The Leon reporter. (Leon, Iowa) 1887-1930, 1914-07-16
SCRIP EVERYWHERE; MONEY
COULDN'T BE HAD.
Dark Days of 1907, When Roosevelt
Was President, lsecalled-PeOple
Organized Clubs to Boycott Meat
Contrast to This Year With
Abundance Astounding.

Washington, July 13.-President
Roosevelt has fallen back on the cal
amity cry of the little republican pol
iticians throughout the country and
takes the position that prosperity
cannot exist during a democratic adj
ministratiOn.
This is the same Mr.. Roosevelt
whose occupancy of the presidency
was chiefly signalized by the panic of
1907, and the ensuing depression,
from which the country was only
emerging when his successors sue
cessor was installed in office.
During that panic, when Mr..
Roosevelt was in the White House,
there was organized in every section
of the country NO MEAT CLUBS.
Money was so scarce and meat was
so high many people throughout the
land boycotted all forms of meat and
were forced to a vegetable diet. The
people of this nation have not been
forced to any such boycott under the
Wilson administration. There is
abundance everywhere.
You remember, of course, the
scrip days of the Roosevelt admins
tration. In those nevertO-be-forgot-
ten days people who had good hard
money in the banks couldn't draw it
out. Checks were no good. DEPOSIT
tors were given scrip instead of mon
ey which had to be hawked around
and finally exchanged on discount.
Remember those dark days of 1907?
well, next time little two by four
republican says anything about al
legged depression in the year 1914,
just bark back to republican rule
and scrip.
On the floor of the house Con-
gresham Rainey, of Illinois, force
fully called attention few days ago
to the deplorable situation that ex-
listed in 1907. He said:
'In 1907 the men who had toiled
all day long, day after day, in our
shops and under the hot suns of sum-
mer on our farms, were unable to go
to the banks and get the money they
had earned and had deposited there.
During that period of time l myself
recall that check on the treasury
of the United States drawn by the
sergeant-at-arms of this house, pay
able to myself for one months sal
airy, was refused payment by one of
the greatest banks in the middle
west The banks locked up the
money of the people in their vaults
during that typical republican panic,
and they issued their own paper, in
violation of law. We suspended the
operation of the criminal and civil
laws of the country and permitted
throughout the land every bank that
wanted to do so to violate the law.
On this side of the house there was
not a murmur of discomfort or disap-
proval throughout the dark days of
1907-not a single political speech
calling attention to this panic, for
which the republican party was di-
rectly responsible, was made on this
side of the chamber. 1t was a case
where we applied the faith cure to
the situation, and starting on the
democratic side of the house and of
the senate we made speeches of con-
fidence, and the inspiration created
mere spread throughout the country.
"Out in my section a widow who
had saved up two or three hundred
dollars and hid it away, because she
did not believe in banks, was SO in
spired with the patriotic feeling
which started on this side of the
house and extended throughout the
country that she brought her money
from it's hiding place and deposited
it in local bank. and said: Here is
my money; | feel I ought to contrib
ute this toward the security of the
banks and business throughout the
land Those acts of patriotism,
as they were, conspicuous
as they were in 1907, can all be
traced to the wave of patriotism
which was inspired by democratic
leaders here and throughout the
country in the dark days of this re-
publican panic. Patriotic utterances
so frequent in 1907 and 1908 on this
side of the house are absolutely lack
ing at the present time on the other
side of the house."