Driving Out the Money Changers

Charles E. Coughlin

TO THE EX-SERVICE MAN

I

Last week I spoke to you on the subject of the “New Deal and the New Men.”

I was reasonably enthusiastic.  Enthusiastic because I believe in the honesty, in the loyalty and the courage of President Roosevelt to carry on.  Enthusiastic, because I believe in the fine, unprecedented confidence which is evident throughout the rank and file of American citizens and which will continue to be evident as long as the leadership which we have so far enjoyed will remain steadfast to its declarations and promises.

Frankly and without equivocation I plan to address this afternoon’s remarks to the ex-soldier, to the retired soldier.  I shall do this because, partly through misinformation, partly through misunderstanding, there has appeared a rift in the ranks of those who above all others should be foremost in their fearlessness and in their determination.

Fearlessness to follow through !

Determination to see that the “new deal” will be accomplished, cost what it may !

II

Veterans, I feel that in one sense I have a right to speak to you in your own language ;  to speak to you right from the shoulder.

For seven years I have stood back of you, defending you when you have had nothing but slander cast upon you ;  and contributing from my personal money until I was forced to borrow from friends when your buddies were hungry, naked and treated like hoodlums as they congregated on the mud flats of Anacostia begging for their bonus or a job.

These are delicate memories to recall.  But if in the past I have stood by you when the radical and the communist diced for your leadership ;  when a heartless government fed you with fire and greeted you with sabre, in the future, I pledge my word to you, I shall not change.

III

But, I am inquisitive !

What has caused commotion to arise in your ranks ?

Why the hundreds of telegrams which you have sent to your Congressmen asking them to oppose the passage of the Economy Bill ?

Surely, it is not because you and I and every sane American are opposed to a “new deal !”

Surely, it is not because we refuse to stand foursquare back of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his attempt to purge the government of the leeches, the racketeers, the human boll-weevils who have been instrumental in pyramiding our taxes until they almost have become unbearable !

Both you and I know that if this taxation orgy continues much longer, those who own homes or farms will soon be singing :  “It’s a Long Long way to Prosperity.”

Those who never owned homes, never had a better home than a rented flat, had better say, “farewell” to hope, to security and to contentment.  Gentlemen, I think that I sense the source of your restlessness.

You have been so preyed upon and played upon by vote seekers that you are wondering whether or not you have become political footballs !

You have been so maltreated, despised, condemned, derided and almost spat upon, that your confidence in good government is measured both by the false promises and by the lash of criticism which characterized the past twenty years.

No wonder that you are agitated !

No wonder that you have been taught by bitter experience to expect a stone when you cry for bread ;  to await the bitter cup of vinegar when you plead for a drink of water.

Boys, bear with me !  I am not blind to the past any more than are you.  God knows there rankles in my mind the cruel deceit which put guns in your hands and the hate in your hearts.

Every school child knows, at least in part, the Gethsemane through which you lived in the mudholes of France.

Filth, vermin, sleepless night and hellish days !

Nights when the silver moon was outshone by the crimson burst of flares !  Days of slaughter, of blood, of death !

Days when you wondered if Christ had forgotten you !

Forgive me for mentioning these horrid things.  I know they make you live over again those hectic times.

They recall the hiss of the bullet, the crash of the shell, the smell of the corpse, the death of ideals which your old mother taught you as a lad.

No one realizes what you have suffered except yourselves.

Nor am I blind to the present—to those pallid faces, to the sightless eyes, to the broken bodies which languish in the hospital wards of America.  Listen !  Listen ! can’t you hear the thump, thump, thump, of your legless buddy’s clumsy crutch ?

Can’t you see the dangling sleeve which swings in the breeze as Joe walks down the street ?

Can’t you hear the racking cough which tells that Tom has only one more autumn to see the flowers fade, the leaves fall, and then his soul, like the birds, will wing its way to the west ?

Listen and think for a moment !

Think of the crosses row upon row !  The cross—the flag of the Prince of Peace—standing sentinel—like over the victim of the prince of darkness !  Think of the boys and girls whose dads are over there !

Of the widows, of the old mothers whose sons have gone and with them their only support !

Boys, I have been thinking of these things.  I have been thinking of you.  Together we have been reading the Economy Bill.  Together we have been tempted to scream aloud in the face of it when we did not understand it and say :  “Is this the reward of it all ?”

“Is this the thanks, the gratitude of a nation ?”

IV

But pause a moment !  Just a moment !  Let us think again !

If you and I are going to think, let us think not with hysteria, not with crookedness, but with straightforward logic.

First of all, if this Economy Bill was passed, are you wondering why the ex-soldiers were made the goat of it all ?  For that is what some people are telling you.

Well, if they tell you that, it is a damnable lie.  It is not so.

Oh, I have listened to crack-brained publicity seekers tell us that a bankrupt government is about to save itself by cutting the salaries of scrub women, by chopping off the livelihood of janitors, of postmen, of menial servants, and especially by denying a just and righteous remuneration to the deserving ex-soldier or ex-sailor.  I have listened to that tommy-rot and I am just about surfeited with it.

The truth of it is, our government dare not do such a thing and will not perpetrate such an action.

Did you ever hear of racketeers ?  They are everywhere in life.  We have them in church.  They are among the Masons, among the Knights of Columbus.

You have them in the government.  Washington is thick with them.

You have them in the American Legion, in the Veterans of Foreign Wars and every other military organization.

I know the racketeer.  I have been victimized by him.

He goes around ringing door bells.  With a sanctimonious look upon his face he tells the innocent housewife that Father Coughlin sent him to sell a book or to beg a dollar.

Anything to chisel an unjust stipend from an unsuspecting person !

Must the entire church be condemned for exposing such a dishonest scoundrel ?  Or would you argue with me and say such rascals should not be exposed ?

There are bogus Masons and bogus Knights of Columbus who bring undeserved dishonor upon their organizations.

But, do you condemn either organization for letting the world know who the bloodsuckers are ?

What is your reaction to a government which prints tons and tons of pamphlets on “How Bullfrogs Make Love,” “How To Dress For a Sun Bath,” “Canal Boat Children” and “How to Make a Cat Trap ?”

Is that not a political racket as was the army of professional snoopers who too often would squeal for a pint and be dumb for a dollar ?

Honestly, do you want the government to perpetuate such rackets as these ?

How about the racketeers in the American Legion or in the Veterans of Foreign Wars ?

Oh, I know that you soldier boys have borne undeserved criticism because of them—and there are plenty of them.

Nearly one billion dollars a year expended in pensions, in hospitalization, in bonus money !

And how much of it—your money and my money—has been handed out to patriotic panhandlers, whose only claim for a pension was a soldier’s suit that never left American soil, a doctor’s service stripe that was glued to Camp Custer, or a broken rib of the 1925 vintage ?

I have little time to multiply examples.  But I do not fear to lay down the principle of “Millions for the deserving but not a penny for the racketeer.”

Soldier boys and sailors, what kind of a President of the United States do you think we have ?

Heartless, cruel, unsympathetic ?  Is it his ambition to succeed in resorting prosperity by starving widows, by turning his back upon old mothers, by driving out maimed soldiers from hospital wards instead of vile money changers from the temple ?

I know that you think differently.  Franklin Roosevelt has a mother whose hair has long since been silvered in the winter of time.  He knows what other mothers think because he loves his own.

Franklin Roosevelt has a body that has suffered pretty much.  He is not going to take it out of the maimed and crippled because he sounded the depths of that kind of suffering, and sounded it with a smile on his lips.

He has a heart and a soul that puts human rights above financial rights !

And above all, he has a conscience that will not permit him or his Government to squander the hard earned dollars of honest men upon the undeserving, the racketeer.

V

Two years ago, one year ago I was not silent in championing the immediate payment of the so-called Soldiers’ Bonus.

I took that stand not for the purpose of being antagonistic to the Government’s policy ;  nor to gain the acclaim of the American Legion.

I advocated this immediate payment to put into circulation approximately $2½-billion of currency money and, if possible, to bring us nearer to the point where gold would be revaluated ;  where debts would be harnessed ;  where the end of the depression would be reached.

Certainly, I always had sympathy for the ex-service man.  This was especially so when doles for bankrupt banks and railroads were handed out by the billions of dollars ;  when hardly one constructive thing was being done for the unemployed, for the jobless veteran.

You were patient fellows, sober men, all through this terrible campaign against poverty.  You have written a page in the record of time that shall never grow dim when men in the future speak of level-headedness.

If you petitioned for a bonus, you qualified your request by coupling with it the substitute of a job.  “The bonus or a job”!  That was your slogan.

Well, since that day, times have changed.

Do you want me to paint the picture of it all over again for you ?

One hundred and eighty thousand farms are confiscated !  Two hundred and thirty-five billion dollars of public and private debts which cannot be paid in full !

Hunger in the midst of plenty !

Nakedness with cotton at 5 cents a pound !  Fourteen million men out of work !

Gentlemen, your ranks have been augmented.  Fellow sufferers have joined you until you have become outnumbered.

A new condition has arisen when a new leader has considered our nation to be in the equivalent of a state of war.

But it is a war to the death !

A war not against a foreign foe.

A war not waged with bayonet and bullet.  But a war to be fought here in America.

Now is no time to seek a bonus.  Now is the time to put on the armor of courage ;  to take into your hands the weapon of determination.

Boys, the battle is on !

Three years of needless suffering !  Three years of sharp questioning  !  Three years like the three hours of agony endured by Christ on the cross have conspired to regiment the best elements of America into a solid army.

We are determined once and for all to attack and overpower the enemy of financial slavery ;  to oppose and to defeat those who still support the ancient heresy of the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, the principles that cunning bankers must control labor, industry and agriculture.  It is about time that industry can take care of its own business, as can agriculture and as can labor.

In this venture can we rely on you, on every sane American to take his place in the ranks of justice ?

The real fight is but beginning.  The real leader is in command.

Do you not see that the old economic foundations of our life upon which our palaces, our homes and our hovels were built, is cracking visibly beneath our feet ?  Look around you !

Long enough have we stared at those cracks trying to patch them up again, only to see them widen and widen.

Long enough have we watched the happenings in other nations.

Europe and South America are crowded with the refugees from revolution.  The Hapsburgs of Austria are scattered and with them departed a thousand years of tradition.

The Romanovs of Russia went down in the darkness of a new reign of terror.

The Hohenzollerns of Germany are no longer in power !

The curtain of time, of progress, of liberty has been rung down upon the old scenes of life’s drama.

This is a new play, a new war in which the heroes and captains of yesteryear have no part to play !

Fellow citizens, need I parallel with the European names of Hapsburg, of Romanov, of Hohenzollern their American counterparts, the international money changers ?

Need I outline the strategy which you and I must employ under our leader ?

There is the citadel of debt which we must overpower.

Attack it, if you will by economy on the left flank and by the nationalizing and revaluation of gold on the right.

There is the long line of financial entrenchment which next we must capture.

Force its defenders to submit to the recall of unproductive, interest bearing bonds.  Then compel them to share with the nation at large their sole right to conduct privately controlled banks.

There is the campaign that is marked out for us !  Its battles will be long and arduous.  And perhaps the wounds which you will receive will be numerous.  Oh, but it is worthwhile !

Perhaps we will be able to accomplish all this under the banner of the old-time democracy.  And on the other hand, perhaps we will be glad to continue for an indefinite period under the new democracy of the Franklin D. Roosevelt type.

At any rate, you and I are both agreed that the height of yesterday’s democracy is the depth of today’s misery.

Democracy, if it will endure, must be purged.  Never again can we elect spoilers and profiteers under the name of a Harding.  Never again can a wave of puerile emotion, democratic emotion, if you will, give us prohibition under the guise of law and order ;  prohibition, the adulterous mother of ten thousand acts of lawlessness and disorder.

Yesterday’s democracy gave us the financial jazz of Wall Street and the rag-time philosophy that we could sell  foreign nations without buying from them.

Its hero was the bootlegger, and its master, the racketeer !

Its high priests were the dishonest press.  Its god was the idol of gold.  And its victims were the voters — the farmers, the laborer, the soldier, the industrialist, the professional man, the army of the exploited and the regiment of the jobless !

Soldier Boys, you have asked for either a bonus or a job.

I know what you mean.  I speak your language.  You want to exercise your right to work.  Isn’t that it ?  It is your right.  No government may long continue to exist which does not grant it.

You want a job which pays an honest wage !  A job which enables you to own your own home ;  to protect and educate your own boys and girls !

I have confidence that little by little such jobs will be made available.  I am not anticipating a miracle but I am anticipating a speed which this oldtime democracy never dreamed possible.

VII

But there is another job !  A bigger job !

Before I mention it I am going to ask you a question.  Do you know what patriotism is ?

Do you remember how in your boyhood days you learned to love the stream which flowed by your farm ?  Every hillside was your playmate ;  every tree and rosebush, your companion.

There were schoolmates and sweethearts.  Then came the great city.

Then came love, a modest home, and baby fingers to play among your manly locks.

As the little home grew dearer and dearer in your heart, you really began to live.

Work became a pleasure.  You were proud to bring your friends around as they were proud to have you call at their homes.

What is patriotism ?

Well, add to the love you have for your dad and mother, the joys of your boyhood.  Mingle with them ten thousand baby kisses and the devotion of your wife, and you have its source, its fountainhead.

It is then that your country begins to mean something to you.  Do not its laws protect this home that you love ?

Its institutions—do they not mean something to you ?

Schools for your education, courts for your defense, markets for your purchases, factories for your labor, churches for your spiritual care ?  All for your children—for your boys and your girls.

Only these institutions, according to your way of thinking, must be better, if possible.

Fellow citizens, if patriotism means anything it is identified not only with the past and the present.  It reaches out to the unseen future, to the future of your dreams with its ideals, to the future which will be your boy’s present.

Patriotism means progress.  Patriotism proposes to leave your country a better place than you found it.

Why, then, shall you or I be so unpatriotic as to suffer silently the undeniable abuses which surround us ?  That is not patriotism to suffer like that.  That is cowardice.

Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln—the heroes whom we have elevated to our altars—they were dissatisfied with the abuses of their times.  They became heroes because they destroyed them.

Shall their virtues be vices for us ?

Shall we not meet and destroy the financial abuses which have grown up in our midst, the tyranny of Wall Street, the thievery of banking institutions, the game of playing with other people’s money ?

Surely, you have a job, soldiers—an heroic job, a job that does not try to identify patriotism with how much you can get out of your country but by how much you can put into it ?

Therefore, this is not the time for the self-seeker.  There is no honor for the able-bodied veteran at this moment who has his hand out seeking a dole when 20-million farmers are forced to sell their produce at slave prices ;  when 20-million women and children know not where their next week’s meal is coming from.

If it is necessary for some of the veterans to take a cut, blame not Franklin Roosevelt who dare not spend more money than he is taking in.  Blame the money changers, the racketeers of high finance, the holders of precious, priceless Liberty Bonds who have invested in the corpses in France, in the broken bodies in our hospitals, in the widows and orphans and in the general misery of a country rather than in the products of industry or of commerce or of agriculture.

No veteran will be permitted to suffer physically from wounds received in the war if his condition is brought to the attention of the proper authorities.  And no veteran who is receiving medical attention or pension through the grace of a racket should dare to continue to do so during these days of crisis through which we are passing—these days when honest men will stand side by side, cost what it may, in this battle for financial liberty.

Blame the weavers of war who upon their loom of greed pass back and forth the shuttle of gold from nation to nation.

Blame the international banker !

Do you know that : “barely was the ink dry upon President Wilson’s signature to that unfortunate declaration of war into which we were cajoled by the lying propaganda engineered by some international bankers of ours, who had been financing the war for Great Britain and France when the first of the money raised by us from our people by popular subscription-money amounting to $400-million was promptly used to repay J.P. Morgan and Company out of the proceeds of the first Liberty Loan.”

“That money represented the amount the Morgans had loaned Great Britain and it was represented by an over-draft advanced by Morgan that might never otherwise have been repaid,” and you were sent to collect it even with your life.

I quote that information about Liberty Bonds and Morgans from the address of the Honorable Samuel Untermeyer of New York City, delivered February 27th, 1933, before the University Club of Los Angeles.

Well, that should be enough to stir you and awaken you.  Soldier boys, your greatest battle is in the making.

Never with the old capitalism will we work out our destiny.

Never under communism can we live.

There is a leader who has promised us a new day and a “new deal.”  All we ask is that the simple precepts of Christian social justice be spun into the fabric of our everyday lives.

You are tired of those so-called cyclical depressions—depressions caused not by an act of a kind God but rather by the avarice and stupidity of godless men.

You are weary of bearing conditions which forced the factories to close and compelled you to raise your children a prey to rickets and to tuberculosis through undernourishment.

Neither you nor I can figure where the justice of Jesus Christ permits one fortunate individual to amass and to hold millions of unproductive dollars, of blood bonds, while his fellow citizens, his brothers and sister in Christ Jesus, know not where to turn for the next poor penny to keep body and soul together.

Soldier boys, beware of the cunning deceivers who at this vital moment would separate you from the leadership of a President who has pledged himself to the forgotten man and, therefore, to the Unknown Soldier.

His it is to lead.

Yours and mine to follow.

Late as yesterday the sword of truth was in his hand, the shield of courage was before his breast as he was fighting the efforts of a certain group of bankers—Detroit bankers—who precipitated the nation-wide holiday and who were engaged either through themselves or through others in trying to resurrect the corpses or the two great group banks, with new names, perhaps, over their main entrances, with new names listing their boards of directors and their chief executives, but with the old principles, the old tricks, the old dishonesty still prevailing.

It was the City of Detroit where the bank holiday originated.  It is in the City of Detroit and nowhere else that the cleansing of the Augean stables of the banking industry will take place.

The Wall Street bankers were willing to pour millions of dollars into this banking graveyard of Michigan to prevent the establishment of a Federal controlled and Federal directed banking unit.

But what happened yesterday ?  The old banks are gone forever.  The Federal Government is establishing two new banks in this City.  This has been decided upon.  Half the capital will be subscribed by private, local interests, by citizens, by industrialists, by automobile manufacturers.  And the other half by the United States Government.  Not loaned, mind you, but actually subscribed.  Half the stock, the shares belong to you and to me and to the American people.

Here is the greatest advance in the history of banking which this nation has ever experienced ?

Here is a Federal controlled and Federal supervised fool-proof institution where “insiders” cannot drag out the back-door their money and leave the little “outsider” depositor staring through a closed front door.

Fool-proof, if you keep your Government clean and out of the hands of Wall Street !  Soon other banks will be open.  And if the bank in your town, Mr. Veteran, wherever you live—if the bank is still closed, that is no argument that it will never open.  It will be opened and it will be foolproof, I hope.

At this moment congratulate President Roosevelt and Secretary Woodin for this other victory which they have gained on the battle front.

Ladies and gentlemen, I said that a new chapter has been written in American banking.  One week ago I tried to emphasize for you a chapter that was equally new and equally important.

Now our Government controls the gold of this country.  Today it has ventured upon a policy that has been longed for and hoped for and dreamed of by every understanding heart that ever throbbed to the tempo of the tune of liberty.

We in Detroit will see that this becomes the model bank of civilization.  We will support it.  We will protect it.  We will defend it against the attacks from those who say that it is a departure into the realms of radicalism.

Preferably, it is only the God-given right of a Government to take out of the hands of private individuals the elemental and substantial things which are for the common good of all.

Soon shall Cleveland and Pittsburgh and Buffalo and every other city be clamoring for similar institutions !

Soon shall Federal controlled banks make their appearance not only in every city of these United States but in every city of Europe, Asia and South America where men still love liberty and where the lamp of faith and the patriotism of progress burn within human hearts !

This is but the first battle.  And, men, you dare not desert your leader who has pledged himself to drive out the money changers.  With your help he can do it !

The day we hoped for has arrived.  It is the golden dawn of a golden era !  It is the rebirth of the patriotism of progress !

Soldier boys, I know that you learned much from rubbing shoulders overseas.  Your minds are not old-fashioned minds.  Not minds filled with the savage notions of primitive tribes nor with the haughty egoism, the bully spirit of pagan patriotism ;  the patriotism and the egoism, both of which are identical with the mortality of a worn-out past.  Ours is a Christian patriotism, predicated upon peace and justice and charity.

Do you misunderstand me.  When I say peace, I am no pacifist.  When I say peace, I am no advocate of a row boat navy.  But I do not believe that by loving my country, I must hate my neighbor’s country as we were taught to do in the past.

This is what you men have learned from rubbing shoulders with the German and the Italian, the Pole and the Jew, the Slav and the Scot, the Irish and the Canadian.

There is room to live and let live in this world which God has given to us.  There is time to develop a polity of peace.

There is need on your part and on my part to help spare the children of this generation from being forced to bathe in a cauldron of war more fierce, more bloody, more cruel than we ever dreamed of.

And while speaking of that, I am thinking of a verse penned by the great apostle of the Gentiles.

I am thinking of the thought which is expressed in the words :  “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female for you are all one in Jesus Christ.”

Do you know what that means ?  If you want to find out, stand you at a corner of Michigan Avenue or Broadway and watch the traffic pass you by.

Amid the hum of the motors, the honk of the horns, the clang of the bells, the shouts of the voices, there is a drama being enacted before your very eyes.

Italian and Greek, jowl by jowl !  English, Irish, French and Spaniard, sailor from Portugal, trader from India, native from China ;  black and yellow and white Caucasian, Jew and Gentile, watch them as they mingle in the traffic !  Listen to them as they speak a common tongue !  Behold them, one and all, brothers and sisters of Christ Jesus, crimsoned with His blood, crowned with the glory of His grace.

“I have prayed that you be one,” said Christ our Master.  Elsewhere He said :  “One God, one faith, one baptism and one Father of all.”

Behold the melting pot of America where there is neither bond nor free, no distinction between male and female in the courts of the land.  Christ’s dream coming true.  Paul’s vision being realized upon the canvas of life, for you are all one in peace, one in the brotherhood of Jesus Christ.

Away, then, soldier boys, with bigotry and your gun logic.

Lift aloft the flag of unity.  Not the red flag of the internationalist !  But alongside our own Stars and Stripes, lift aloft the flag of Christ’s charity, of Christ’s love, of Christ’s doctrine that whatsoever we do to the least of His little ones we do unto Him.

One we are and one we will stand so that the truth will make us free.  There is the battle for us to fight !

There is the Waterloo for the international money changer, for the Liberty Bond holder.

God bless you, soldier boys !  God bless you !