Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1921-11-25
9''sSANITY IN FINANCE
Recent Commercial Crisis in Com
prehenSiVe Review.
The DOLLAR SHOULD Be KEPT STABLE

to Be Vested In rev men Wnose
Principal Concern Seems to Be to
Safeguard and Enhance Value OF
Aeeruins Interest-consress Should
contrsf Discount Rate. j.
Manufacturers Record.
Man proposes; God disposes.
On the eve of the disruption Of the
greatest of the ancient empires NOV
ing finger traced in letters of fire the
prophecy of the event. Less vividiy'
but none the less indelibly, the head
long rush of a whole world into bank
ruptcy has been written into the re-
cords of recent months and no proph-
cts were required to interpret the
writing. The policies of the Federal
Reserve board, having destroyed val
ues the country and the worli over as
in q consuming fire, have been re-
versed. 1t was that or stark ana utter
ruin.
Not frankly. as behoovcs men in
high position, but grudgingly and al
ter long delay, overwhelmed by the
pressure of economic fact and coerced
by the executive power, the Federal
Reserve board at last has loosened to
some extent its stranglehold on bus
mess and production. 1t permits re-
discount rate as low as IL per cent.
in the Boston district. 1t enables the
War Finance Corporation to bring It's
current rates down IL per cent. IL
allows, at last, reductions which Sec
retary Herbert Hoover describes as
pointed milestones in the progress
toward recovery"
We accord to Governor Harding and
his associates whose basic program IS
thus utterly repudiated no measure OF
credit for conversion. They were
stiffrecked in their arrogance when
they began their assault on credit ana
they continued to be stiffnecked until
it was entirely obvious that they,
would be kicked cut of office unless
they foreswore their own program.
However great, their sincerity in the
initiation of their ruthless and de-
structive warfare against prosperity
assuming that they were slncere-h
had become abundaEtly evident TO
them months and months ago, as their
own mouths testified, that they had
lost control of the situation. BY that
was meant that ruin had Followed
faster and in a denser volume thah
Governor Harding had anticipated
They had initiated their policy when
the country was il the flood tide OF
prosperity 4 They reduced i within
few short months to a condition oi
manic. They bore in their hands the
standards of the pawnbroker ana they
practiced usury as never before II was
practised by any responsible govern
ment in the history of the world. All
history was against them, and all hu-
man experience. They said the crying
need OF the world was production ana
that they would increase production by
damming the credit reservoirs What
they did was to dismantle the fleets OF
the nation turn factories into habitats
for spiders, cut the cotton crop in
two and curtail production in virtually
every basic, raw material on the race
of the earth.
They almost brought into collapse
the credit of the government itself.
We said that the usurious habits Of
the board were equivalent to the gov
ernment spittihg upon its own war Sc
curities. Look at the prices of Liberty
Bords today and compare them with
the bargain day quotations when the
Governor Harding program was in its
zenith! But there is not behind them
the same. record of production, the
same mightylvelume of labor. One
thing and one thing only had forced
them down and that was the deliberate
intent of the Federal Reserve Board.
One thing and one thing only is bring
ing them back to par and that Is
.reversal of the boards policies. II the
government could wreck its own Sc
curities, with equal ease it could wreck
all private securities. And so it did.
We had piled gold into the United
States until the reserve hdo peCoiiie
an international scandal. The cries OF
protest were beginning to be heard
around the globe. Gustav Cassel, the
great European economist, speaking
with the utmost deliberation, after de-
claring that ruthless defiation was re-
sponsible for unemployment and nom
production, had declared that goio
had ceased to have a fixed value, could
hardly longer be used as money
standard and that the possession OF So
vast a part OF: the monetary gold OF
the world by the United States impair:
ed even the possibility of adhering TO
the gold standard. What did this mean
Simply that the Federal Reserve board
had so boarded gold declining TO per-
nit it to perform its normal credit
functions that the world was in revolt.
We do not, we trust eXaggerate the
financial intelligence of the men re-
sponsible for the drastic deflation po-
licy when we say that it had finally
dawned on them, too, that they had
pulled the string too tight. The rest