The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1921-10-04
ALL ARE CHEERED
Nations Bankers at Los Angeles
Agree Prosperity Dawns.
Finaneiers Representing $780,
OOO,OOO,OOO in Session.
NORMALLY NEARLY HERE; DRUM
President of Association De-
cIares Legislation Only Mistake.
Nothing Can Interfere With or
Improve Economic Laws.
NORMANDY NEARLY HERE; DRUM

that better and brighter days for the
United States are Just around the
corner.
Representing a countryside survey,
prepared after months of careful OBJ
servation by experts in every section of
the country, John S. Drum, president
of the American Bankers association,
told the delegates to the forty-seventh
annual convention of the organization
that influences preventing the resto-
ration Of stable conditions are disap-
pearing.'
Depression Not Permanent.
Mr.. Drum also said in his address:
There is nothing in our domestic
situation nor in the international situa-
ton. that can sustain a pessimistic
outlook or a respondent view that the
world has sunk into permanent de-
preston"
An analysis from every nook and
corner of the country also showed.
President Drum said, that as prices
move toward stability on an equitable
basis, the full purchasing power that
Is a necessary prerequisite of normal
prosperity is being recovered.
steadily as social and political con-
ditiOns abroad improve, the wealth
wasted in war is being replaced and
foreign countries are working to re-
build the productive capacity that
measures their ability to consume and
markets for American goods are being
reopened."
Problem solution Delayed.
According to Drum, three influences
have served in the last year to retard
a proper solution of Americas domes-
tic and economic problem:
THE first" he said, lis the mistaken
idea that the process of readjustme nt
Is a struggle between groups of pro-
t.ucers anu that each group is capable
of improving its own condition at the
expense of the others and is striving to
attain prosperity by keeping the other
fellow down.
"The second is the mistaken idea
that legislation can defect the oper-
alton of economic laws so as to bene-
fit particular groups and the tendency
to let the enactment of legislation be
guided by political expediency rather
than by sound economic requirements.
THE third is the tendency to coin
slogans and catch phrases and to sub
stitute them for sound reasoning.
These serve only to obscure the vision
and befog the reason
No Real buyers Strike"
--a Ir. Drum cited buyers strike as
p catch phrase 7hich was misleading
because it was not that the people
did not want to buy: it was simply that
wartime prosperity was at an end,
values were being reduced and people
did not have the money to buy.
Drums survey enumerated three
great domestic influences that more
than all others are retarding the read
justment of prices and costs" These,
he said, are. first, the delayed a6-
justment of the cost of labor; second.
the sustained high costs of transL orta-
ton; third, the continuation of an I'M
sound system of taxation that diyerts
working capital from its proper chan
nels."
agree Unemployment Is Crisis.
Prominent bankers who are present
at the convention agreed in interviews
today that the unemployment situa-
tion is one of the most important prob
lens now confronting the country and
must be given immediate attention.
John G. Lonsdale, president of the
National Bank of Commerce, st. Louis,
said:
The growing army of unemployed,
now officially estimated at 100000,
should of itself, spur the desire to
speed up before winter is too far ad-
vanced. There is business today in
America in every nook and corner. 1t
merely needs printing, like the old
country pump, to start the profitable
How"