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Woodrow Wilson


As Congress debated the tariff bill, Wilson presented his program for reform of the banking and currency laws. The nations banking system was outdated, unmanageable, and chaotic. To fix this Wilson favored the establishment of a Federal Reserve Board with presidential appointed financial experts. The Board would set national interest rates and manage a network of twelve major banks across the country. These banks, which would issue currency, would in turn work with local banks. Congress passed the Federal Reserve act basically in the form the President had recommended. Amendments also provided for exclusive governmental control of the Federal Reserve Board and for short-term agricultural credit through the reserve banks. This was one of the most notable domestic achievements of the Wilson administration that modernized the nations banking and currency systems, laying the basis for federal management of the economy and providing the legal basis for an effective national banking system. The final major item on Wilson's domestic agenda was the reform of big business. Big businesses worked against the public by fixing prices and restraining competition. Business and politics worked together, and Wilson sought to stop that. Determined to accept big business as an inevitable, but to control its abuses and to maintain an open door of opportunity for the genius which springs up from the ranks of unknown men, one Wilson's hoped to curb big business. He thought that government should intervene in the regulation of business, and that it was essential to control corporate behavior to prevent corporations from stifling opportunities for creative and ambitious people. Business consolidation was inevitable and might be beneficial, yet he insisted that great corporations behave in the public interest: These were the balances Wilson sought to achieve and maintain. Our laws are still meant for business done, by individuals that have not been satisfactorily adjusted to business done by great combinations and we have got to adjust them, 2in that big business was unjust and somebody needed to watch out for the people, and Wilson was just the man to do that.


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