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.
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