Excerpts of the President's News Conference

Here is an inquiry about the MacFadden National Bank bill. I don't recall that I have seen that bill. I haven't seen it certainly this year. Perhaps it was brought specifically to my attention last year. I understand it is a bill to authorize branch banks. I rather think that something can be done in that direction. But it needs to be very carefully safeguarded, otherwise you will have just one great credit system built up here that will virtually control all the credits in the United States, and I wouldn't want to have that condition exist. We ought to have a reasonable competition in credits, and reasonable facilities for extending credits, so that borrowers can be accommodated. Oftentimes it happens that one kind of a bank is interested in doing one kind of business and another bank another kind of business. You will recall the names of banks that have been established in the past and their very names indicated that they were proposing to cater to a certain line of business—the Metals Bank, Commerce Bank and the Farmers' Bank, everything of that kind. A central bank, of course, with branches, tends to lend strength to the credit situation and provides opportunity to adjust resources, analogous to that which is done by the Federal Banking Board under the Reserve Act. But the main object to be attained here is to keep the avenues of credit open, so that no person can be denied credit in every quarter just because one quarter thinks it wouldn't want to extend credit to him.