Mr. McGEER:

Where and how is it to be found?

Mr. McGEER:

Is it not a fact that, according to the evidence before the banking and commerce committee, right in the depths of the depression in 1933 five banks disclosed 829,500.000 worth of losses and that this did not affect public confidence one bit? They said they had to make up their inner reserves to that extent.

Mr. McGEER:

Northumberland wit.

Bank Act Amendment

Mr. McGEER:

That is not my language.

Mr. McGEER:

Last night I was pointing out the necessity for this measure of control over the issue of bank deposit credits, as a substitute for Canadian currency. I would draw the attention of hon. members to the inflationary condition which existed between 1926 and 1929, and the deflationary condition between 1929 and 1932, which followed the line of the flow out of bank deposit money, and its withdrawal.

From 1926 to 1929 bank deposits were increased by $335,000,000, and from 1929 to 1932 they were withdrawn to the extent of $338,000,000. It was that amount of money, that amount of inflation of bank deposits, and that deflation of bank deposits that played a preeminent part in the stock boom and collapse.

To-day, under the law as it stands in section 59. the banks have issued $5 billion of bank deposits. They have, as the evidence before the banking and commerce committee shows,, issued that on a ten per cent reserve of cash, holding, as they say, $501,000,000 of Bank of Canada cash on deposit in the Bank of Canada, or in their till. They therefore can now,

Bank Act Amendment

of bank deposits that was required to start the last boom and to precipitate the last depression.

I know that it is easy to say that men are eloquent and that their oratory runs away with their intelligence, but I have never been ashamed of what talents I have. I have tried to use them in whatever public service my friends and neighbours have elected me to. I am not alone in advocating monetary reform. I would like to add to the list a few names of people who have advocated monetary reform, because we must be all crackpots together.

Woodrow Wilson said in 1911:

The great monopoly of this country is the money monopoly. So long as that exists, our old variety and freedom and individual energy of development are out of the question. The growth of the nation and all our activities are in the hands of a few men who. by reason of their own limitations chill, check and destroy a genuine economic freedom.

Senator Elihu Root, recognized as one of the greatest councillors that ever spoke in the United States Senate, predicting what would happen and what did happen in 1933, said when the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 was being passed:

This bill (the Federal Reserve Act) proposes to put in pawn the credit of the United States. We are setting our steps in the pathway that brought Rome to its fall.

Louis D. Brandeis, the distinguished American counsel at the Pujo commission in 1907 and afterwards an associate, justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, said:

We must break the money trust or the money trust will break us.

Following these statements, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, after he was elected in 1933, said:

Nature still offers her bounty, and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep but a generqus use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankinds goods have failed through their own incompetence. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.

The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths.

Lloyd George, describing Roosevelt's fight for monetary reform, said this:

The intrepidity with which he is fighting against the machinations of the established and arrogant priesthood of the golden calf is being watched with a thrill of admiration by those who. all the world over, have been suffering from its thraldom. If lie wins he will have rendered a service to mankind which will exceed that of Lincoln when lie abolished a more limited slavery.

But his task is even more formidable, for the hierarchy he has challenged is powerful and

its janissaries in all lands are'federated in a well-knit, well-drilled and well-equipped brotherhood in arms. They play into each other's hands -they fight each other's battles. If they fail, they will share each other's ruin-if they succeed, they will divide the loot among themselves.

In London and in Paris they are unassailably entrenched. To adopt the Scriptural quotation, "Judas is their law giver. Industry is their wash-pot and over successive ministries have they cast their shoes."