On March 12, 1915, while the Great War, daily increasing in intensity, was drawing the world more and more into its vortex, the American Governments were, in the name of the President of the United States, invited to send delegates to a conference with the Secretary of the Treasury, at Washington, with a view to establish “closer and more satisfactory financial relations between the American Republics.” To this end it was intimated that the conference would discuss not only problems of banking, but also problems of transportation and of commerce. It thus came about that there assembled in Washington on Monday, May 24, 1915, under the chairmanship of the Honorable William G. McAdoo, Secretary of the Treasury, the first Pan-American Financial Conference.

The subjects submitted to the conference embraced public finance, the monetary situation, the existing banking system, the financing of public improvements and of private enterprises, the extension of inter-American markets, the merchant marine and improved facilities of transportation. It was a program that went beyond the emergencies growing out of the war; and the conference in its deliberations did not confine itself to the adoption of temporary devices. On the contrary, it sought to meet a permanent need by establishing an organization which should devote itself to the carrying out of a task whose importance was not to be measured by temporary conditions, whether of war or of peace.