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view. In formulating his plans and in advancing in them 

slightly varying

suggestions from time to time, it was incumbent on him to 
remember that the education of the

country must be gradual and that a large part of the 
task was to break down prejudices and remove 
suspicion. His plans therefore contained all sorts of 

elaborate suggestions designed to guard the public 
against fancied dangers and to persuade the country 

that the general scheme was at all practicable. It was 
the hope of Mr. Warburg that with the lapse of time it 
might be possible to eliminate from the law a few 
clauses which were inserted largely at his suggestion for 

educational purposes."

Now that the public debt of the United States has passed a trillion 

dollars, we may indeed admit "how great is the indebtedness of the 

United States to Mr. Warburg." At the time he wrote the Federal 
Reserve Act, the public debt was almost nonexistent.

Professor Seligman points out Warburg’s remarkable prescience 
that the real task of the members of the Jekyll Island conference 

was to prepare a banking plan which would gradually "educate 
the country" and "break down prejudices and remove suspicion". 

The campaign to enact the plan into law succeeded in doing just 
that.

__________________________

10 Frank Vanderlip, From Farmboy to Financier

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