Jobs for Dollars

Up to the beginning of this week only one national bank--the First of Hamilton, Ill.--had failed in 15 days. The Federal Reserve System announced an increase in holdings by central banks of $19,399,000 in Government securities, evidence that banks were availing themselves of credit expansion made possible by the Glass-Steagall bill. A decline of $9,000,000 in the amount of money in circulation for the week was interpreted by the Treasury as showing that more currency was coming out of hiding.

With these cheering facts in mind, President Hoover felt that the nation's sluggish economic tide was turning. It was a President more cheerful than he had been for months who broadcast last week an address which inaugurated the anti-hoarding campaign of his Citizens' Reconstruction Organization. Excerpts:

"The time has now arrived for a new offensive rally in the spirit that has made America great. The battlefront today is against the hoarding of currency. . . . Some of these idle dollars are finding their way back into the channels of trade. But we must continue until we have won all along the line. . . .

"The summons tonight is a call to the faith of a people. Not to faith in some rosy panacea or pretentious theory but to their intelligent faith in themselves and in individual resourcefulness and enterprise, and to the sense of responsibility of every man to his neighbor. The safest risk in the world is a share in the future of the American people!"

Next day in 1,300 U. S. towns and cities under the direction of Col. Frank Knox, publisher of the Chicago Daily News, an army of men and women set out on a house-to-house canvass to get people to spend or invest their money in some way. "We are an employment agency for idle dollars," said Col. Knox. "If the owners of idle, hidden dollars do not want to employ them in normal ways. Uncle Sam will give them a job--and pay them wages."

Uncle Sam's dollar job-giver was Secretary of the Treasury Ogden Livingston Mills, who made available last week a special obligation of the Government-- 2% Treasury certificates in denominations of $50, $100 and $500.

It was not private hoarding, however, with which the Administration was most concerned last week. Bankers, in the opinion of the White House, are hoarding too. Letters flooded the President's desk telling of loans denied on what was considered ample collateral. It was hoped that a flow of the citizens' currency into the banks would quiet bankers' uneasiness.

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