A Study of The Federal Reserve and Its Secrets

"In the fall of 1949 I went to the Library of Congress to get material for a newspaper article about the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. What I expected to be a week's labor turned into a lengthy research job of nineteen months, for I discovered, in my initial inquiry, that there existed not one narrative account of the origins and activities of this powerful organization. The standard works on the Federal Reserve System, almost entirely abstruse and technical works on economics, I found of little practical value. Even in the matter of acceptances, the usual textbooks contained no information upon such an important item in America's economic history as the changeover from the open-book system of credit to the acceptance system, which has wrought such vast changes in our practice of commerce, and for this information I found only one source, a few pamphlets published by the American Acceptance Council from 1915 to 1928.