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it has never taken care of anybody but a few big bankers. Prof. 

O.M.W. Sprague, Harvard economist, writing in the Quarterly Journal of 

Economics of February, 1914, said:

"The primary purpose of the Federal Reserve Act is to make sure that 

there will always be an  available supply of money and credit in this 

country to meet unusual banking requirements."

There is nothing in that wording to help the farmer.

The First World War had introduced into this country a general 

prosperity, as revealed by the stocks of heavy industry on the New York 

Exchange in 1917-1918, by the increase in the amount of money 

circulated, and by the enormous bank clearings during the whole of 

1918. It was the assigned duty of the Federal Reserve System to get 

back the vast amount

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of money and credit which had escaped their control during this time 

of prosperity. This was done by the Agricultural Depression of 1920-21.

The operations of the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee in 

1917-18, while Paul Warburg was still Chairman, show a tremendous 

increase in purchases of bankers’ and trade acceptances. There was 

also a great increase in the purchase of United States Government 

securities, under the leadership of the able Eugene Meyer, Jr. A large 

part of the stock market speculation in 1919, at the end of the War 

when the market was very unsettled, was financed with funds 

borrowed from Federal Reserve Banks with Government securities as 

collateral. Thus the Federal Reserve System set up the Depression, first