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He was also very liberal about this. I heard him say once, and practically everybody in the rood agreed with him, “The great trouble, Mr. President, with modern bankers is that they won't lend money to people who haven't got money. This country was built up, and the institution of banking and the function of bankers in the early economy likewise, on the principle that a man who had some money somewhere, whether it was his own, or other people's money, would lend it on a chance that Walker, or John, or Amos or somebody could do what he said he was going to do with his business if you would lend him $5000 or $500,000 as the case might be. That's what the function of banking in this country grew out of. We never could have expanded and grown the way we have if the bankers in the early days had had this mean, close-up, I've got to be sure I'll get my money attitude. Banking should take a risk.” He would go on, “The RFC should take risks on reasonably good projects.”
Long before this I had come to like and respect Mr. Jones because, as I say, he knew what he was talking about. His knowledge of economics was not theoretical knowledge, but practical knowledge. He studied the public debt. He studied the income of the United States all the time. I think it was about this time that he
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