Publisher's Synopsis
"AT first sight the book appears to be a considerably more elaborate treatise than the title would indicate, but a closer examination reveals the fact that but 90 pages, set in large type, are given to the discussion of the subject in hand. The rest of the volume is given over to four appendices containing, respectively, an annotated combined balance sheet of the twelve banks, the complete text of the Federal Reserve act and amendments, the parts of the text of the Farm Loan act affecting the federal reserve system and that part of the War Revenue act of April 24, 1917, which affects federal reserve banks. Two indexes follow, one of the act and its amendments and the other to the author's own text. The former is highly unsatisfactory since it refers only to sections, many of which cover a number of pages and subjects.
"The purpose of the present work is, according to the author, "to set forth in non-technical language the chief reasons why the federal reserve system was called into being, the main feature of its organization and how it works." In his first four chapters, Professor Kemmerer has singled out for brief discussion, what he considers the four groups of chief defects of our old banking system, viz., decentralization, inelasticity of credit, cumbersome exchange and transfer system, and defective organization as regards relationship with the federal treasury. The remaining four chapters point out the respective remedies which are provided by the federal reserve system. Not only are the legislative provisions of the system recorded in each case but the progress made to date in carrying them out is summarized as well. To boil down into a few brief paragraphs, free from technical language, the important features of so complicated and comprehensive a subject is by no means easy, but Professor Kemmerer has performed the task in admirable fashion. Naturally, however, detailed explanation had to be sacrificed to brevity with the result that a reader without a fair knowledge of our financial mechanism and its method of operation may experience some difficulty in following some portions of the discussion."
-"The American Economic Review," Volume 9
