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market, expanding credit to a great excess between 1926 and 1929, 

raised the price of stocks to a fantastic point where they could not 

possibly earn dividends, and when the people realized this, they tried 

to get out, resulting in the Crash of October 24, 1929."

Senator Owen did not go into the question of whether the Federal 

Reserve Board could be held responsible to the public. Actually, they 

cannot. They are public officials who are appointed by the President, 

but their salaries are paid by the private stockholders of the Federal 

Reserve Banks.

Governor W.P.G. Harding of the Federal Reserve Board testified in 1921 

that:

"The Federal Reserve Bank is an institution owned by the stockholding 

member banks. The Government has not a dollar’s worth of stock in it."

However, the Government does give the Federal Reserve System the 

use of its billions of dollars of credit, and this gives the Federal Reserve 

its characteristic of a central bank, the power to issue currency on the 

Government’s credit. We do not have Federal Government notes or 

gold certificates as currency. We have Federal Reserve Bank notes, 

issued by the Federal Reserve Banks, and every dollar they print is a 

dollar in their pocket.

W. Randolph Burgess, of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, stated 

before the Academy of Political Science in 1930 that:

"In its major principles of operation the Federal Reserve System is no 

different from other banks  of issue, such as the Bank of England, the 

Bank of France, or the Reichsbank."