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570

A meeting of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve
SY"'em was held in Washington on Thursday, May 8, 1941, at 11:00

PRESENT:

Mr. Eccles, Chairman
Mr. McKee
Mr. Draper
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.

Morrill, Secretary
Bethea, Assistant Secretary
Carpenter, Assistant Secretary
Clayton, Assistant to the Chairman

The action stated with respect to each of the matters hereinter

referred to was taken by the Board:

Letter to Mr. Powell, First Vice President of the Federal Reserv
e Bani,
--, of Minneapolis, reading as follows:
"The Board of Governors approves the changes in
the personnel classification plan of your Bak relating
1!4) the
Defense Contract Service Department, as requested
'
11 Your letter of May 1, 1941."
Approved unanimously.
Letter to the board of directors of "The Exchange Bank of
tileke
Luckey, Ohio, stating that, subject to conditions of member13114
nilMbered 1 to 3 contained in the Board's Regulation H, the Board
414)roves
the bank's application for membership in the Federal Reserve
--ud for the appropriate amount of stock in the Federal Reserve
flk of

Cleveland.
Approved unanimously for transmis.
sion through the Federal Reserve Bank
of Cleveland.
Letter to Mr. Robert L. Mehornay, Chief of the Defense Contract
reading as follows:




571

-2"We have discussed the matter referred to in your letter of may 5,
1941, relating to the desire of your office
t? send over
the Federal Reserve leased wires to the 36
field offices of Defense Contract Service daily summaries
of defense press releases. The leased wires are equipped
tO handle
this additional load and therefore the only questlon involved is one of cost.
"The cost of operating the Federal Reserve leased
w?res is distributed on the basis of the use made of the
wIres by the various sending offices, the total cost of
operation being
divided by the total number of words sent
each month to find the per-word cost of the business
1
]andled,
and each sending office is billed on that basis
the words sent during the month by that office. Durrig the first three months of this year the per-word cost
averaged a little less than 1-3/4 cents over the main
-lanes, Therefore,
if the daily summary to which you recosted 500 words and were sent to the 36 offices, the
would be somewhere in the neighborhood of 3OO per
day,
. "Most of the main and branch lines are limited ser:
lee wires, so that the handling of this additional traffic
"
oluld add to leased wire charges. However, some of the
costs would remain unchanged, with the result that
the
would be some reduction in the per-word cost, so
th:rethe
total cost of sending the summaries probably
would be
something less than ;,300 per day.
, ."Another question that may be of some importance to
f3°11 is the fact that at the present time several of the
are operating on daylight savings schedules and the
"
a4-1"es.to the Federal Reserve Banks of Boston, Philadelphia,
1112.1 Richmond close not later than 4:30 p.m., the wire to
'inta around 4:45 p.m., Cleveland about 5 p.m., and St.
seills, Minneapolis, Kansas City, and Dallas about 6 p.m.
f velial of the branch lines also close before 6 p.m. Thereii°
112!, if the daily summary wire were received in the Washtow-Jon telegraph office after 6 p.m., it would be necessary
c.hold the wires open and keep operators on duty to rewilve them which would add to the cost, or to send the
tZs to the early closing banks and branches the first
l-4-ng the following morning.
fie, "Should you desire to have the summaries sent to the
Offices under these circumstances, we shall be pleacicd
ji d offices
to :
ha
the Federal Reserve leased wires handle them."

t

i




Approved unanimously.