On June 23, 1913, President Wilson personally appeared before Congress and called public attention to the deficiencies in the existing system of banking and currency in the United States, at the same time urging prompt remedial legislation by the adoption of a bill providing for the establishment of a system of Federal Reserve Banks, designed "to give the business men of this country a banking and currency system by means of which they can make use of the freedom of enterprise and of individual initiative."

"We must have a currency," said the President, "not rigid as now, but readily, elastically responsive to sound credit, the expanding and contracting credits of everyday transactions, the normal ebb and flow of personal and corporate dealings. Our banking laws must mobilize reserves; must not permit the concentration anywhere in a few hands of the monetary resources of the country or their use for speculative purposes in such volume as to hinder or impede or stand in the way of other more legitimate, more fruitful uses. And the control of the system of banking and of issue which our new laws are to set up, must be public, not private, must be vested in the Government itself, so that the banks may be the instruments, not the masters, of business and of individual enterprise and initiative."

Congress took prompt action, following this message, and the Federal Reserve Bank Act became the law of the land by the signature of the President, on December 23, 1913. It provided for the establishment of not less than eight and not more than twelve Federal Reserve Banks, and on November 16, 1914, twelve such banks were accordingly established and began operation in the following cities, which had been selected as the Reserve cities for the twelve Reserve Districts established under the law:

District No. 1, Boston, Mass.; No. 2, New York, N. Y.; No. 3, Philadelphia, Pa.; No. 4, Cleveland, O.; No. 5, Richmond, Va.; No. 6, Atlanta, Ga.; No. 7, Chicago, 111.; No. 8, St. Louis, Mo.; No. 9, Minneapolis, Minn.; No. 10, Kansas City, Mo.; No. 11, Dallas, Texas; No. 12, San Francisco, Cal.