I want to bring aid to the people directly, that is where my talents are best used. Instead, my first task is to help prepare speeches about the banks. The President has decided to declare a Bank Holiday. According to some of the transition team members,before he took office the President had been pressuring President Hoover to close the banks until they could be back on solid footing, to prevent the runs on the banks that we have been watching fearfully for too long.
Banking is not my area of expertise, so I sought out staff from the Treasury Department, from Woodin’s inner circle. The previous administration, I learned, had been more prepared for this step than I thought, since it the President’s Proclamation actually first read: “I Herbert Hoover, President of the United States of America.”
Not everything was just for the average citizens who put their money and trust in their local banks. They wanted to keep bank investors from taking out money in the form of gold, which would deplete the gold reserves.
It sounds like a powerful first step, but I can’t help but think that the people who need our help will only stop losing money, they won’t get anything back, yet. If the President can use his power to rearrange banks for investors like a checkerboard, what else can we get him to do?

In light of the recent earthquake that has nearly crippled our area, causing thousands of dollars in damage to homes and businesses, it was very nice to hear the strong and reassuring voice of our new president, Franklin Roosevelt. Tonight our whole neighborhood gathered at the fire station, to listen to Mr. Roosevelt’s radio address to the country since the fire trucks are the only vehicles with radios in them around here. The president discussed the banking crisis, explaining what he and the government were doing to fix the problems.

After listening to him say how bad it was for the banking system to hoard money and certifying the legitimacy of the banks that are slowly reopening, Al said on the way home we should do our part to help the economy and put our savings back into the bank when it opens. I am so grateful my whole family is safe, but I am deeply concerned what the damage from this earthquake in the midst of this depression could mean for us and our community. I need a job now more than ever.

It is infinitely easier to administer to an individual member of the working poor than it is to try and meet the needs of a multitude of them through economic reform. Trying to explain how that economic reform will help the working poor is even harder. I give you my latest attempt, with inspiration from L. Frank Baum:
Dorothy has been indirectly uprooted by a cyclone in rural Kansas. In Oz, the Wicked Witch has exploited the laborer, the Tin Woodsman; the Scarecrow is without means to save himself, and the Cowardly Lion was once a powerful force but his roar has become the only menacing quality he has left. Dorothy just wants to go home. The ragtag team looks to the Wizard to give them the opportunities to fulfill their desires. He projects the image of a powerful leader, but being everything to everyone is just his outer shell and is a feeble old man inside. Dorothy has to follow a golden road, but it is her SILVER shoes that can get her back to her family safe and sound.
Bimetallism, the specter of Willliam Jennings Bryan’s populist movement has returned to mainstream politics almost forty years after the first edition of the Wizard Of Oz. This time it is tied to inflation, to help alleviate the debt of the farmer. The President has thus decided to devalue the dollar – and take thus allow the people to walk on the gold road in silver slippers, too.

The President sounds like something out of a storybook himself when talking about his decision. Taking advice from Dorothy was, he said, “the only legitimate method of putting the country back on its feet without destroying human values.”

Did you know that nearly 9000 banks have failed since Black Friday? 4000 this year alone! We very nearly lost all our savings because of a run on our bank. Now that we have put our little bit of savings and my meager paychecks in the bank, I’ve still been as nervous about our money being safe there as when it was under my mattress. Al and I have been fighting about this all the time because my concern is that who is to say that our local bank won’t fail again? I just don’t see how our situation is any better than it was a hundred days ago when FDR first came into office. Yes, there have been various programs enacted to help people in industrial and agricultural sectors, but all I’ve noticed around here is a greater influx of dirt poor migrant workers coming from the Plains looking for work.

Al says that many of the acts pertaining to banking actually are going to help us, including this second Glass-Steagall Act passed today. Part of the act is the creation of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation or the FDIC, which will ensure deposits up to $2500. So if our bank fails, our money will be insured and we won’t lose it. As for all of the other programs being enacted, Al has assured me that they are meant to help the people and sectors in the direst situations, which in turn helps our economy as a whole.

Since he has a lot of free time during the day he reads the paper and listens to the radio so I guess I’ll have to concede that he is better informed than I am. He believes that FDR is just trying a bunch of things and seeing what works and what does not, especially since he did say in his inaugural address that we “need action and action now.” I still think there is a long way to go to get us out of this depression, though, and until we can afford to purchase meat other than hot dogs and do not have to make shoe soles out of cardboard when the rubber wears down, I don’t believe things are any better off. I guess we’ll just have to continue to make do.