File:The Saturday evening post (1920) (14762046876).jpg

Identifier: saturdayeveningp1933unse (find matches)
Title: The Saturday evening post
Year: 1839 (1830s)
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Publisher: Philadelphia : G. Graham
Contributing Library: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

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k,now a ton of freight could be moved a milefor one cent or less. In spite of this great national achievement,however, capital at the opening of, and almosta decade before, the World War gave warningin a thoroughly characteristic fashion that thissituation could not indefinitely continue in therailroads. American railroads required, according to theirclose observers, a billion dollars of new investment a yearto do their work properly. This sum capital obstinatelyrefused to furnish on a number of grounds, chief of whichwas that American railroads were not now earning enoughmoney to make this investment worth while, or in manycases not even enough to keep them out of bankruptcy. The transportation system of the country, therefore,even at that early time gave signs of the situation whichcapital was later to force upon the country through thismeans. But it was not in this place that capital was to es-tablish the first of its well-known relations with Washington DECORATIONS BY DOUGLAS RYAN
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during the recent war, but in another and an indirect way,through the familiar difficulties which were now beingencountered by those other semipublic, semiprivate insti-tutions, the banks. The reform of the American banking system, which hadbeen on its way for more than a decade, was finally, as allknow, consummated by the agrarian administration atWashington just before the European war, and constitutedone of the greatest of its achievements. Not only was itcalculated to curb the power of Wall Street by a decentral-ization of the so-called money power but it gave the coun-try at large a greater, stronger, more flexible banking system, without which it is doubtful whetherthe financial system of this country could havesurvived the terrible strain put upon it by war.It is therefore all the more striking to note thatthe first compulsion which capital placed uponWashington was through the medium of thenational or commercial banks, whose positionhad been recently so much strengthened. The

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