ABSTRACT
The fairness of access to capital and credit has been a recurrent theme in U.S. public policy debates for more than a century. It was an issue associated with reform movements led by Andrew Jackson and William Jennings Bryan and, following the panic of 1907, was revived by the Pujo Committee and in subsequent debates on the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. In addition to inadequades in the monetary system and the effects of the gold standard in constraining the expansion of money and credit needed by a growing economy, conflicts of interest and the concentration of finandal resources in what were then termed the "money trusts" were thought to produce distortions in the allocation of credit in the early years of this century. Widespread public awareness and concern about these issues resulted in a substantial increase in govemment intervention in defining economic and finandal structure.
