THE CONGRESS Bank Bill

Bank Bill

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.

Though the spirit of Congress was new, its mechanics were as old as the U. S. Proceedings began in the House with the election of Illinois' white-thatched Henry Thomas Rainey to the Speakership as a result of last fortnight's Tennessee-Texas-Tammany deal in the Democratic caucus. He got 302 votes to the 110 cast for his Republican opponent, New York's Snell&3151;an immediate demonstration of the Democrats' margin of House control.

Ignoring precedent, a spectator in the gallery when the House convened was Anna Eleanor Roosevelt Roosevelt, bareheaded, knitting a sweater. When members spotted the First Lady, they rose and clapped. Mrs. Roosevelt responded by standing, nodding, smiling pleasantly, and like Mme Defarge in the French Revolution resuming her knitting. With her in the Presidential box were her son James, Mrs. Henry Morgenthau Jr.. Mrs. Mary Howe Baker, daughter of Roosevelt Secretary-Crony Louis McHenry Howe, and Miss Nancy Cook, Mrs. Roosevelt's partner in the Val Kill furniture factory.

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.

"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.

* 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."

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