Jones on Past & Future

Jones on Past & Future

Many a bitter, cynical attack has been made on the Old Deal and Charles Gates Dawes because of the $90,000,000 loan made by the Reconstruction Finance Corp. to his Chicago bank in 1932, shortly after he resigned as RFC president. In last week's issue of the Saturday Evening Post, the record of that transaction was set straight. It was told how General Dawes announced to other Chicago bankers and officials of the RFC that his bank would not open next morning; how he made it plain that he was asking no help for his bank, merely giving warning to others of the serious banking crisis in Chicago that would follow his bank's closing; how all agreed that his bank must not fail; how later, when action was started against the bank's stockholders to enforce their "double liability," General Dawes at once paid up his personal assessment of $5,200; how when the legality of the assessment was upheld; Dawes Brothers, Inc. paid up their liability of $1,027,000 six months before it was due. The author who thus gave the Daweses their due was New Dealer Jesse Holman Jones.

Not only by such fair dealing has Texas Tycoon Jesse Jones (who weighs 230 lb. and stands six foot three) won the respect alike of lovers and haters of the New Deal. In Washington he has been noted for two peculiarities, one literal, the other figurative: his flat feet and his level head. Last week at the time his article in Satevepost was doing a favor to Old Dealer Dawes, Jesse Jones was in Philadelphia, receiving an LL.D. from Temple University and doing a favor to the New Deal by expounding a practical man's reasons for supporting it. Said he:

"We still have unemployment and the Government is still being called upon to do many things that should be done by private enterprise.

"There is a limit to what the Government can do, or what it should be required to do, but no one should be allowed to suffer from want.

"People must support their Government and not expect the Government to support them. We in America are proud of our tradition of self-independence and should not permit an economic upheaval and the social disarrangements attending it to destroy this tradition.

"Just how we are to get back to self-reliance and quit demanding so much of the Government will test the wits and ingenuity of all of us. Habits are not easily broken, and we have gotten into the habit of expecting everything of the Federal Government. The longer we put off correcting this, the more dangerous it will get and the more difficult to meet. . . .

"I venture to say that if Congress at this session voted taxes enough or reduced Government appropriations for Relief and other purposes sufficient to balance the Budget, half the members would not be reelected. So let us not blame it all on Congress. The place to begin economizing is at home. The electorate must practice restraint before economy can be accomplished in Government."

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