Business & Finance: Death of Strong

When Governor Benjamin Strong of New York’s Federal Reserve Bank died of an intestinal abscess (diverticulosis; last week, there were many expressions of sorrow. Reliant, well-liked & resourceful internationalist, he had supported heavy responsibilities, weighty matters of finance on his ailing shoulders. Governor for 14 years, for 12 years his steps were dogged with illness. World War loans, rehabilitation problems, international finances hastened his breakdown.

Columns of newsprint recorded his achievements, mourned him. Editorial writers lauded him, decried his untimely end at 55. Among all these encomiums there was one dissenting voice. Said the Barron-bereaved Wall Street Journal, editorially: “His services were of the highest value and conditions today might have been different if his health had permitted undivided attention to his office for the past three months.”

Bitter words to a dead man. More bitter had been the Journal’s polemics of the past six months. For many an analyst believed it was the Strong policy of easy money which led to the stock market’s frenzied speculation. And many a bull, in Manhattan and in Chicago, damned bitterly the Federal Reserve Bank’s efforts to undo, by raising the rediscount rate, the mischief it had done. Most bullish of all bulls is the Journal. Most hateful, therefore, is the present high rediscount rate.

The damningly faint praise accorded dead Benjamin Strong by the potent Journal may give Gates W. McGarrah pause. Some think he, now Acting Governor, will soon be confirmed as Governor.

Ironic was the announcement, made the day before Strong died, that the National Bank of Brussels was to give him a marble bust of himself in appreciation of his aid in stabilization of Belgian currency.

Ironic, too, was a story in the Atlanta Constitution about diverticulosis published the very day Strong died. An ignorant reporter chose to be lengthily flippant in describing the contours of intestinal abscesses as shown on X-ray plates.