TIME: Almanac of the 20th Century

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<text> <title> (1930s) Banking Crisis </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1930s Highlights </history> <link 08166> <link 06829> <link 00672> <link 00030><article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> Banking Crisis </hdr> <body> [Roosevelt had abruptly reversed the large Republican margins of the 1920s, winning 42 states and nearly 60% of the popular vote, and forging the coalition of the north-eastern industrial states and the South that was to dominate national politics for almost the next half-century. By Election Day, notwithstanding any efforts to overcome it, the Depression had just about worn itself out. The stock market had begun to pick up in the fall, and was dubbed the "Roosevelt market." Then, during the interregnum between November and the March inauguration (moved back to January thereafter) a crisis arose in the country's largely unregulated banking system. The incoming and outgoing Presidents, hampered by personal dislike and political misunderstandings, could not agree on an interim policy. By the time Roosevelt took office, the wave of bank runs and closings that began in Michigan had spread frighteningly across the country. The need for immediate action was acute.] (February 27, 1933) A tall man with a $10 bill in his hand stood surveying an apple vendor's stand on Detroit's Woodward Avenue one day last week. "It's a shame," he said, "that an apple won't fit a pay telephone. I've been trying to call my wife since last night to tell her I wouldn't be home." After he explained that he was unable to get his bill changed anywhere in Detroit, the apple vendor loaned him a nickel... Citizens in the fourth largest U.S. city and in most of the other Michigan cities and towns last week found themselves in much the same predicament. Governor William A. Comstock's banking moratorium, unprecedented in scope, had suddenly cut them off with the cash they had in their pockets. People were chary of giving small bills for big ones. By the time the moratorium was modified after two days to permit withdrawals up to 5% of deposits, the scarcity of money was acute. (March 6,1933) Behind the Michigan moratorium, the effects of which were just beginning to be felt elsewhere, lay three grinding years of Depression and 5,096 bank failures throughout the U.S. Nevada had clapped its bank doors shut in self-protection, Louisiana had taken an extra-legal breathing spell. Instead of being permitted to recover from the big Michigan shock, Public Confidence was last week knocked groggy by fresh blows. (March 13, 1933) Thursday, March 2, and New Orleans was completely recovered from its Mardi Gras hangover--recovered as if struck by a douche of cold water, for that morning all Louisiana banks had been closed by proclamation. Hundreds of distracted visitors found they could not get funds to get home. Came Friday morning and Citizen Roosevelt awoke from the sleep of the elected to hear that 22 states and the District of Columbia were in the depths of banking restrictions and moratoria. Noontime and bankers knew that the public was taking cash out of New York banks, savings banks in particular. A savings bank in Newark had already been besieged. Now in 42nd Street opposite Grand Central Station a crowd gathered in the magnificent Byzantine banking hall of the Bowery Savings Bank, largest private savings bank in the world, one of the oldest mutual savings banks in the U.S., famed for its conservatism and strength. Good natured but eager, boot-blacks, Jewish matrons, silk-stockinged stenographers and shawled immigrants carried off cash from the paying windows. Three o'clock and the bank closed with a mob still at its doors. The banking disease had reached Manhattan, heart of the nation's banking system. Before dawn that Saturday morning there were moratoria in Iowa, Missouri, Minnesota, with others following fast. Before 10 a.m. the closing of all the security and commodity exchanges of Chicago and New York had been announced--all except the Livestock Exchange in Chicago, for livestock is perishable, its distribution must go on. By that hour the three-block-long factory of the American Bank Note plant in The Bronx was roaring with activity, with police at the doors to keep the inquisitive away. Not until nearly midnight when the deliberations of the Treasury conference had been well mulled over, did President Roosevelt take his first direct action on the banking situation. Calmly in his study, with a fresh cigaret carefully placed in ivory holder, he proclaimed--under the Trading-with-the-Enemy Act of 1917 which gave the President power to regulate foreign exchange and prevent hoarding: 1) From March 6 to 9 inclusive, a complete holiday for all banks in the U.S. 2) Power for the Secretary of the Treasury to make specific exceptions to this rule. 3) Power for the Secretary to direct Clearing Houses to issue script. 4) Power for the Secretary to allow the establishment by banks of trust accounts ("cash box" deposits). The nation took a breathing spell. President Roosevelt slept and rose to tell the Governors of 25 States, summoned a month before to the White House, how they must work as henchmen of the Federal Government to make its banking plans--not yet worked out--effective everywhere throughout the nation. Meanwhile ten times ten thousand men, women and children had gathered before the inaugural platform on the East Front of the Capitol. They blackened 40 acres of park and pavement. They sat on benches. They filled bare trees. They perched on roof tops. But for all the flags and music and ceremony, they were not a happy, carefree crowd. Their bank accounts were frozen by what amounted to a national moratorium. Many of them wondered how they could raise the cash to get home. Their mass spirits were as sombre as the grey sky above. Yet they remained doggedly hopeful that this new President with his New Deal would somehow solve their worries and send them away in a brighter mood. Instantly President Roosevelt, without hat or overcoat in the chill wind, swung around to the crowd before him, launched vigorously into his inaugural address. His easy smile was gone. His large chin was thrust out defiantly as if at some invisible, insidious foe. A challenge rang in his clear strong voice. For 20 vibrant minutes he held his audience, seen and unseen, under a strong spell. Only occasionally was he interrupted by cheers and applause. "My Friends!" he began. "This is a day of national consecration...The only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. "Our common difficulties concern, thank God, only material things. Values have shrunk to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen; government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone. A host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment. "Primarily, this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted. True, they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit, they have proposed only the lending of more money. "Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. "The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths." [The legislation that followed legalized the President's action ex post facto. It also, by allowing the Federal Reserve to issue currency backed only by its own obligations, effectively took the U.S. off the gold standard. The emergency steps appeared to work, if only on the strength of the President's confidence. There began the series of reassuring Roosevelt radio talks that became known as "fireside chats."] (March 20, 1933) Last Sunday evening President Roosevelt sat comfortably down before a microphone in his upstairs study at the White House, ground a cigaret stub and proceeded to broadcast to the nation a neighborly 15-minute talk on banks & banking. On the morrow the country's sound banks were to start reopening. During the sensational week they had all been closed by his decree, the President had done some extraordinary things. Now in A.B.C. fashion he wanted to explain his actions to his countrymen and persuade them, by simple word and confident voice, not to repeat their own extraordinary behavior of the week prior when all at once they attempted to convert their bank deposits into currency, precipitating crisis. "My friends," began the easy Rooseveltian voice in countless homes, "...when you deposit money in a bank, the bank does not put the money into a safe deposit vault. It invests your money, puts it to work...What, then, happened? There was a general rush, so great that the soundest banks could not get enough currency to meet the demand...It was then that I issued the proclamation providing for the nationwide bank holiday... "There is no occasion for worry. The banks will take care of all needs--except of course the hysterical demands of hoarders. When people find they can get their money, the phantom of fear will soon be laid. I can assure you it is safer to keep your money in a reopened bank than under the mattress." </body> </article> </text>