Financial panics were more acute here than in any other land, and the evil clearly was traceable in large part to defects in the banking situation.

In academic teaching and in public conferences of bankers, business men, publicists, and students, the subject was continually discussed after 1890.

At length Congress in 1908 created a "National Monetary Commission" to inquire into and report what changes were necessary and desirable in the monetary system of the United States or in the laws relative to banking and currency.

After the most extended inquiry and discussion that the subject had ever received, the commission submitted its report in January, 1912.

The defects to be remedied, as enumerated in the report,[4] may be reduced to the following five headings: (a) Lack of system, (b) Inelasticity of credit, (c) Periodic local congestion of funds.