I earnestly recommend to Congress the need of economy and to this end of a rigid scrutiny of appropriations.  As examples merely, I call your attention to one or two specific matters.  All unnecessary offices should be abolished.  The Commissioner of the General Land Office recommends the abolishment of the office of Receiver of Public Moneys for the United States Land Office.  This will effect a saving of about a quarter of a million dollars a year.  As the business of the Nation grows, it is inevitable that there should be from time to time a legitimate increase in the number of officials, and this fact renders it all the more important that when offices become unnecessary they should be abolished.  In the public printing also a large saving of public money can be made.  There is a constantly growing tendency to publish masses of unimportant information.  It is probably not unfair to say that many tens of thousands of volumes are published at which no human being ever looks and for which there is no real demand whatever.

Yet, in speaking of economy, I must in no wise be understood as advocating the false economy which is in the end the worst extravagance.  To cut down on the navy, for instance, would be a crime against the Nation.  To fail to push forward all work on the Panama Canal would be as great a folly.

In my message of December 2, 1902, to the Congress I said: 

“Interest rates are a potent factor in business activity, and in order that these rates may be equalized to meet the varying needs of the seasons and of widely separated communities, and to prevent the recurrence of financial stringencies, which injuriously affect legitimate business, it is necessary that there should be an element of elasticity in our monetary system.  Banks are the natural servants of commerce, and, upon them should be placed, as far as practicable, the burden of furnishing and maintaining a circulation adequate to supply the needs of our diversified industries and of our domestic and foreign commerce; and the issue of this should be so regulated that a sufficient supply should be always available for the business interests of the country.”

Every consideration of prudence demands the addition of the element of elasticity to our currency system.  The evil does not consist in an inadequate volume of money, but in the rigidity of this volume, which does not respond as it should to the varying needs of communities and of seasons.  Inflation must be avoided; but some provision should be made that will insure a larger volume of money during the Fall and Winter months than in the less active seasons of the year; so that the currency will contract against speculation, and will expand for the needs of legitimate business.  At present the Treasury Department is at irregularly recurring intervals obliged, in the interest of the business world—­that is, in the interests of the American public—­to try to avert financial crises by providing a remedy which should be provided by Congressional action.