Bankers' Convention

The intellectual bill-of-fare this year set before the Convention of the American Bankers' Association at Atlantic City was both praised and criticized in the press for its overwhelming concern with general, rather than particular, problems. Some have lauded this nonspecific and non-technical tendency as constituting broad-mindedness and public service; others have condemned it as platitudinous and meddlesome.

The outstanding addresses were undoubtedly those of President Cromwell of the Stock Exchange and James M. Beck, U. S. Solicitor General, the former a fighting speech against political meddling with business, the latter a solemn warning of the evil tendencies in politics and government today. A Baltimore banker was simultaneously cheered and hissed for a smashing attack on the Volstead Act; the connection of this subject with the business of banking was not made clear.

The convention adopted resolutions against government price-fixing, radicalism, government regulation of business, reduction of railroad rates and valuations, the late settlement of the coal strike, and resolutions for lower surtax rates, reduction of the wages of labor and a settlement of the reparations problem through negotiation by the Debt Funding Commission with England and France.

Like most successful conventions, this one settled nothing, expressed much.