Turn of the Flood

(See front cover)

More than two years ago a thin, fine rain of inflation sentiment began to fall on the Slough of Depression. Nine months ago men realized there was a rising flood. By October when the last of the old gold standard was submerged many a man saw in his mind's eye the members of Congress assembling in an inundated Capitol wading through the green waters of the flood, legislating in a sea of deep greenbackery. Last week the prophets of catastrophe saw that they were at least in part mistaken. The flood looked silvery, not green and the direction of its drift indicated that it had turned into another course. No shouts of "Greenbacks! Give us Greenbacks!" rose from the Capitol, but 20 Congressmen adopted a resolution, previously framed by 18 Silver Senators, calling for bimetallism--free and unlimited coinage of both silver and gold --"at a ratio to be established by law." Senator Wheeler of Montana and Senator King of Utah called on the President with silver in their mouths. They emerged with shining eyes, and Mr. Wheeler confided to newshawks: "He is thinking about silver." Certainly the President was thinking about silver, if only because a soft answer sometimes turneth away radicals. Arkansas' Robinson, Democratic leader of the Senate, might announce (as he did), "My personal opinion is there will be no silver legislation in the near future." But the President could not afford to ignore a subject so dear to the heart of Congress. It was indicated that if necessary the President would have Senator Pat Harrison of Mississippi introduce a White House silver proposal. Such inflationist outcries as were heard came chiefly from the Senators and Representatives of the six large silver-producing states,* where remonetization of silver means profit first, inflation second. For the moment at least the President's "stupendous" budget message (see p. 17) had stilled Congressional demands for Greenbackery or other measures likely to impair Government credit.

But the inflationists had not suddenly gone into hibernation. When a correspondent gave out the impression that Senator Elmer Thomas of Oklahoma had given up his leadership of the Inflation cause, Senator Thomas was quick to say that on the contrary his cause was all but won, that he was pressing his victory to completion. And he added, sensationally, that he was already devising means for controlling the post-Depression boom which he believed to be inevitable as the result of his efforts.

Making the Tide. Notable indeed in the annals of the U. S. had been the Thomas efforts. The dazzling light of inflation having burst upon him more than two years ago, he was by January 1933 already filibustering in the Senate for "reflation or revolution." In February on the very day that Michigan's banks were collapsing like a house of cards, he wrote letters appealing for inflation to the big bankers of Manhattan--Morgan, Aldrich, Mitchell, Potter, Harrison et al. Said he to them: "After months of effort, here we are forced to appeal from an impotent Congress and a short-sighted administration to you, a higher power, to stop forcing the retreat and to, at once, give the order to advance."

After Congress (by the Thomas amendment to the Agricultural Adjustment Act) put it up to the President to inflate in five different ways, Senator Thomas did not relax but stayed close to Washington, all last summer and autumn, to prod the President on. In September he wired all the members of Congress, lining them up "20-to-1" for the program of inflation. In October he was ballyhooing a march of 1,000,000 men on Washington unless the Administration took inflationary steps.

Last week referring to the fact that the President had made some use of four out of five of the Thomas inflation methods (unused: authority to issue $3,000,000,000 of greenbacks), the Senator graciously bestowed a wreath on his own brow in saying: "I am in accord with everything President Roosevelt has done under the Thomas amendment."

Public Man. Elmer Thomas won the vantage point where he became the legal sponsor of these drastic acts by his own type of doggedness. His well-barbered white hair, businesslike dress, calm manner, conversational public speeches bear no resemblance to the traditional windblown locks, flapping coat tails, and fiery eloquence of the silver-tongued demagog. It is true that his first political campaign, conducted in his native Indiana when he was still at the unripe age of 19, consisted of 28 stump speeches in support of William ennings Bryan. But he did not choose to imitate Bryan. In 1901, aged 25, having graduated from DePauw University, Elmer Thomas started for the lands of the Cheyennes and the Arapahoes, to "make the run" when the Great White Father threw open Indian Territory to his white children. A few months later Elmer Thomas hung his shingle over the doorway of a frame house in the frontier town of Lawton. Across the street hung the shingle of a young, blind lawyer who had not yet developed his resonant chime-like voice--Thomas Pryor Gore. Frequent court opponents, they were friends, and both had their shoes shined by a newsboy named Riley. In that frontier world all things were possible, for today Thomas and Gore* represent the sovereign State of Oklahoma in the U. S. Senate, and Fletcher Settle Riley is Chief Justice of the Oklahoma Supreme Court, youngest man to hold such an honor in any state. Thomas Pryor Gore was sent to the U. S. Senate in 1907 (the year that Oklahoma became one of the United States). With the benefit of his greater Senatorial experience he was able to make the shrewdest observation yet offered on inflation: "If Cheap Money is what the country needs, why don't we repeal the laws against counterfeiting?''

Elmer Thomas did not reach the U. S. Senate till 20 years after Gore had first arrived there. By his law practice and shrewd investments he had built himself an independent fortune. One of his shrewd investments was Medicine Park, created when he decided that Oklahoma needed a summer resort. He began in 1910 to build log cabins, fish ponds, and other attractions on certain land he owned. He lived there in the Park Lodge till he built himself a house (out of boulders) across from his swimming pool. The War boosted Medicine Park which was the nearest amusement place to the training camp at Fort Sill. In 1925 Thomas sold Medicine Park, and according to Oklahoma tradition, did well by the sale: made a good profit and still owns a ponderous mortgage on the land. Meanwhile Thomas rose in politics, served in the State Legislature, in 1923 was sent to Congress, in 1927 to the Senate. Being dignified, well dressed (at least when in Washington), sincere in his convictions, not given to offending men in speech, he made few enemies./- Chief impression of Thomas in the Senate was his work for an oil tariff and for a soldier Bonus. By the latter he was introduced to his big issue, for 1) he planned to finance the Bonus with greenbacks, and 2) two years ago at a hearing on the Bonus bill he met and made friends with George LeBlanc--French Canadian by birth, Manhattan banker by training, and inflationist by theory--the same Mr. LeBlanc whose friendship with Thomas was the basis of Banker Warburg's charge (TIME, Jan. 1) that LeBlanc wrote the Senator's speeches. Whatever theories Senator Thomas may have picked up from Banker LeBlanc the push behind his drive for inflation was his own. The developments of 1933 added many a feather to his political cap.

Private Man. If the biggest public man in the inflation fight was Senator Thomas, the biggest private man in the fight was Father Charles Edward Coughlin of Detroit. Early in 1932 Father Coughlin (Kawg-lin) having damned Prohibition and likened Andrew Mellon to Judas Iscariot, was getting 80,000 or more letters a week from his listeners. He went to Washington to appeal to the Post Office Department for a special postal substation to handle his mail. While there he too met George LeBlanc and thenceforward his sermons took on a more and more economic tinge until he was in the front of the battle for cheapening the dollar.

Like Senator Thomas, he is planning for the next phase of the fight. In his New Year's Eve radio sermon he declared: "There is starvation because what little gold there is is in the hands of a few who mumble about the sacredness of man-made contracts in defiance of God-made obligations. Congress must decide once and for all whether Christ was a poet and idealist when He enunciated 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.' I still believe in His practicability.''

Last week Father Coughlin was pursuing a course strikingly parallel to that of the inflationists in Congress. When Congressmen walked out from their caucus on remonetizing silver, they could have stopped at any newsstand and bought a copy of Mr. Moley's magazine Today, could have read in it an article by Father Coughlin earnestly advocating symmetallism (a cousin of bimetallism, but with differences perhaps more notable than its likeness to its relative). And the same day that Senator Thomas was revealing to the Press a draft of a bill for substituting gold certificates for the gold reserve of the Federal Reserve Banks, the Father in his radio sermon was belaboring the Federal Reserve for not yet having turned over its gold to the Treasury (an act which the Treasury has not yet requested). Father Coughlin demanded it in the name of "120,000,000 inarticulate American taxpayers." Said he: "The American citizenry was crucified on Good Friday, 1917 between two thieves, Gold and Greed. . . . May God bless this Congress and may we hope that by Good Friday, 1934 the Senate and the House will undo what was done in 1917."

*Montana, Utah, Nevada, Colorado, Arizona, Idaho.

*Senator Gore's son-in-law, Eugene Luther Vidal, is Federal Director of Aeronautics.

/-One of Oklahoma's biggest political figures, Governor "Alfalfa Bill" Murray, is, however, no friend of Elmer Thomas.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.