Driving Out the Money Changers

Charles E. Coughlin

THE NEW DEAL AND THE NEW MEN

Somehow or other, I cannot help but recall at this moment the catastrophe which occurred but a few hours ago on the coast of California.  As we listened to the radio announcements, there was a feeling of shock, of irreparable loss.

But, then, we recollected the disaster of the Galveston flood.  Thirty-three years ago a mammoth tidal wave lashed by the fury of an immeasurable wind overspread and destroyed the peaceful city which reposed on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico.

Twenty-seven years ago the world was stunned with the news of the San Francisco earthquake and fire.  News journals carried the startling story of a calamity which of a sudden destroyed the labor of years.

Office buildings transformed into heaps of debris !  Homes devastated by tongues of flame !  Thoroughfares transformed into impassable shambles !  These were my recollections as I listened to the story of the latest disaster which has descended upon a portion of fair California.

But Galveston has since risen to finer heights of glory.

Like another Lazarus, San Francisco has returned to life more resplendent, more beautiful, more prosperous than ever.

How oftentimes it is true that the tears of today are but the smiles of tomorrow.

Nature never intended men of vision to be pessimists.  Boldly written the page of life is her hopeful philosophy of resurrection.

Are not the chilling blasts of winter but the angels of springtime breezes ?

Does not the tiny voice of a sown seed foretell that it shall rise and multiply in days to come ?

If today, my friends, there are hardships, distress and sorrow throughout our nation, we, too, must look forward to the second spring.  Although the banking structure of America lies prostrate, leveled by the tidal waves of greed and the tremors of injustice, it, too, shall rise again more glorious, more stable than ever before.

What though today we, the American people, as did the survivors of the Galveston flood and the San Francisco earthquake—what though today we are standing in the midst of ruins !  Better days are yet to come.

Now is no time for either moans or lamentations.  Now is the day for manly action !

My friends, our real wealth is undisturbed.  As fertile as ever are the fields of our west.  As robust as of yesterday are the laborers in our cities.  Toil and soil, the fundamental elements of all material wealth, have suffered throughout their winter of discontent.  But the sunshine of spring and the philosophy of resurrection are conspiring to bestir every American, despite his creed or his political allegiance, to the upbuilding of a better structure within whose walls the many shall not exist for the few—a structure whose twin towers of charity and justice shall not be builded upon the sandy foundations either of greed or of exploitation.

America, we say to you :  “Thy winter has passed, and the hope that lived through it has blossomed at last !”

II

A “new deal” is here.  The old Constitution remains.  The old principles endure.  But new men, enlightened men, revivify those principles ;  courageous men interpret them anew according to the gospel of the risen Christ !

Criticize the Constitution of the United States of America if you will.  But be honest enough to face the fact that if it has seemingly failed, it was because it had been perverted and misinterpreted in too many instances for the protection of financial pirates and consecrated Judases.

It was dedicated by the fathers to the establishment of justice, to the insurance of domestic tranquillity.  Of late there has been little justice and less tranquillity.  The general welfare was well nigh forgotten amidst the din of battle where financial giants ruthlessly struggled to legalize their plunder at the expense of the common man.

Little by little we witnessed the despots of economic slavery assume the reigns of a similar power which a Lincoln had snatched from the bloody hands of the tyrants who once waxed fat in the yesteryear of physical slavery.

Little by little men forgot the teachings of the King of kings as they substituted for the sanctity of human rights their false creed of financial rights.

No wonder that step by step and law by law both Christ’s Gospel and the Constitution of our nation were not only disregarded but were scorned as scraps of paper.

No wonder we find our best laws distorted as their execution fell under the power and control of wicked, venal men.

III

For example, behold the collapse of our financial institutions despite the splendid legislation of the Federal Reserve Bank Act.

Why was the Federal Reserve Bank Act of the year 1913 placed upon ours statute books ?

In brief the answer was to protect the financial rights of every American citizen.  Speaking in the language of the common man, this law was enacted with the hope that here was an instrument of legislation to prevent both the immoral contraction and inflation of money at the whim of godless manipulators.  It proposed to stabilize values ;  to give an honestly controlled and adequate currency.  It was inscribed upon our statute books to prevent bank failures, to eliminate money famines, to preclude such a condition which overwhelmed us on the very day previous to the inauguration of Franklin D. Roosevelt as President of the United States.

I know that most of you in this audience are under the impression that this piece of legislation had been entrusted for its functioning to international bankers.  The events of the past few years seemed to indicate this very thing.

But did you have even a hazy notion that the governors of the Federal Reserve Bank were the official appointees of the Government of the United States ?

Being assured that such was the case, what are your thoughts as you stand surveying the ruins of the structure which by oath these men were pledged to protect ?

If you point the finger of blame at the international financiers and at the board of governors of the Federal Reserve Bank who either through crass ignorance or through questionable conspiracy have invited the earthquake which has leveled to the ground both our confidence and our financial house of cards ;  if you point the finger of blame at these malefactors, be honest enough to glance over their shoulders where stand those more blameworthy as history shall certainly prove.

Business men, professional men, laborers and farmers, of course, have lost faith in the governors and in the executives of the Federal Reserve Board who evidently represented the philosophy of greed and of gain, the twin virtues of a regime that has been repudiated.

Therefore, it is difficult for us to stomach the presence of the Eugene V. Meyers and the Gilbert Parkers of Morgan and Company, the Doctor Burgesses along with their puppets who are still beating a path into the Treasury Department as they try to resow the seeds of their fallacies and to perpetuate a discredited doctrine of money control.

These men will find a place in the “new deal.”  But their place is in the discard.

I make mention of this only to preface an explanation of the Federal Reserve Bank Act and to remove from the minds of many in this audience any unfounded fear as to the future.  To inform you accurately regarding a portion of this law, may I quote for you section 10 of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 which reads as follows :

“A Federal Reserve Board is hereby created which shall consist of eight members, including the Secretary of the Treasury and the Comptroller of the Currency, who shall be members ex officio and six members appointed by the President of the United States by and with the advice and consent of the Senate.”

In President Roosevelt’s “Banking Relief Bill” there is contained in the third section an amendment to the Federal Reserve Act which reads as follows :

“ Section 11 of the Federal Reserve Act is amended by adding at the end thereof the following new sub-section :  (n) Whenever in the judgment of the Federal Reserve Board such action is necessary to protect the gold reserves of the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Reserve Board in its discretion and upon the affirmative vote of five of its members, may require any or all member banks to pay and deliver to the Federal Reserve Bank any or all gold coin, gold bullion and gold certificates owned by such member bank or banks.”

Now, my friends, place side by side this original provision of the Federal Reserve Act and this amendment.

Consider the power of the President to appoint, and consider the import and meaning of the amendment.

Is it not obvious that although there are only eight members of the Federal Reserve Board two of whom must be the Secretary of the Treasury and the Comptroller of the Currency, the President also has the power to appoint six other members of his own choosing ?

This gives us a total of eight members of the Federal Reserve Board who are in harmony with the President’s views and not necessarily with the views of the international bankers.  Eight members who can either be appointed or dismissed on the decision of President Roosevelt with the consent of the Senate.

Eight members who, in one sense, are his spokesmen.

Eight members who are not only directly responsible to him but whose actions he himself is responsible for to the American people.

If, in former times, since 1913 these eight appointees to the Federal Reserve Board so governed the finances of our nation that the structure of their Mellonism, their Meyerism and their Morganism came tumbling down upon the heads of the world’s wealthiest nation, the responsibility for that collapse must be shared by those who appointed such Secretaries of the Treasury, such Comptrollers of the Currency, such members of the Board whose importance so swelled that they dictated to the President of the United States and to Congress rather than did the President and Congress dictate to them.

I am citing these facts, my friends, in view of the pernicious rumors which already are being circulated that the “new deal” means nothing.

That once more our finances are handed over to the banksters and to the gangsters.

That we can expect nothing except a repetition of the last thirteen or twenty years.

These rumors would have been well founded were there a weakling in the White House who had not the courage to dismiss from public office men who are not in accord with his views and the people’s welfare.

The time for sparing such individuals has long since ceased.  The American public will be glad when these and their fellow malefactors shall be examined before the bar of justice.

I have recited for you, my friends, this portion of the Federal Reserve Act to prove to you that what we need in the “new deal” is a group of new men.

Formerly men were appointed as governors of the Federal Reserve Board who, as events have indisputably proven, have not been for the welfare of the American people.

They were men who were consistently wrong, consistently unmoral and consistently destructive in their financial policies.

Like serpents they squirmed from the swamps of international greed to entwine themselves around the body of the American Government.  And in the “new deal” like serpents will they be treated.

A “new deal” means new men.  Men with a new philosophy the rudiments of which are unknown to the die-hards, the wreckers, and the Benedict Arnolds of American finance.

In the future, thanks be to God, we Americans can expect appointees to the Federal Reserve Board who are not dictated to by the barons of Wall Street but rather who act in accord with the President of the United States who has appointed them to their office and, therefore, who is responsible for them.

IV

Pausing for a moment to consider the amendment to the Federal Reserve Bank Act as written by President Roosevelt, is it not apparent in framing it, he has thereby written a new law which takes our basic money, or gold, out of control of private individuals and private bankers ?

The new law certifies to every American citizen that henceforth the President of the United States together with the Senate and their appointees control every ounce and every grain of commercial gold resident within this nation.

Whether you know it or not you have lived to see the day marked upon the calendar of time when financial slavery has come to an end.  No longer shall it be said to our disgrace that we have permitted the basic common wealth of our country, its gold, to be controlled by the godless hands of a few speculators.

No longer shall it be possible under this new regime and this new law for the value of your farms to melt over night because a group of international Communists have decreed to steal out of our country the gold upon which our wealth is predicated.

That day has passed forever !

Hoarding of gold in the hands of a few has taken its place with the holding of human lives in the hands of slave owners.

The execution of the law is henceforth in the power of the president and his eight appointees, the governors of the Federal Reserve Bank.

Both houses of Congress in passing this amendment deserve the undying gratitude of the American people.

This Congress has done more for humanity and for the American people in the first four hours of its existence than did its predecessor in the last four years.

Lincoln and one Congress are revered for having loosed the fetters of physical slavery.

Roosevelt and another Congress shall be immortalized for having broken the bonds of financial slavery.

My friends, does this not build up a new hope in your hearts a new confidence in our Government, a new ambition to work for the common good ?

While we hoped for this day and prayed for its dawn, it was almost be yond expectations !

The new law is the harbinger of prosperity, the first messenger of a new democracy !

Henceforth, in matters relative to money the Government of the United States controls every ounce and every grain of commercial gold resident in this nation.

Hitherto, a small band of international bankers into whose hands had fallen the control of the world’s commercial gold terrorized nations, bred wars, produced famines of money, confiscated homes, devastated farmlands, emptied factories.

Thanks be to God this weapon of destruction is hereby taken from their dirty hands.

V

Momentous events have been happening in the banking world itself.  Prompted, perhaps, by a guilty conscience, perhaps by a spirit of reformation, the world’s largest bank, the Chase National of New York City, removes itself from its security affiliates.

The ever interesting Will Rogers calls the Security Company the Bank’s “roulette wheel” and follows with the statement :

“Imagine a bank just having to live on interest alone.  Removing their security or holding companies is like taking the loaded dice away from the crap shooter.”

Away, then, with the crap shooter !  Now is the time for honest men ;  for financial reformation ;  for industrial rehabilitation.

Now is the period for real reconstruction.

My friends, it required many years which were characterized by dark devisals, by intrigue and by greed before our financial institutions failed us.  Let us, therefore, be sensible and not expect their reconstruction to be accomplished in a day.

Need I tell you that Rome was not built in a day ?

Need I remind you that San Francisco and Galveston did not totally rise from their ruins only after a period of many months ?

The “new deal,” therefore, must not be associated with an expectant miracle.

The element of time must play its part.  The virtue of patience must be cultivated both by you and by me.

VI

But I dare look into the future.

There are approximately $20-billion of tax-exempt bonds issued by our Federal Government.  They are bonds held by private individuals and by banking corporations upon which no taxation is paid.

May I ask you what is the difference between a piece of gilt-edged paper passed out to a bondholder and a piece of green paper such as the five dollar bill in your pocketbook ?

The former is simply a bill of a large denomination and dimensions upon which the Government must pay interest to its holder.

The latter is a bill of smaller denomination and dimensions bearing no interest.

In common they are backed by the stability of the United States of America.  In common they are backed by the integrity of the farmer and the laborer and the industrialist of our country.

Now, approximately $8-billion of these bonds are due sometime this year.

This means that our Federal Government must collect from you, the people, approximately $300-million in taxation money to pay the interest on these bonds even though they are refinanced and re-issued under some other title.

But as I look into the future it becomes more and more evident that the “new deal” means that these bonds will not be refinanced.  In their stead good, sound, honest, American currency most likely shall pay them off once and for all.

This does not signify that our Government is abandoning sound money.  On the contrary it is a courageous step forward in restoring the sound dollar.  Nor does this intimate that our Government is about to create inflationary or fiat currency money.  It simply indicates that we are about to rid ourselves of the dishonest dollar which today, according to accurate figures contains 170 pennies.

Sound money for the sound minded American is identified and always will be identified with 100 pennies in a dollar.  This can only be obtained by increasing the volume of our currency and ridding ourselves of at least a portion of our abnormal debts.

Or again as we look over the eastern sky where the sunrise of tomorrow is already casting its first rays of hope upon a distressed world it is not beyond the bounds of probability that the remainder of these tax-exempt bonds totaling almost $12-billion shall henceforth be taxed.

No longer shall men be allowed to profiteer upon patriotism.

No longer shall men be permitted to wax wealthy upon the common debts of a burdened nation.

Visualize what this will mean !

Billions of dollars which today are invested in the unproductive debts of our country shall be forced to seek investment not in the misery of our people but rather in the stocks and bonds of honest industry ;  in the commodities of our fields ;  in land itself.

Here is executed a frontal attack on the problem of unemployment !

Here is the logical method by which the parasites of the present economic order shall be transformed into productive agents of human society !

Here is a death blow to usury !

Here is the rebirth of a new prosperity !

Here is the end-all and the be-all of the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few !

Here finally is the solution for balancing the budget !

Beginning almost one hundred and fifty years ago and increasing with rapidity, especially during the past twenty years, the false notion had arisen in this nation that the most profitable way to make money was by loaning money on unproductive debts.

The old philosophy that the industrialist with his costly factories, the farmer with his far-flung acres, the professional man with his years of learning and the laborer with his sturdy toil—the old philosophy that these were the channels where wealth must flow ;  that these were the sources from which wealth must spring had been side-tracked and eliminated by the heretics of civilization who sat in the pagan temples of Wall Street mumbling their meaningless mysticism of money.

They produced little.  They controlled all.  From their unholy sanctuary they reached forth until they gained control of the steel industry, of the railroads, of the automobile industry, of the textile industry, of the canning industry, of the public utilities, of homes and farms upon which inordinate taxes had been super-imposed.  Finally they succeeded in gaining control of the Government itself which became their craven servant.

Like leeches they lived upon both the profits and the debts of the nation, governing it, directing it, mismanaging it, and mangling it.

At one time we find them raising the prices of cotton and wheat and the necessities of life.

At another we behold them slashing wages and reducing values of heavily mortgaged real estate.

Over all they ruled while hiding behind a subsidized press which dared not question or contradict them for fear of being penalized in the advertising columns.

Bankers they were not in the strict sense of the word.  Too often they were buccaneer lawyers whose only claim for leadership rested upon the agility of their minds to discover both loopholes within the law and moral weaknesses within the souls of the Punch and Judies whom they placed in the seats of the mighty at Washington to do their bidding.

Little wonder, then, that the day has arrived when the money changers shall be driven from the temple.

A “new deal,” a new law and a new man coupled with a new patriotism has risen up against those who have made of our beautiful nation a den of thieves.

A few years ago were one to speak in such terms as these he were branded as a Socialist, as a radical.  But times have changed.

In harmony with these thoughts are the majority of men and women in this nation.

At last the great industrialists have awakened to the fact that this concentration of wealth in the vaults of Wall Street must cease.  People cannot buy the products of factory or of mill unless the people have a share of the money wherewith to do the buying.

VII

Once more, then, I implore a continuation of patience from a patient people.  It is not difficult to picture how week by week and month by month factories will be reopened, the wheels of industry will begin to sing the new song of prosperity ;  the army of the unemployed shall soon become the whistling army of happy workers.

My friends, I repeat :  expect no miracle.  Time must take its course.  Soon shall the little children learn to know that their determined fathers and mothers, under the leadership of a Government which dare not fail them and which will not fail them, has like a new Moses pioneered the way from the calf of gold in the desert of the wilderness to the mountain tops where in the distance the land of promise and prosperity stands with open arms to receive them.

The hopes of today—may they become the realities of tomorrow !

VIII

My friends, democracy has not failed in this crisis.  It has simply rallied around a leader upon whom it has bestowed its loyalty, its confidence and the power to act.

He is a leader who is surrounded by able, honest, unpurchasable people.  How inspiring it was last week to behold the courage of our President and the beautiful simplicity of his help-mate.

How stimulating it was to find Vice-president Garner and his wife working at their desks through long, tedious hours as if they were the humblest clerks in Washington.

How impressive the dynamic activity of James Farley !

How inspiring to sense the atmosphere of humility, of determination and of sterling honesty which was manifest in every member of the Government from the head of the Cabinet down to the lowliest officer !

The fashion and style of Washington have changed.

To serve and not to seek, to lead and not to follow, to do and not to hesitate—may God keep those virtues flourishing during both the days of transition and during the future days of reconstruction.

A “new deal” is identified with new men.

Tomorrow and henceforth you can look forward to strict banking supervision as never existed in this country before—so strict that henceforth you can know that your deposits are guaranteed by the honesty of a Government.

Immediately the sound banks will be opened.  Within a short while those other financial institutions which are not totally insolvent will likewise be re-opened but under the supervision and control of a conservator.  If you look in a “Century Dictionary” you will find a “conservator” defined as “a person appointed to superintend idiots, lunatics, etc., and manage their property and preserve it from waste.”

According to “Black’s Legal Dictionary,” “conservator” is defined as “a guardian, a protector, a preserver for one incapable of managing his own affairs.”

St. Paul has something very apposite to say on this point.  In I. Thessalonians, iv; 6, he condemns those persons who overreach and circumvent their brothers in business.

The word “circumventor” is defined in our dictionary as “a man who through artfulness, cunning or deceit takes advantage of his fellowman.”  He is the professional insider.

It is high time that this old word be resurrected for the purpose of placing over certain bankers a guardian whom they sorely need.

Yesterday according to the philosophy then extant the idiot was the investing public who really had no right to his money.

Today the tables have turned and the idiot, perhaps, shall be that type of banker who wasted through gambling and speculation the funds entrusted to him.

My friends, it would be almost criminal on my part or on the part of any other person in public life to raise up in your heart hopes founded on false foundations.

I have already told you that most certainly sound banks will be re-opened.  I have indicated to you that banks which in the normal future can be made solvent—these, too, will re-open.

While speaking on this topic I cannot help but reflect on what occurred here in Detroit and, perhaps, elsewhere in many other communities.  At least two of our great banking institutions in this municipality had become fearfully weakened in their assets due to the fact that the money which they had loaned on mortgages, which they had invested in stocks and bonds and other securities have scant hope of being immediately returned dollar for dollar.

It will require the healing influence of time before these bonds and mortgages and securities will be honestly re-valuated.  Our Government cannot bring about this condition over night.  However, let me say a word on the events which preceded the bank holiday in Michigan.

Little by little information regarding the present instability of these two banking institutions leaked out amongst the public of our City.

Little by little the small depositors who were ignorant of the laws of banking and of the laws of finance and yet who suspected that all was not well, began to withdraw their money.

To these people scarcely any blame is attached.

The foundation stone, as it were, of our local banking stability was blasted.  No wonder the towers of the entire structure came tumbling down upon the innocent heads of the trusting depositors who either had no inside information or who realized that here was a case where we must either hang together, or, perhaps, hang separately, thereby keeping their money intact in the bank.

Justice shall not be fulfilled in its entirety in the case of such circumventors unless this “smart information,” this cunning money, shall be replaced in the vaults of the bank.

Would these gentlemen, or lily-livered insiders, be willing to have us pronounce their names in public ?

My friends, be it said of the present administration of the United States of America that during this past week legislative measures already have been adopted which henceforth shall prevent the repetition of a similar catastrophe when circumventing men shall be able to wreck our banking institutions.

At least from the errors of the past we have learned how to obviate their recurrence in the future.

In passing may I invite you to listen to the first nation-wide radio pronouncement of our esteemed and courageous leader, President Roosevelt, who tonight at ten o’clock Eastern Standard Time will address his remarks to the American public and, no doubt, will touch somewhat upon these thoughts that I have just expressed.

IX

In conclusion, may I state that we must look forward to new men among the citizens as well as among our leaders.

Now is the time to put off the old leaven, the old habits, the carousing, the false pride, the intemperance and the carelessness for virtue, which were the revered vices of yesterday.

At last, my friends, we have found leadership.  Now we are seeking followership.

Oh Washington !  Oh Jefferson !  Oh Lincoln !  How have we failed to follow you in your leadership so strong, so true, so dedicated to political, to personal liberty !

Oh fathers !  Oh mothers, of this generation how have we failed to follow you in those examples so dearly dedicated to generosity, to self-effacement and to humility !

Oh Christ, divine Teacher of the divine plan, how have we failed to follow your lessons of justice, of charity, of truth—willing indeed to follow up the mountain if the loaves and the fishes were to be again multiplied—unwilling to follow into the Garden of Gethsemane to spend one hour with Thee !

Oh Christ !  Today we implore Thee by Thy poverty of Bethlehem, by Thy flight into Egypt—we beseech Thee by the merits of Thy sacred passion—the whip, the thorn, the heavy cross, the piercing nail, the cruel spear which opened wide Thy Sacred Heart—to grant us the grace that we may take up Thy cross and follow Thee !  Follow Thee along the pathways of honesty ;  follow Thee, if necessary, along the tortuous road to Calvary !  There from Thy Sacred Heart may Thy precious blood continue to flow forth as from a fountain of new life, to bless, to cleanse, to strengthen and preserve everyone of us.

“With malice toward none and charity towards all”—may we cease even righteous anger and say for those whom we judge to be responsible for our present misery, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”