NOVEMBER 23, 1933
Sprague’s resignation and criticism seem to have fired the revolt on the money question. Today’s papers are full of the pros and cons of the question. It may become a bitter issue in the Congressional campaign next fall.
Business remains completely stagnant in spite of all the excitement. There is simply nothing doing and nothing you can do about it. We seem to be in the midst of another bad lull with everybody waiting for a break.
NOVEMBER 24, 1933
General opinion seems to be that Pres. Roosevelt is facing a crisis on the monetary question and that he will soon have to turn either to the left (printing press money) or to the right (stabilization and return to gold standard). In eight months of experiment the tangible improvement is slight, business on the down grade, distrust growing and huge public debt arousing fear as to the government credit. It is a very difficult time for everybody.
EDITOR’S NOTE
Despite the flurry of legislation and dramatic overhaul of the New Deal’s early efforts, joblessness did not immediately improve. The American Federation of Labor estimated in April 1933 that there were 13 million Americans unemployed, up from 12 million in November 1932. To remedy this, in November 1933 Roosevelt adviser Harry Hopkins hastily assembled a plan and a $400 million budget to create the Civil Works Administration to provide federal jobs for unemployed Americans to build roads, parks, playgrounds, airports, and the like. Roth would begin to see the effects in his community almost immediately, and by Christmas some 3.5 million Americans had CWA jobs.
DECEMBER 12, 1933
Talk of inflation has died down since opposition to the President’s gold policy became vocal. Very little activity in the gold market, dollar is still quoted at 60¢ and the stock-market stationary. A government bond issue of a million dollars was oversubscribed—money to be used to meet Dec. 15th interest and refunding requirements. This increased confidence. Meanwhile basic business conditions are getting better. Corporations which pared down overhead to rock bottom are now getting in a position to pay back dividends. I do not think this improvement is due to the manipulations of the new deal. The local relief problem has been solved by putting about 10,000 men to work at the government expense. They get $15 per week and dig ditches, clear parks, widen streets. None of the work is very essential. It is really a dole because local relief was unable to function. Both Morris and Joe went back to work Monday after intermittent unemployment of 3 years. Morris works as a draftsman for the city and Joe works as a book-keeper in Cleveland. Both jobs temporary.
DECEMBER 13, 1933
Col. Leonard Ayres made his annual prediction yesterday for 1934. It was not optimistic. The following are the highlights:
a. 1934 will be another depression year like 1933.
b. There will be continued manipulation of the currency but no uncontrolled inflation.
c. The NRA will fail of its purpose because it stimulates only “consumer goods”—not heavy industries.
d. Private financing is essential to recovery and this has been stopped by monetary fears and gov’t regulations.
e. Prices of consumer goods will rise and these mfrs of radios, autos etc. will make money.
f. The stock market will be inactive and will move within narrow limits.
DECEMBER 27, 1933
The retail merchants report the best Christmas season since the depression started. The weather was perfect and the streets were jammed with shoppers. The situation was helped by the fact that over 12,000 people in Youngstown alone have been drawing good pay from the government on CWA projects. Also the City of Youngstown issued $450,000 in scrip to pay out about five months back pay. This scrip is redeemable in 5 years out of delinquent taxes. It is being accepted without discount by most of the stores. All in all there is more optimism this year than last year although the law business has not benefited much.
Otherwise the monetary and business situation remains unchanged. Roosevelt ordered the government to buy a limited amount of newly mined silver and boosts the price from 32¢ to 64¢ per ounce. The amount involved is too small to affect the money situation but it is giving a “hand-out” to the silver states just as he helped the farmers etc. Roosevelt is building up a tremendous following but is also building a huge government indebtedness which will someday be paid.
I just listened to a hard luck story as told by J. G. Was in liquor business in pre-Prohibition days. Came to Youngstown in 1926 with $200,000 in cash. Went into business of loaning money on 2nd mortgages and real estate and charged big bonuses. Pyramided by borrowing on these mortgages. When slump started he used all available cash to protect his 2nd mtges by buying in the properties at foreclosure. Today he has the properties but in each instance they are worth less than the 2nd mortgage. Would gladly hand them back to the bank if they would release him—but they refuse to. Is flat broke and looking for an opening in some other line. He does not think real estate will come back for several years. Also went into beer business a short time ago but lost what little he had left.
DECEMBER 28, 1933
The Secretary of the Treas. issues a new order calling in all gold in private hands. It will be paid for at the old price of 20.34 per ounce instead of the world market price of 36. This may be result of a lower court ruling that the 1st order was illegal because issued by the President instead of by the Secy of the Treasury. On the other hand it may be a preliminary step to devaluation.
Year end stock prices are about the same as during past few months. Just finished reading a book entitled
Our Mysterious Panics
by Colman. He gives brief history of every panic from 1819 to 1929. Comes to conclusion that every panic is brought on by human greed and speculation instead of by complex economic cycles. Reasoning seems logical and as follows:
1. After a depression comes a slow return to normal.
2. A few years of “normal business,” men get too optimistic and begin to over expand, speculate, etc.
3. Speculation leads to fraudulent stock issues, embezzlement, new theories such as “new era.”
4. Then comes the crash or panic caused by over-expansion, fraud, embezzlement, & human greed.
It is also interesting to note the dates of these panics. They seem to recur more frequently in last 35 years:
1837-Panic caused by land craze and Western expansion
1857-California gold rush—new gold
1873-Post-Civil War. Too much R.R. expansion
1884-Gambling bankers
1893-Over-development big trusts—silver questions
1901-Too many mergers: U.S. Steel, Bethlehem; Youngstown Sheet &
Tube
1907-Battling bankers—money panic
1914-Panic stopped by coming world war
1921-Primary post-war Panic
1929-New Era philosophy—fallacy that common stocks are best form of
investment
The intervals between panics are 20 years—16 yrs—11 years—9 years—8 years—6 years—7 years—7 years—8 years. These periods count from the
beginning
of each preceding panic. The 1929 panic is not yet over but will end probably in 1935. On a 7 year average there should be a small depression in 1937 and a more severe depression in 1942-3. It is certainly not a pleasant picture. The only answers seems to be to keep investments fairly liquid always during “normal” times. Then even if panic comes unexpectantly you will have cash to buy bargains to the limit. Then liquidation again when “normal” times return.
The major panics came at longer intervals: 1837—1857—1873—1893—1907—1929. The intervals are 20 years—16 years—20 years—14 years—21 years. The average is about 15 years. If this is correct then the next major panic should come sometime after 1944 which gives about 10 years “normal.”
CHAPTER 5
JANUARY 10, 1934-NOVEMBER 6, 1936
“It has been a long, dreary road.”
EDITOR’S NOTE
While President Roosevelt initiated many dramatic new programs in his much examined, much hailed First Hundred Days, it would actually take another year or so for Roth and most white-collar Americans to experience any real, practical impact from the New Deal. Nearly twelve million Americans, for example, were still out of work by the end of 1934. It would take until the months leading up to President Roosevelt’s reelection in 1936 before West Federal Street in Youngstown, as well as other main streets in America, witnessed a “boom” unmatched in post-1929 life: shopping for home furnishings and clothing, new autos on the road, and steel mills operating at 80 percent capacity. Rather, 1934 and 1935 were years in which parts of the New Deal proved successful, parts failed, and parts were overturned by the Supreme Court.
One relative success story, noted by Roth, was Roosevelt’s Home Owners Loan Corporation, which saved many families from foreclosure and homelessness. The program helped rescue home owners from foreclosure and banks from bad loans. The administration offered banks the chance to trade defaulted loans for government bonds. Home owners could refinance their homes with twelve-year mortgages rather than the common five-year plan. The HOLC ended up refinancing one in five home mortgages under this plan and laid the foundation for a renewed—and more stable—mortgage-lending practice that would last for decades to come. Says Schlesinger of the HOLC, “Probably no single measure consolidated so much middle-class support for the administration.”
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation of 1933 also counts as an almost instant success, and its continued existence has doubtlessly prevented the kind of widespread bank closures that Roth observed. By federally insuring bank deposit accounts up to five hundred dollars (via a small tax on bank deposits), the run on bank withdrawals that had paralyzed the system since the Great Crash of 1929 stopped. In fact, the number of banks that had to shutter for the remainder of the 1930s was less than 8 percent of the total that closed in just 1933. By April 1934 Roth witnessed his local Dollar and City banks remove their restrictions on withdrawals of fourteen million dollars in frozen deposits.
Other initiatives, however, sputtered. The Agricultural Administration Act passed quickly in May 1933 with a lofty aim: to return farmers to the income level and prosperity they experienced between 1909 and 1914. It also provided the secretary of agriculture with grand powers: The AAA paid farmers who agreed to cut their production output by one-third and entered into marketing agreements with processors. Much to the bewilderment of Roth and many Americans, the AAA even destroyed some existing overproduction (including the slaughter of eight and a half million piglets to boost hog farmers’ income as people starved in many parts of the country) that would drive prices down if the surplus made it to the market. On one level the AAA was a success: It enabled gross farm income to increase by 50 percent between 1932 and 1936. But overall it failed: The program boosted farmers’ income at the cost of taxing processors, distributors, and American households, which footed the entire bill.
In fact, by February 1935 housewives across the country picketed local butchers with signs proclaiming, “Down with high meat prices!” In Los Angeles ten thousand women boycotted meat shops until the prices dropped by five cents a pound. In New York and Chicago, similar organized protests ensued. Eventually, the courts became involved; many lawsuits were filed in 1934 claiming that the AAA’s practices were unjust. In 1936 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Butler that the AAA was unconstitutional and coercive. It found, in a six-to-three decision, that the Constitution did not give the federal government the right to use its power to levy taxes on processed foods as a means to regulate the economy and subsidize farmers’ profits. As a result, more than two hundred million dollars in illegal fees were returned to food-processing companies.
1934
From all reports this has been the wildest and happiest New Year in 5 years. Liquor was legal for the first time. Every hotel, theater and club was jammed New Year’s Eve. The stores repeated their Christmas rush last Saturday and it was almost impossible to get thru the streets. Everybody had a little money and seemed anxious to spend it. Everywhere I met optimism for 1934. [Economic theorist Roger] Babson made a special prediction for Youngstown saying we would see a 25% improvement here on account of heavier steel production. This is contrary to [Cleveland financier Leonard] Ayres report.