Who Shall Control Our Financial Destiny? : Three Possibilities: Government Ownership, Government Control, Banking Control; Address Delivered Before the Finance Forum of New York City, on December 18, 1912 (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Who Shall Control Our Financial Destiny?: Three Possibilities: Government Ownership, Government Control, Banking Control; Address Delivered Before the Finance Forum of New York City, on December 18, 1912

Now I believe that in estimating the people's verdict my friend was mistaken. Every man no matter what his own status may be, demands from others the truth. He was reading into the minds of the people a suspicion which could not exist unless fostered by secrecy. It is secrecy that breeds the germs of suspicion, and it is suspicion that undermines our reasoning powers and makes us see things which do not exist. I believe that if a partner of that influential house had gone to the bankers' convention at Los Angeles, had struck out from the shoulder, and said to those men assembled from all parts of the Union - Gentlemen, I am from Wall Street. I am sincerely interested in banking reform, and have given much thought to the subject. I am here to help and to be helped. Do you care to hear me or do you not? Gentlemen of the Finance Forum, I believe if that question had been put at that time by a man I have m mind, banking reform would no longer be a dream but a reality.

I do not wish to be misinterpreted. It is not for me to dictate to any man a course of procedure. I merely tell the story to impress upon you the misunderstandings which must be overcome before banking reform is an accomplished fact.

N ow, I went to Los Angeles. I saw able bankers from Chicago, able bankers from St. Louis, New Orleans, Cleveland, able bankers from all parts of the country. I heard them speak. I saw them mingle with the crowd. But I neither saw nor heard the shrewdest of them all, the bigger men of Wall Street.

Real banking reform will be a vision until the brainy banker of the East and the brainy banker of the West co operate; nay, until the men of the North, East, South and West confer with one another, learn one another's views and trust one another's motives. I wish to impress upon those who hear me, and upon those who do me the courtesy to read what I have to say, that I am a Wall Street man. I wish them to understand who I am and where I come from, I want them to do me the honor to believe that my motives are disinterested. I want them to know that when I ask for the brainy man of Wall Street to join us in this great reform, it is because we need him. Wall Street is not so filthy as some would think. Selfish men are there, yes, and everywhere, cold, calculating.

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