National Affairs: Glass Blast

Grubbing around among the oratorical remains of the 1932 campaign for flavor and facts, future historians are likely to pluck out and re-examine as the most authentic and complete summation of the Democratic case last week’s radio speech by Virginia’s testy little Senator Carter Glass. The 74-year-old Lynchburg publisher got out of a sick bed to answer President Hoover’s stump speeches. Senator Glass is a political snapping turtle but no Republican has dared call the “Father of the Federal Reserve” a “wild man.”

He served through the thick of last winter’s bi-partisan Congressional struggle to keep the U. S. from going over an economic precipice. An expert on banking and currency, he packed into his speech all the things other Democratic stumpsters had been unintelligibly mouthing for weeks.

He began with what he called “suitable restraint”: “Neither Hans Christian Andersen nor Carl Grimm in appealing to the fancies of children ever overtaxed his imagination as President Hoover repeatedly has done in his endeavor to regain the lost favor of the American people. Contrasted, with his addresses, Aesop’s Fables deserve to rank as accurate history.”

Senator Glass argued that in the Depression of 1921-22 the U. S. liquidated the War which had no more to do with the current Depression than “the wars of the Phoenicians or the conquest of Gaul by Caesar.” Republican administrations, he declared, encouraged an “orgy of stock speculation” and President Coolidge “figuratively jumped into the stockpit and cheered on the gamblers.” Billions of dollars of foreign securities “now practically worthless” were dumped on the U. S. market. The State Department “without sanction of law” usurped the function of passing on these loans and was therefore “implicated” in the disaster. When the Senate unanimously ordered it to desist as financial censor, Secretary Stimson brushed aside the order “with a contempt that entitled him to impeachment.” Declared Senator Glass:

“When that Florentine spendthrift Lorenzo the Magnificent held sway over Continental Europe the average diplomat thought there was nothing better in life than a successful lie. The State Department in Washington has not yet learned that there are few things worse in life than a stupid lie.”

After the Crash, according to Senator Glass, President Hoover called “mass meetings” at the White House as “psychological poultices” but set his face against any definite legislative action.

President Hoover did not have “one thing on earth” to do with devising the R. F. C. which was a “complete paraphrase” of the War Finance Corp. set up by Democrats. Declared the Senator:

“There is not a safeguard in the R. F. C. act that was not written into it by a Democrat or a Progressive Republican after the bill came from the Treasury Department. . . . The very fact that not one dollar of the corporation’s debentures has been offered to private investors but every dollar of them unloaded on the Federal Treasury is a clear portent of the burden the taxpayers will be compelled to endure. President Hoover has converted the Treasury into a national pawnshop and infected the central government with the fatal germ of financial socialism.”

As for the Glass-Steagall bill passed at the President’s request to “broaden the base of Federal Reserve credit,” its Senate sponsor hotly pointed out that only 39 “limping” banks out of 7,600 have been “insignificantly” aided by this feature of the law.

Senator Glass hotly denied the President’s Des Moines statement that the country was within two weeks of going off the gold standard. Recalling that the Treasury sold nearly $4,000,000,000 worth of short-term Federal obligations payable in gold during the first half of 1932, the Senator declared: “If the President and the Secretary of the Treasury had knowledge that this country was faced with imminent disaster by being ‘driven off the gold standard in two weeks’ and failed to so advise the banks and private investors who purchased these Federal securities, they were guilty of amazing dishonesty: they were cheating the investing public.” Relief? The Democrats forced the Administration to act by bringing forth the Wagner bill. Economy? Congress cut $334,000,000 from the President’s own estimates over the loud protests of his Cabinet. Budget? It is still unbalanced despite the President’s “breathless rush to the Capitol to get publicity.” Bonus? It was specifically voted down at the Democratic national convention. The Garner “loans-to-all” bill? President Hoover wanted to authorize R. F. C. loans to private industries and named an automobile corporation whose head contributed $25,000 to his campaign fund as a likely recipient.

Secretary of the Treasury Mills, No. 1 Hoover stumpster. procured an advance press copy of the Glass speech, engaged radio time immediately following to make a partisan retort. Hearing of this Senator Glass concluded his speech by declaring that Secretary Mills had obtained his copy “by some means which involves a breach of confidence disdained by every honorable newspaper man,” and adding:

“If he prefers the backstairs method of controversy he is at liberty to make that choice. I prefer to keep my rapier clean and play the game as gentlemen in their code of ethics require.”

Secretary Mills, fagged by a long campaign, insisted that there was nothing unethical in the manner of his reply, the gist of which was: “It is so easy to be wise after the event.”