New Britain herald., 1916-09-20

l the Philadelphia & Reading com 1 panies attempted to corner certain ore l lands and went into insolvency. A
 nation wide panic followed. i "In 1907, Heinze, president of the l Mercantile National bank, used that l institution in copper speculatiOns; l other banks became involved, includ- 1 ing the Knickerbocker Trust company, and within a few days nearly every national bank in America and many ] of the state Banks and Trust com panies suspended payment. Right here in Connecticut wages were paid in token money in the form of time l checks issued at the factories There were plplty of asseus an abundance of avail Able business but industry paused; he wheels paused and Amer | ica found itself in the grip of another
 unnecessary panic because the money
 of the country had been impounded and could not flow with the channels or trade. That was the inefficient system of finance which the republi-
 can parry had promised for forty years t. remedy. That was the sys-
 tenn which the Federal Reserve Act
 supplanted. What do you suppose
 would have happened in this country
 when the war broke if the dem Ocratic
 party had not been in power and the
 old republican system of finance had
 remained unchanged?
 Our friends in the republican party
 are fond of explaining how thorough
 ly they understand business and how
 safe industry is in their hands. I ask again what would have happened if the republican party had been in power when the war broke and cotton
 went from fourteen cents a pound to three cents pound in one day at a
 total loss to our people of six hum dred million dollars?
 What would have happened if the republican party had been in power when the war broke and international exchange became disarranged and all the European banks suspended pay- ment?
 What would have happened if the republican party had been in power when our trade with Germany, in one year, declined from over five hun dred million dollars to fourteen mil non dollars. and in the single month or August, 1914, our trade with Eu- rope fell off seventy-five million dol Iars?
 What would have happened if the republican party had been in power when Europe began dumping securi- ties upon America, which in a period of about twenty-one months, amount ed to three billion. five hundred million dollars?
 What would have happened under the old republican system if, only ten days after the war began, forty eight millions of gold had been withdrawn from this country by Europe?
 What would have happened if all these disasters had come almost sim ultaneously and the republican finan- cial system had remained unchanged? ~ The answer is-PANIC-great, overwhelming, disastrous panic, in- VolVing losses of untold millions of dollars, the fortunes of the rich, the savings of the poor, sacrificed upon the altar of an archaic and provincial system.
 "But, fortunately, during all this period, the democratic party was in charge of our government and not the republican party. Our finances had been reformed; the Vreeland Act had been amended; the Federal Reserve Act had been passed, and our fnan- cial system withstood the shock like a veritable rock of Gibraltar.
 Not only this. but we were able to care for our dom estic needs and lend hundreds of millions of dollars abroad. and had the op- portunity to convert America from a debtor nation into the greatest Scredi- tor nation of the world.
 'In the face of such record. un- disputed and indisputable, how trivial and senseleSs becomes the pattering refrain that only the republican party the business of the nation.
 My friends, the business of the nation needs a more comprehensive knowledge than that which is pos- sessed by those provincial and archaic statesmen, who have no vision of the greater America that is. to be and know of no remedy for existing evils except to reapply the processes of antiquity.
 Slandering the President.
 We have come upon days when, I suppose, it is our fate to deal with many of the devices of partisanship. We have come upon days when, in the midst of peace and plenty, and after a record unparalleled, we find our president criticised, maligned, slan- dered. All this we must endure with equanimity. We know that after all had been said, no matter what our friends may think of the methods adopted by the president, they are bound to applaud the results. No man can quarrel with peace and prosperity. It is idle to criticise the details of the presidents policies, when one is obliged to commend the re- suits. But they tell us that there are some people who are disturbed by the Mexican situation. When affairs were pretty bad upon the border, a certain prominent republican used to encount-