GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 865 



The year 1932, however, brought some relief. When the President's election 

 •came on in 1932, the country was considerably better off than it had been in 

 1930 and 1931. 



FEDERAL RESERVE BO-\RD .^.CCENTUATES A BAD CONDITION 



In 1920, the Federal Reserve Board precipitated a panic by deflating the cur- 

 rency and credits. 



No one knows exactly how much the deflation amounted to, but the fact can 

 be established that the currency was deflated at least to the extent of $2,000,- 

 000,000. It was this deflation by the Federal Reserve banks which caused the 

 first panic after the First World War. 



It was this deflation of the currency which caused the absorption of $43,000,- 

 000,000 worth of imports to have a fatal impact on our economic stability. 



Deflation of the currency caused low prices, low prices doubled the amount of 

 goods we were forced to absorb. 



This deflation of the currency, plus $43,000,000,000 worth of imports, was 

 ■enough to wreck our economics completely and bring a condition of chaos follow- 

 ing the stock market crash of 1929. 



After the export of $3,500,000,000 worth of gold, after the stock market crash 

 of 1929, after the years 1930-31 which carried us through the depth of the depres- 

 sion, came another Presidential election. At the time of the election in 1932, 

 the rank and file of the people had gone through the worst years of a national 

 economic adjustment. The great danger spot then was the banks. 



The banks had made loans on a basis of high prices which they could not collect 

 under panic conditions. The result was that the banks, as a whole, wei'e most 

 unstable and in great danger of collapse. 



PARTY PLATFORM OF 1932 



The Democratic condidate for President in 1932 ran on a platform very much 

 akin to the Republican platform of 1946. Any man who will take the trouble to 

 read the Democratic platform of 1932, and then read, the history of the Roosevelt 

 administration, is bound to admit that there is no similarity in any particular. 

 The Democratic platform of 1932 was still a good platform in 1946 for the Repub- 

 licans, because it had never been used. It had been put away with the dry cleaners 

 •over the entire period of 14 years. It remains to be seen whether the Republicans 

 will also put it back in storage or whether they will use it. 



When Mr. Roosevelt came into office on March 4, 1933, the Government, as 

 such, was in splendid condition for the reason that the great wealth of this coun- 

 try was not incumbered to any major extent. The only thing needed was to use 

 public credit sufficiently to enable the banks to work out their problems, to put 

 enough money into circulation to start our industries and agriculture moving, and 

 to prevent imports of those things for which we had no need. 



The administration started out in an effort to bring some gold back into this 

 •country to enable the Ijanks to maintain a necessary gold reserve to stabilize the 

 •currency, all of which was well and should have been done. 



THE UNSEEN HAND 



Almost overnight there was an unseen hand which wrought a miracle and caused 

 the President and Congress to completely change and go off on an entirely different 

 tack. 



This unseen hand scrapped the platform of 1932 and plunged this Nation into 

 a commvmistic, totalitarian, democratic iiupo-isibility. 



When the price of gold was raised from $20 to $35, this, of course, had the effect 

 of making money cheap. It had the effect of bringing shiploads of gold into this 

 country. Gold piled up so that every dollar of currency could have been covered 

 200 percent by gold deposits. 



The administration began a program of wild Government spending wiiich 

 would involve an amount of money so great that all the gold in the world would 

 not be sufficient to stabilize it on any reasonable percentage. 



Not only that, but men in high places, especially the State Department, let 

 the secret leak out that the day was coming when this gold would be used to sta- 

 bilize the currency of other nations and, therefore, could not be used to stabilize 

 our own money. 



Not only that, but the unseen hand, by some means, caused the administration 

 to believe in free tJ-ade on raw materials and agricultural products. At the same 



