Relationship 
to Treasury 
Comptroller of 
Currency 
Building for 
Board 
© 
COMMITTEE REPORT 
distinguished and influential. Enhancement of the importance of this 
office is necessary if men of the highest capacity are to be secured 
and if Board membership in general is to be more attractive. This 
proposal is not to be understood to involve any reflection upon the 
present Secretary of the Treasury. On the contrary, his ability and 
the undoubted high character of his public service stamp his ad- 
ministration as one of the ablest the country has ever enjoyed. It is 
hecause of his very incumbency that such a proposal can be made 
without the restraints that would be necessary were a lesser man in 
slice. 
There should, however, be some rather close interrelationship 
between the Federal Reserve Board and the Treasury Department, 
and it is inevitable that in the very nature of things there would be. 
To be independent is not to be less cooperative. There could, and 
undoubtedly would exist a close contact and splendid cooperation 
between the Department and the Board, without dissolution of the 
official connection as we suggest. There are important banks of issue 
abroad which have no representatives of the government upon their 
governing boards. 
The Committee has reviewed a current proposal that, instead 
of the Secretary of the Treasury being a member of the Board, the 
Undersecretary should sit, but is convinced that this is not a practi- 
cal suggestion. The Committee is convinced of the undesirability 
of the Secretary’s membership on the Board. The Committee is will- 
ng to concede that legislation to this end might await the test of 
further experience, but believes that an early change in the Chair- 
nanship of the Board is desirable. 
This Committee is further of the opinion that there should be 
a thoroughgoing survey of the office of Comptroller of the Cur- 
rency and its relationships to the Treasury Department and to the 
Federal Reserve Board to see if it would not be feasible to make such 
a transfer as would bring the duties and activities of that office under 
the purview of the Federal Reserve Board rather than continue 
them under the Treasury. While recognizing the force of some: of 
the practical difficulties, the Committee nevertheless feels that more 
is to be said for the divorce of the office of the Comptroller of the 
Currency from the Treasury Department than against that proposi- 
Hon. 
As a further means of developing the independent status of the 
Board, that body should be adequately housed in a special building 
of its own. This building should provide adequate facilities for the 
Board’s analytical and research work, now being done at a distance 
from the Treasury Building where the Board is housed. 
Continued on page 481