It is under the compulsion of what seems to me a clear and imperative
duty that I have a second time this session sought the privilege of
addressing you in person. I know, of course, that the heated season of
the year is upon us, that work in these chambers and in the committee
rooms is likely to become a burden as the season lengthens, and that
every consideration of personal convenience and personal comfort,
perhaps, in the cases of some of us, considerations of personal health
even, dictate an early conclusion of the deliberations of the session;
but there are occasions of public duty when these things which touch us
privately seem very small, when the work to be done is so pressing and
so fraught with big consequence that we know that we are not at liberty
to weigh against it any point of personal sacrifice. We are now in the
presence of such an occasion. It is absolutely imperative that we should
give the business men of this country a banking and currency system by
means of which they can make use of the freedom of enterprise and of
individual initiative which we are about to bestow upon them.
We are about to set them free; we must not leave them without the tools
of action when they are free. We are about to set them free by removing
the trammels of the protective tariff. Ever since the Civil War they
have waited for this emancipation and for the free opportunities it
will bring with it. It has been reserved for us to give it to them. Some
fell in love, indeed, with the slothful security of their dependence
upon the Government; some took advantage of the shelter of the nursery
to set up a mimic mastery of their own within its walls. Now both the
tonic and the discipline of liberty and maturity are to ensue. There
will be some readjustments of purpose and point of view. There will
follow a period of expansion and new enterprise, freshly conceived. It
is for us to determine now whether it shall be rapid and facile and of
easy accomplishment. This it cannot be unless the resourceful business
men who are to deal with the new circumstances are to have at hand and
ready for use the instrumentalities and conveniences of free enterprise
which independent men need when acting on their own initiative.
It is not enough to strike the shackles from business. The duty of
statesmanship is not negative merely. It is constructive also. We must
show that we understand what business needs and that we know how to
supply it. No man, however casual and superficial his observation of the
conditions now prevailing in the country, can fail to see that one of
the chief things business needs now, and will need increasingly as it
gains in scope and vigor in the years immediately ahead of us, is the
proper means by which readily to vitalize its credit, corporate and
individual, and its originative brains. What will it profit us to be
free if we are not to have the best and most accessible
instrumentalities of commerce and enterprise? What will it profit us to
be quit of one kind of monopoly if we are to remain in the grip of
another and more effective kind? How are we to gain and keep the
confidence of the business community unless we show that we know how
both to aid and to protect it? What shall we say if we make fresh
enterprise necessary and also make it very difficult by leaving all else
except the tariff just as we found it? The tyrannies of business, big
and little, lie within the field of credit. We know that. Shall we not
act upon the knowledge? Do we not know how to act upon it? If a man
cannot make his assets available at pleasure, his assets of capacity and
character and resource, what satisfaction is it to him to see
opportunity beckoning to him on every hand, when others have the keys of
credit in their pockets and treat them as all but their own private
possession? It is perfectly clear that it is our duty to supply the new
banking and currency system the country needs, and it will need it
immediately more than it has ever needed it before.
The only question is, When shall we supply it--now, or later, after the
demands shall have become reproaches that we were so dull and so slow?
Shall we hasten to change the tariff laws and then be laggards about
making it possible and easy for the country to take advantage of the
change? There can be only one answer to that question. We must act now,
at whatever sacrifice to ourselves. It is a duty which the circumstances
forbid us to postpone. 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. And the control of the system of banking and of issue
which our new laws are to set up must be public, not private, must be
vested in the Government itself, so that the banks may be the
instruments, not the masters, of business and of individual enterprise
and initiative.
The committees of the Congress to which legislation of this character is
referred have devoted careful and dispassionate study to the means of
accomplishing these objects. They have honored me by consulting me. They
are ready to suggest action. I have come to you, as the head of the
Government and the responsible leader of the party in power, to urge
action now, while there is time to serve the country deliberately and as
we should, in a clear air of common counsel. I appeal to you with a deep
conviction of duty. I believe that you share this conviction. I
therefore appeal to you with confidence. I am at your service without
reserve to play my part in any way you may call upon me to play it in
this great enterprise of exigent reform which it will dignify and
distinguish us to perform and discredit us to neglect.