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People's Banking: The Promise Betrayed?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Jean Reith Schroedel  and
Bruce Snyder
Jean Reith Schroedel
Affiliation:
Claremont Graduate School
Bruce Snyder
Affiliation:
Claremont Graduate School
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Extract

The period roughly encompassing the last twenty-five years of the nineteenth century and the first two decades of the twentieth century has been described as one in which America embarked on a “search for order.” It has also been characterized as a period that witnessed the genesis of the modern American administrative state. The time was one of profound change, marking the transition from a principally agrarian to an industrial society and economy. Positions on the most contentious issues of the era tended to fall along sectional lines that reflected regional disagreement on the scope, as well as the propriety, of that transition. Even after appeals to the “bloody shirt” had waned, the fundamentally sectional nature of the national debate over these issues, and the state's capacity to deal with them, remained.

Type
Research Notes: Populists and the Post Office
Information
Studies in American Political Development , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , Spring 1994 , pp. 173 - 193
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

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28. In 1869, there were twenty-six national bank branches in the South and 829 in New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Ohio alone (Goodwyn, Democratic Promise, 27). Over twenty years later, the sectional disparity in the distribution of savings banks was even greater. See Wanamaker, John, Postal Savings Banks: An Argument in Their Favor (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1891), 9.Google Scholar

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35. Floor debate on S5876 was replete with such ideas. For example, see Congressional Record, 61st Cong., 2nd sess. [hereafter CR 61/2:], 1256–1257, 1282–1283.

36. Hechler, , Insurgency, 158–159.Google Scholar

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38. Ibid., 100.

39. A particularly acerbic comment was made by Senator Thomas P. Gore (Democrat, Oklahoma), who, noting Aldrich's absence during debate, said, “the principal champion of a central bank in the Senate and in the United States [Aldrich] was hostile to this [postal savings] measure one year ago. He is a man of matured judgment and fixed convictions. The reasons which have wrought this change in his convictions or, at least, in his tactics have not been submitted to the Senate…. Did he imagine that his presence would excite, or that his absence would allay, suspicion?” CR 61/2:2772.

40. Chicago Banker, February 5, 1910.

41. U.S. Congress, Hearing Before House Subcommittee No. 2 of Committee on Post Office and Post Roads, 02 25, 1909, 113.Google Scholar

42. Hechler, , Insurgency, 159.Google Scholar

43. Particularly enlightening is the colloquy between Cummins of Iowa and Burton of Ohio on the proper locus of economic power. Dolliver (Republican, Iowa) stated that previous postal savings bills had not succeeded because they failed to insure that deposited funds would remain in local communities. See CR 61/2:2658–2662, 2666–2668.

44. Congress, even at this time, used the mechanism of paired voting to protect its members from taking political heat on unpopular votes. If a senator wanted to “hide” his vote on a particular bill, he could “pair” with another senator on the opposite side without either announcing his position. They would effectively cancel each other's vote but would be listed simply as “Not Voting” despite their actual policy preferences. In analyzing the vote on this and other roll calls on postal savings, we counted paired votes as “Yes” or “No” only when preferences were announced at the time of the roll-call vote itself. In such cases, usually caused by absence from the chamber, the preference was not “hidden.”

45. Smoot by this time had become one of Aldrich's key lieutenants. See Stephenson, Nathaniel Wright, Nelson W. Aldrich: A Leader in American Politics (New York: Charles Scribners' Sons, 1930), 40.Google Scholar Intelligent speculation suggests he was acting at Aldrich's behest.

46. Brody, Brady, and Epstein, , “Heterogeneous Parties and Political Organization,” 206.Google Scholar

47. Hechler, , Insurgency, 159.Google Scholar

48. CR 61/2:1140.

49. Hechler, , Insurgency, 161Google Scholar; CR 61/2:8735, refers to Taft's explicit disagreement with Borah.

50. S5876, section 9, as amended June 7, 1910.

51. A section-by-section analysis of the House version of S5876 is contained in the House Post Office Committee's report on the bill. See United States Congress, Report on S5876, H. Rep. 1445, 1910, 2–5.Google Scholar

52. They took the then-unusual step of attaching “Minority Views” to the Committee Report. In addition to criticism of the Committee (Majority) bill, it included a minority substitute bill. See ibid.: “Views of the Minority.”

53. CR 61/2:7579.

54. Rep. Clement Dickinson (Democrat, Missouri), CR 61/2:7691.

55. Rep. E. Stevens Henry (Republican, Connecticut), CR 61/2:7712.

56. Rep. Edward Taylor (Republican, Colorado), CR 61/2:7736.

57. CR 6/2:8735.

58. See the comments of Cummins, who said the House version “reverses every policy adopted by the Senate after weeks and months save one, namely, the institution of these depositories” (CR 61/2:8534–8539). Senator Augustus Bacon (Democrat, Georgia) noted that Carter had strongly emphasized that in the original bill local communities would benefit by maintaining deposits in local banks; Bacon saw Carter's advocacy of the House plan as hypocritical (ibid., 8629).

59. Ibid., 9073.

60. See CR 61/2:8464, 8733.

61. Cummings was especially forceful on this point. He, as much as any Democrat, led the fight against the House version. For example, see CR 61/2:8633–8642.

62. Kemmerer, E. W., “The United States Postal Savings Bank,” Political Science Quarterly 26 (1911): 462–499.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

63. Statutes at Large of the United States of America, vol. 36, part 1, 1911.

64. Postal savings was discontinued on June 30, 1967 (public law 89–377, enacted March 28, 1966). Its basic characteristics did not change. Aggregate deposits first topped $1 billion in 1933 and peaked at $3.4 billion in 1947. The number of depositors doubled in one year to over 1.5 million in 1932 and reached a high of almost 4.2 million in 1947. For an annual summary of postal savings business, see United States Congress, “Postmaster General's Annual Report on Operations: Postal Savings System,” House of Representatives, 90th Cong., 2nd sess., H. Doc. 260, 1967.Google Scholar