National Affairs: Action in Urbana

One day last week the First National Bank of Urbana, Ill. failed. Panic spread. Mayor Reginal Carl Harmon sat up most of the night with the city councilman and economic professors from nearby University of Illinois. At dawn, he issued an edict suspending all business in the town for five days excepting only food, drug stores, public utilities, newspapers. And the following night he said:

“The streets look almost as if it were Sunday. . . . My drastic action is without precedent in municipal annals. Our citizens shall have time to think about how silly they were when they stampeded to the paying tellers’ cages.”

“I have firm faith in our citizens,” he continued on the second day. “Already more than 1,500 depositors have pledged their entire deposits to the local banks. We are preparing now to go over our city, block by block and house by house, to get all our citizens to sign pledges that they will not withdraw their money until they need it.”

After two days of enforced thinking, the Mayor let the town go back to work which it did with pleasure and composure. Meanwhile, student life at the University of Illinois was not disturbed.

Impressed with Urbana’s action, the Mayors of Aurora and Mendota, Ill. and Monte Vista, Col. followed suit.