TERMS:-Issued monthly, 35 cents a number, $4.00 a year in advance in the United States and Canada. Elsewhere $4.50. Entered at New York Post Office, as second-class matter. Entered as second-class matter at the Post-Office Department, Ottawa, Canada. Subscribers may remit to us by post-office or express money orders, or by bank checks, drafts, or registered letters. Money in letters is sent at sender's risk. Renew as early as possible in order to avoid a break in the receipt of the numbers. Bookdealers, Postmasters and Newsdealers receive subscriptions. THE REVIEW OF REVIEWS CO., 30 Irving Place, New York Pacific Coast Office, 327 Van Nuys Bldg., Los Angeles, Calif. ALBERT SHAW, Pres. CHAS. D. LANIER, Sec. and Treas. June-1 561 The Conference met on April 10. Thirty-four nations were represented, including Germany and Russia. The article by Mr. Simonds VOL. LXV THE AMERICAN REVIEW OF REVIEWS NEW YORK, JUNE, 1922 THE PROGRESS OF THE WORLD Government and Having measurably recovered Hoover Favors Associations" No. 6 upon what are now admitted to be useful forms of non-competitive business development. His conclusions were based upon exhaustive study of actual business movements. At this convention, there were several other speakers representing the Administration and Congress, and they all showed from the Government standpoint an attitude of friendliness and confidence. The nation in its public capacity, with its enlarged fiscal operations, is just as dependent upon the success and prosperity of private business as are our hundred millions of people in their work-a-day capacities. Federal The Federal Reserve systemalready very elastic-is being freshly adapted in certain ways to the expanding needs of the country as regards a safe and satisfactory system of banking and commercial credits. The foremost object of the Federal Reserve Banks, as operated under the central direction of the Federal Reserve Board, is to insure the business of the country against banking panics by an effective kind of coöperative agency that protects the bankers while the bankers are protecting the business men. The second great object is to provide elastic currency, responsive to general or regional needs. Recent annual reports show the magnitude of the active operations of the Reserve Banks and indicate their varied usefulness; yet their most important services lie in the passive sphere of protection and prevention, rather than in that of their current business activities. The New York Federal Reserve Bank is of course the largest in the series. Its total discounts last year exceeded thirty billion dollars. One service that these Government banks render is a wholesome kind of oversight of the business situation in its entirety. The recent annual reports show Copyright, 1922, by THE REVIEW OF REVIEWS COMPANY The present Administration is "Trade not fighting to break down the business structure of the country. It is endeavoring to remove temptations to violate laws by making it lawful to do things that are up to date and worth while. Thus on May 10 Mr. Hoover made a speech at the convention of the National Association of Manufacturers in New York advocating changes in the Clayton Anti-Trust law in favor of "trade associations." He deprecated uncertainty as to the bearing of the laws 563 a steady return throughout the United States toward normal conditions. They summarize a rather dull business year, with unemployment considerable but diminishing, interest rates going down, the credit reservoir strengthening, and the price levels much more correct and suitable than those of 1920. Personnel of the Thus, through the Government's relation to banking, we are Reserve Board I likely in the new period to be saved from the panics and violent crises that formerly afflicted our world of business. There has been much praise accorded to the personnel of the Reserve system, and it was suggested last month, that Mr. W. P. G. Harding, who was made Governor of the Federal Reserve Board in August, 1916, for a full six-year term, should be reappointed as head of the Board. Mr. Harding was formerly a banker at Birmingham, Ala., and is a member of the Democratic party. His retention would perhaps help to convince the public of the entirely non-partisan character of this great agency which is so promotive of our economic welfare. One of the least HON. WILLIAM P. G. HARDING, GOVERNOR OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE BOARD (Mr. Harding was born in Alabama fifty-eight years ago. After graduating at the University of Alabama in 1880, he entered a bank and steadily advanced until in 1902 he became president of an important national bank at Birmingham. He was made a member of the Federal Reserve Board when first constituted in August, 1914, and has been Governor since 1916) noticed but most valuable efforts in connection with the Genoa Conference is the organization of a standing commission of the European powers to deal with problems of money, banking, and finance. This commission has requested that a representative of our. Federal Reserve Board should join in its efforts to solve some of the most difficult financial problems; and it is understood that the invitation will be accepted. The present members of the Reserve Board are W. P. G. Harding (Governor), Edmund Platt (ViceGovernor), Adolph C. Miller, Charles S. Hamlin, John R. Mitchell. Ex-officio members are the Secretary of the Treasury and the Comptroller of the Currency. Financing American The task of putting American agriculture upon a business basis. Agriculture is not only too large to be performed by the available resources of private loan agencies and local bankers, but is too essential for the nation's well-being to be met in a haphazard way. A proper financing of American agriculture requires a general method and a national point of view, supplementing detached and local activities. Thus we find here a necessary field for statesmanship and for governmental action along several lines. This is a comparatively new departure, but the main object is no longer a matter of dispute. For several years a Federal Land Bank system has been helping, though in a limited way. Mr. Eugene Meyer, Jr., the capable banker who is at the head of the War Finance Corporation, has been giving his principal attention lately to the problems of agricultural credit and finance, and has been studying nation-wide conditions of farm production at first hand. A month ago he was able to make some important recommendations to President Harding for permanent improvement in the farm credit system. His proposals have to do with (1) creating institutions that will properly finance the cattle and live-stock business, (2) changes in existing loan systems which would better recognize the longer periods necessary for producing and marketing agricultural products than for the average turnover of merchants and manufacturers, (3) plans for encouraging cooperative marketing organizations by enabling them to rediscount their notes easily in adequate amounts, (4) extension of the powers of the Federal Reserve banks to handle the paper of properly warehoused agricultural products, (5) changes that would permit many hundreds of the smaller State banks to enter the Federal Reserve System, thus bringing that system closer to rural neighborhoods, (6) changes in the the National Banking act to permit branch banking within a limited radius, thus again bringing banking facilities closer to the farms and rural villages. Farm Economics These six proUnder Secretary posals have to do HON. HERBERT C. HOOVER, SECRETARY OF COMMERCE (Who has been using his official position in many ways to promote American industry and commerce) Wallace with permanent conditions. Mr. Meyer's report contains an amount of information upon the relation of capital and credit to farm prosperity that makes it a notable contribution to our current literature of applied economics. It should be added that while Mr. Meyer has been arriving at these valuable conclusions as to Government policy, he has also been distributing great sums of Government money through existing loan agencies for the relief of agricultural credit needs, under special authorization of Congress as extended to the War Finance Corporation. With all these plans to give American agriculture a better financial support, Secretary Wallace is not only in hearty sympathy, but is working all the time in direct coöperation. One of the most important steps that the Agricultural Department has taken in its efforts to help agriculture in its business relations has to do with the Department's own efficiency. Several bureaus and services have been grouped together to form what is now the new Bureau of Agricultural Economics. At the head of this Bureau is Dr. Henry C. Taylor, who has directed the Bureau of Farm Management for several years, and is a distinguished economist as well as an authority in all that relates to farming. The Department of Agriculture will not lessen its interest in everything that has to do with plant industry, animal industry, farm demonstration, rural life, and the advancement of practical and scientific farming; but it will give increased attention to farming from the standpoint of business management, which includes accounting, credits, markets, coöperative buying and selling and many other things. Congress is fully supporting these services. Fresh Hope for the Railroads Another sphere of paramount economic interest is that of transportation. It will be several years before the Railroad act of 1920 has begun to fix upon the economic map of the United States the new pattern of its series of rearranged railroad groups. But the fifteen or twenty corporate units that the existing law contemplates will probably begin to evolve themselves in the near future, and to present something like a completed series within twenty years. series within twenty years. This of course is sheer guessing; yet business tendencies and the persuasive influence of Government policy can produce a result that statesmen like Senator Cummins and experts like the Interstate Commerce Commission have sponsored, while leading railroad economists like Dr. Ripley, and great transportation administrators like President Daniel Willard of the Baltimore and Ohio system, have endorsed as practicable. In a speech last month before the Academy of Political Science in New York, President Willard strongly supported the existing Railway act. The President of the United States took a hand in the railroad discussion last month, both from the standpoint of the demand for reduced freight rates and also from the standpoint of the proposed regrouping plans. As a mark of the improved relations between Government and Business, President Harding invited railroad executives to the White House |