Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/186



If it seems unkind to allude to “vox populi” as a new factor of value, it is only necessary to go back in our memory and reconstruct the chorus of opposition to the Federal Reserve System, and it is also well to look forward.

On June 6, 1922, Smith W. Brookhart was nominated at the Iowa Primaries as Republican Candidate for Senator on a program which has among its planks the following:

“Predominance of the farmer and other producers on the Federal Reserve Board, that they may control the country’s credit, which is right fully theirs.”

This possibility is no longer pure apprehension. We now have the record of the will of the majority of our most conservative party in a state dominated by a fair average American voter.

The effect of the intervention of political discretion is discussed by a much more competent authority: "“Nevertheless, Congress has now passed the bill to modify the complexion of the Board, for the very purpose of minimizing expert judgment and giving greater strength to the popular influence most likely to lead it into error. …The objection to the measure is not that it is dangerous to have a farmer on the Board, but that all the arguments for it have been unsound. It has been carried through by one of the spasms of ill-informed opinion of which the creation of the ‘bloc’ itself is the chief expression.”"