The bill was actively discussed within and without the halls of Congress, and many of its features were attacked by bankers individually and acting through the bankers' associations, at various stages of its progress.
As a result it underwent numerous amendments in details, and tho it remained in most essentials as it was first proposed, it was at last accepted even by its critics as on the whole a beneficent act of legislation.

Indeed, its strongest critics had been the friends of the Aldrich plan, and the Federal Reserve Act embodies, in a greater degree than its authors were ready to admit, the main features of the Aldrich plan.

In one important respect, however, it is different; it provides for more decentralization of control and of reserves than did the Aldrich plan.

It created not one central banking reserve, but, in the end, twelve regional, or district, banks each to keep the reserves of its district.

The Jacksonian tradition of opposition to a central bank[1] in part helps to explain this; in part the contemporary congressional investigation and discussion of the so-called "money-trust" and the consequent desire to decrease the importance of "Wall Street" and of New York city banking power.
On the accompanying map are given the outlines of the districts as constituted and altered down to 1916.[2] [Illustration: FEDERAL RESERVE BANK DISTRICTS] Sec.2.