorder. [volume] (Americus, Ga.) 1891-current, 1916-09-28
BANKERS START
MEETING WITH 4
SPEECH BY HEAD

~"~S~S~NNNANhAg
membership has during the past year
reached total of 16,016 banks, OPEN
ed it's general convention here today
with its president, James K. Lynch of
San Francisco, delivering an address
in which he discussed the Federal Re-
serve Act and national defense.
"The primary purpose of a govern
ment,' he said, is to provide adequate
defense for the country governed, and
how shamefully this purpose has been
neglected under one administration
after another is a familiar tale.
I'VE are given to boasting of our
size, but when we are no longer capa-
BILE of feeling pin pricks in our feet,
are we not too large. For years our
rage, and the national consciousness is
barely aroused. Not in Mexico alone,
but within our own borders as well as
on thehigh seas have our people on
their lawful occasions been done to
death while the nation has slumbered
or murmured feebly in its sleep.
AS nation, we have grown rich,
and have grown fat and have grown
soft, and we are today the most tempt
ing prize under the blue canopy of
heaven.
"But if we as nation are sick, it is
as individuals that we must supply the
cure. Congress does not lead, but
follows public opinion. First of all,
we need cooperation, teamwork, the
things that win any kind of human en-
deavor, and to secure this there is
nothing quite so good as universal mil
itary training which arouses national
feeling and national consciousness as
nothing else can do.
I'm the task of vitalizing the nation,
the most important agency is the press,
which informs, instructs, advises, ad-
monishes the people 1t i'll becomes
one ignorant of the difficulties encoun-
tered in collecting and distributing the
news, to criticize the apparent failures
or deficiencies, but is it too much to
ask of our papers that they take the
larger view of our national affairs and
help in the difficult task which is be-
fore us, and to ask of our people that
they discriminate between the varying
grades of ability and integrity with
which the work is done?
IF our people can rise to the heights
OF citizenship that the times demand
the work that must be done can be
accomplished peacefully and in order,
but if they will not learn from the bit
ter experience of our kin across the
sea, the reformation will be worked
out amid the ruin of war"
So far as the bankers are concerned,
the most important subject of the day
is the operation of the Federal Re-
serve Act, said President Lynch. Criti-
cism of the reserve banks had come
from different sources; from the
banks of the financial centers, which
objected to the absorption by the re-
serve banks of the supply of bank ac-
ceptances; from the small banks in
the more remote districts, with com>
plant that the requirements for the
eligible papers are too strict and from
the member banks generally protest
ing against an enforced investment
which carried no immediate prospects
Of dividends and on reserve deposits
on which no interest is paid. Tt all
these objections he pointed out that
conditions for two years past have
been abnormal and furnished no evi-
dcnce of what the reserve system
could do, but that much had already
been accomplished. Bank acceptances
Cont 'ued on Page 5.)