Called into special session on four days notice, the 73rd
Congress, young and Democratic, sat momentously in the Capitol last week.
President Roosevelt had summoned it to meet the banking crisis—Emergency Item
No. 1 of the New Deal. Not since War days had the Congressional temper been so
grave, so unanimously bent on speedy action. The State of the Union was so
serious that the most opinionated Senators and Representatives submerged their
convictions in worried silence and took orders from the White House. Other
Congresses had gabbled away opportunities to rescue the country but the 73rd,
with a record to make, gave a legislative performance which for dispatch,
efficiency and good behavior during the first week's session, placed it high in
public esteem.
After Speaker Rainey had sworn in the membership with one
thunderous oath* and the President's message had been read, the House plunged
headlong into H. R. 1491, "an act to provide relief in the existing national
emergency in banking." So hastily had the bill been drawn up that no printed
copies of it were yet available for members. Their only knowledge of what they
were being asked to approve came from a clerk's sing-song reading of the lone
text which still bore last-minute corrections scribbled in pencil. Chairman
Steagall of the yet unorganized Banking & Currency Committee arose to
explain to his bewildered colleagues how H. R. 1491 gave dictatorial banking
power to the President, authorized impounding of all gold, and provided for a
new currency issue. Members were told that only by voting this measure could the
nation's banks open on the morrow. Exalted by his subject, Representative
Steagall exclaimed :
"It has taken 50 years to develop the great financial system of
the U.S. which is now prostrate and in ruins. We cannot rebuild it in a day or a
week. We can only do it step by step.
Heaven is not reached at a single bound;
But we build the ladder by which we rise
From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies
And we mount to its summit round by round.
(2 of
3)
"The step we take leads upward toward the light. .
. . The people have summoned a leader whose face is lifted toward the skies. We
shall follow that leadership until we again stand in the glorious sunlight of
prosperity and happiness.''
Precisely 38 minutes after it had taken up H. R. 1491 the House
passed it with a unanimous roar. Trusting their new President to do right,
members voted it blind, without a single word's change. Under the Roosevelt
spell the House's deliberative session became a ratification meeting.
When half an hour later H. R. 1491 came up in the Senate,
Representatives crowded into the chamber to try to learn the details of what
they had just done. Florida's Fletcher, benign rosy-cheeked chairman of the
Senate's Banking & Currency Committee, nominal sponsor for the measure,
conveyed little information. Senator Fletcher nipped his hands up & down
helplessly, spoke of the necessity for prompt action and left it to Virginia's
Glass, No. 2 man on the committee, to do the explaining.
"I haven't slept an hour since night before last," Senator Glass
declared out of the corner of his mouth. But fatigue did not diminish the little
Virginian's ardor of exposition. He admitted that there were sections of the
bill that "shocked" him. Pointing to its anti-hoarding provision as "arbitrary,"
he said: "I don't know who there is with wit or wisdom enough to define
hoarding."
Criticism of H. R. 1491 was leveled at the fact that its
principal benefits were limited to Federal Reserve member banks, thus excluding
state banks which never joined the system. Chief critic was Louisiana's loud
Long who offered an amendment whereby the President could sweep every bank in
the land under the shelter of the Federal Reserve. Senator Glass whose antipathy
toward Senator Long is so great that two days later he angrily tried to punch
his nose, bitterly flayed the Long proposal. Ensuing wrangle:
Glass— Any layman knows the amendment is utterly invalid.
Lon—The Senator has misstated the facts. He wants to get his
record straight.
Glass—My record's quite straight and I do not relish having the
Senator say I misrepresented anything. The Senator had better be more civil. . .
.
Long—The Senator is honestly in error. . . .
Glass—The Senator has such ignorance of the whole problem, such
a lack of appreciation, that he wants the President to cover 14,000 state banks
into the Federal Reserve without knowing a thing in the world about them. . . .
Long—What will the little banks do in the little county seats?
Glass—"Little banks!" Little corner grocerymen who get together
$10,000 or $15,000 and then invite the deposits of their community and then at
the very first gust of disaster topple over and ruin their depositors! What we
need in this country are real banks and real bankers.
The Senate finally passed H. R. 1491 by a vote of 73-10-7, with
no amendments. In seven hours and 51 minutes after it opened its special session
Congress had sent President Roosevelt the first thing he had asked for—the
largest grant of power over the U. S. pocketbook ever given in peacetime.
(3 of
3)
* Subsequently sworn in were Maine's Utterback, whose
election was contested, and Minnesota's Shoemaker who had served a term
in Leavenworth Penitentiary for publicly calling a banker a "robber of widows
and orphans."
____________________
The following is from
an allegedly PDF file titled Congressional Record March 9 1933 and it
does look real. On page 76 it reports:
"H. R. 1491 amended the act of
October 6, 1917"
which has to be 'War and Emergency
Powers Act' and on page 83 it reports:
"The money will be worth 100
cents on the dollar, because it is backed by the credit of the Nation. It
will represent a mortgage on all the homes and other property of all the
people in the Nation."
__________________________
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