ent economic groups.

The present system has given economic life an exceptional opportunity to
grow within the boundaries of single nations, and to co-operate within
those areas that are not sacred to competition. Meanwhile the need for
world co-operative organization has grown steadily with the evolution of
economic life on a world plane, fostered by some of the clearest
visioned among the men who are responsible for the direction of the
economic world.

3. _Present-day Economic Authority_

Under the present system of society the linking together of the various
parts of the economic world is a private matter. Mines, factories and
mills use the railroads as a means of transporting their products. The
intermediary in this as in other transactions between the various
branches of the economic world is the bank. Thus the banker, who
provides the credit, and through whose private institution financial
transactions take place, becomes the arbiter of economic destiny,
rendering decisions upon which the well-being of the masses or producers
depends, yet wholly irresponsible for the results that follow on these
decisions. Using the people's money, possessed of vast authority over
the jobs and the property of the producers, the banker is answerable
only to other financiers who have a similar power and who enjoy a
similar freedom from social restraint. Within the scope of the law
prohibiting fraud and theft, and subject to the limitations of
conscience the bankers and their confreres follow the dictates of their
own inclinations. Quite naturally, under the circumstances, they have
grown rich, and powerful far beyond the extent of their riches, since
their control of the credit--upon which the whole business community
depends--and their easy access to other people's money in the form of
insurance premiums and savings bank deposits, place them in a strategic
position which permits them to dominate and to dictate outside the
boundaries of their ownership.

The power now exercised by the bankers will, in a producers' society, be
under the control of public servants whose business it will be to link
up the various lines of activity within the economic machine.

At one stage in the development of the world's economic life it was
necessary to take out of the hands of private individuals the right to
issue money, and to make of money issue a public function. To-day no one
questions the desirability of having money issued by publ