s.
And it was not satisfactory to the majority of the articulate bankers
of the country, who wanted a central bank instead of the regional
division of the reserve functions, and who thought that the banks
should have a good deal to say about appointments to the Federal
Reserve Board.

As late as the beginning of December there were still three separate
bills before Congress, but the party organization under the
President-Premier held together, and on December 23 the Glass-Owen
Bill, with some modifications acquired en route, was signed by the
President. The pressure on the White House during that struggle was
perhaps the hardest which President Wilson encountered during his
entire eight years. Many an honest Democrat thought the fundamental
principles of the party were being betrayed, and many a Senator or
Representative who regarded the reserve banks with profound alarm felt,
nevertheless, that if the iniquitous things were going to be
established there ought to be one in his home town. When Paul M.
Warburg, a Wall Street banker, was appointed as one of the members of
the Federal Reserve Board, there were more protests from politicians
who professed to believe that the nation was being delivered over to
the money power, while the complaints of bankers who thought that the
banks were being given over to politicians had not yet died down. But
when the act once went into operation criticism almost disappeared; and
in the course of a few months the unprecedented financial strain
attendant on the outbreak of the European war made it plain to almost
anybody that without this timely reform of the banking system 1914
would have seen a disaster far worse than that of 1907.

The work of "striking the shackles off business" was continued in 1914
by the introduction of bills to carry out the President's
recommendations for prohibiting interlocking directorates, clarifying
the anti-trust laws, establishing an Interstate Trade Commission, and
supervising the issue of railroad securities. The chief results of this
discussion were the creation of the Trade Commission, a body of which
much more was expected at the time than it has accomplished, and the
passage of the Clayton Anti-Trust Act, which exempted farmers'
combinations and labor unions from the anti-trust laws, and wrote into
the statutes the declaration that labor is not a commodity. The La
Follette Seamen's Bill, drawn by Andrew Furuseth of the Seamen's Union,
was introduc