In May, 1915, the Reserve Board began the publication of the Federal Reserve Bulletin. The Bulletin records monthly all the matters of interest, bearing on the Reserve System. It recounts the activities of the various agencies connected with the system, gives the decisions of the Board and the important opinions of counsel, and supplies a satisfactory assortment of statistical material. The Federal Reserve Bulletin is indispensable to the student of our new banking system.

While this summary description of the practical operation of the Reserve System is of necessity incomplete, it warrants the conclusion that the system justifies most of the hopes placed in it. The most obvious need in the further development of the system is the bringing in of the state institutions. Their aloofness grows out of a narrow consideration of immediate self-interest without due regard for the importance of thoroughgoing reserve organization and control. If the state banks do not voluntarily come into the system compulsion must in time be brought to bear on them.1 Other needs of the system can undoubtedly be cared for without serious difficulty. The acceptance by Congress with little criticism of the amendments advocated by the Reserve Board shows that the necessary changes in the law itself can, under intelligent and disinterested leadership, be readily secured. Changes in practice, however, and the development of sympathetic understanding depend upon the slower process of education.

Selected References

C. A. Phillips, Readings in Money and Banking (1916), Chapters XXXI and XXXII.

Federal reserve bulletin

Conclusion

1 Here, too, it becomes necessary to state that, since the entrance of the United States into the war, the movement of state banks into the system has accelerated.

H. Parker Willis, American Banking (1916), Chapter XIX; "The First Year of the New Banking System" (in Political Science Quarterly, Volume 30, page 591); "What the Federal Reserve System Has Done" (American Economic Review, June, 1917, page 269).

Federal Reserve Bulletin (published monthly by the Board, giving full account of important developments in system).