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AB - Abstract From 1911 to 1966, the United States government operated a savings bank at local post offices. Throughout the early 20th century grassroots agitation to expand the Postal Savings System served as an oppositional political force to the power of bankers. Working people advocated a postal bank that would prioritize financial security, affordable credit, and macroeconomic stability. The banking fraternity aggressively opposed efforts that workers and farmers made to expand postal savings. The failure of more than one-fifth of the nation’s banks during the early Great Depression placed the private banking system’s future survival in doubt. The extension of postal savings was a distinct possibility. However, New Deal programs responded to the banking crisis by guaranteeing bank deposits and providing affordable credit to homeowners and farmers. These reforms reduced popular interest in extending postal savings. By 1966 the political opposition facing banking interests was much diminished. Bankers finally succeeded in terminating the Postal Savings System. For more than a half-century the United States government operated a savings bank. From 1911 to 1966, millions of Americans deposited their earnings at the local post office. These savers sought the security that the national government’s guarantee of their deposits afforded. Bankers had lobbied hard against the Postal Savings System’s establishment and opposed subsequent efforts that workers and farmers made to expand the institution. Immediately following the enactment of the Postal Savings Bank Act of 1910, the president of the American Bankers Association warned his fellow bankers that they would face an ongoing political struggle: “[I]t can only be hoped . . . Congress will heed the unanimous warnings of our members . . . and at an early date repeal the present law.”1 The organization formed its Special Committee on Postal Savings Legislation to block any extension of the new service. In 1915 this committee warned: “we must at all times keep a watchful eye upon the constantly recurring efforts to amend the Postal Savings Law.”2 The banking fraternity would maintain its enmity toward the government’s savings bank for the next 50 years. Proposals to expand the Postal Savings System rested on the engagement of workers and farmers with banking issues. The political contest over this institution sheds light on the financial thought of everyday citizens who were not expected to think about financial questions.3 In 1908 coal miner John Brophy departed Nanty Glo, Pennsylvania, for Indianapolis, where as a delegate to his first United Mine Workers of America convention he was stirred by “this tremendous gathering representing the power of hundreds of thousands of men united to improve the lives of all who lived in the coal camps.” The new knowledge that Brophy took away from this inspiring experience included insight on postal savings gleaned from discussions with socialist miners who supported the idea.4 Postal savings often was considered when working people gathered together. After singing “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” Massachusetts Grangers attending a 1913 meeting debated banking issues and concluded in favor of “making the postal savings banks the agent of loaning funds to the farmers.”5 When the Cattle Raisers Association of Texas endorsed a proposal for lending postal savings funds in 1916, these ranchers demanded what many Americans strove to accomplish: “that the postal savings banks . . . be made in fact the postal savings banks of the people of these United States.”6 Popular interest in expanding postal savings remained strong into the 1930s. In 1931 the chairman of the Farmer-Labor Party of Iowa echoed a commonly heard refrain when he proposed to “make every post office a bank with full banking powers.”7 Analyses that privilege the activities of bankers and assume their perspective dominate the existing historical literature on banking in the United States.8 Applying the concern of social history with the lives of workers and farmers to financial history reveals the influence ordinary people exerted on finance.9 Working peoples’ grievance against the private banking system sustained popular interest in banks and money. Farmers and workers across the nation translated their everyday experiences with the banking system into political ideas and action. Affordable loans were hard to obtain and banks habitually failed. Through the Postal Savings System, the national government helped working people achieve some measure of financial security. The government’s savings bank provided depositors a welcome safe haven prior to the New Deal reforms that put an end to regular financial panics and frequent bank failures. Throughout these years the savings window at the local post office also presented an alternative that encouraged ordinary citizens to imagine a radically different banking system. Postal savings inspired many workers, farmers, and their family members to seek a financial reformation. Working people advocated a postal bank subject to democratic controls whose very purpose differed from existing banks. Ordinary citizens and their political supporters demanded that banking prioritize financial security, affordable credit, and macroeconomic stability. This heterodox financial activism forced bankers to contend with potential displacement by public banking. Throughout the early 20th century grassroots agitation to expand postal savings served as an oppositional political force to the power of bankers. Postal savings advocates presented banking policy as an open question and thereby forced bankers to expend political effort defending their prerogatives. The failure of more than one-fifth of the nation’s banks during the early Great Depression placed the private banking system’s future survival in doubt. As postal savings deposits soared, bankers feared that the institution posed an imminent threat. But rather than expanding postal savings, New Deal programs responded to the issues that heterodox banking activists had raised by guaranteeing bank deposits and providing affordable credit to homeowners and farmers. These reforms reduced popular interest in postal savings, and over time the institution ceased to provide inspiration for reimagining the basic order of the financial system. While business interests’ fear of economic reform in the 1930s was central to the rise of a right-wing political movement following World War II, bankers had remained committed to eliminating the Postal Savings System since the Progressive Era.10 By 1966, the political opposition facing banking interests was much diminished, and they finally accomplished this longstanding objective. The death of postal savings resulted more from declining popular political engagement with economic issues during the postwar years than from the emerging strength of right-wing politics.11 An institution that for years had inspired popular challenges to the banking fraternity’s power no longer served this function and ceased to exist. The Roots In the late 19th century, workers and farmers agitated for the postal system to secure their savings.12 The Knights of Labor, American Federation of Labor, National Grange, and People’s Party all championed the idea.13 The New York State Knights of Labor articulated the public’s mistrust of bankers when it demanded that Congress establish “Postal Savings Banks, where the surplus savings of the laborers may be kept safely from the itching palms of the stock-jobbing bank officials.”14 During these years, a number of leading Post Office Department officials helped raise the profile of postal savings. Philadelphia’s “Merchant Prince” John Wanamaker, for example, promoted postal savings as a means to encourage thrift while he served as postmaster general in the early 1890s.15 The support of postal officials for a government savings bank also lent the concept a measure of respectability. Postal savings proposals acquired urgency following the Panic of 1907, when banks in two-thirds of the nation’s cities imposed limitations on currency withdrawals and a number of western states declared bank holidays.16 This crisis made financial reform a national issue. Farmers and workers called once more for the Post Office to protect their savings.17 The St. Louis Central Trades and Labor Union’s endorsement of postal savings pointedly stressed that “working people could deposit their few hard-earned dollars without fear of losing them.”18 The Boot and Shoe Workers Union maintained that public confidence in postal savings would prevent hoarding and, in turn, “stop money famine and industrial panic.”19 Farmers’ advocacy of postal savings won the idea favorable attention from policymakers who were concerned about the accelerating migration of rural people to cities. And Congress demonstrated considerable interest in reforms designed to aid farmers during this era.20 Postal savings supporters also regularly noted the near ubiquity of post office savings banks internationally. “Almost all the civilized nations of the world successfully maintain postal savings banks,” admonished the muckraking journal Collier’s.21 Postmaster General George von L. Meyer backed postal savings after concluding the program would instill the value of thrift among immigrants and the working class. “It is in order to accommodate a large class of people who have not the proper [savings] facilities,” he explained, “that I believe postal savings banks should be established.” Meyer proposed an institution that would limit its activities to safeguarding the savings of small depositors while offering them minimal interest payments.22 The postmaster general obtained President Theodore Roosevelt’s approval of his conservative plan, and both men lobbied to have the Republican Party include a postal savings plank in its 1908 platform. Roosevelt insisted that backing this groundbreaking government service would encourage workers to vote the Republican ticket in the general election. Following the GOP’s adoption of a postal savings plank, the Democrats endorsed the popular idea at their national convention.23 After emerging victorious from the 1908 election, President William Howard Taft pushed for a law that would accord with the basic parameters Meyer had outlined.24 “The successful party at the last election declared in favor of postal savings banks,” he pointed out, “and although the proposition finds opponents . . . I am convinced that the people desire such banks.”25 The banking fraternity resisted all efforts to establish a postal savings system. In 1908 the American Bankers Association condemned the “unwise and hurtful” idea of a government savings bank as “revolutionary.”26 The president of the Ohio Bankers Association castigated the concept as “not only . . . paternalistic but communistic.”27 But support for postal savings had long united a nationwide coalition of workers and farmers who believed that government policy should prioritize their welfare over private business interests. These ordinary citizens exerted considerable political pressure for legislative action. Grassroots agitation to enact postal savings legislation had intensified when the Panic of 1907 furnished new prospects for financial reform. This public outcry convinced both major political parties to endorse the idea, which ensured that elected officials would address the issue. In 1910 the Postal Savings Bank Act became law.28 After campaigning for postal savings since the Populist moment of the 1890s, the editor of the venerable northeastern agricultural magazine Farm Journal declared that the law’s enactment “proves that in the last analysis the people, when they stand together, can get what they want.”29 Such expressions of victory were tempered by the knowledge that the Postal Savings System would operate only in designated post offices, redeposit its funds in existing banks, and pay a noncompetitive 2 percent interest rate.30 The Boot and Shoe Workers Union declared: “the chief value of this legislation is in the establishment of the principle of Postal Savings Banks and the opportuni[ti]es for amendment . . . which will come later.”31 The Depositors The geography and demographics of postal savings patronage would vary over time. During the 1910s, per capita deposits were lowest in the South and highest in the Northeast and West.32 A remarkable 24 percent of the institution’s total deposits had been made in New York City, where more than 14 percent of the nation’s foreign-born population lived.33 Immigrant workers were particularly likely to patronize postal savings. They were highly motivated to save, and many had experience with post office savings banks in the old country.34 The outbreak of World War I interfered with remittances to relatives in Europe, which further encouraged the already heavy immigrant patronage of postal savings.35 Workers from Greece, Russia, Italy, Austro-Hungary, and Sweden were especially inclined to entrust their savings with the Post Office Department.36 In 1916 almost three out of five depositors were foreign-born.37 At the end of the decade, 565,509 people had deposited over $167 million in the Postal Savings System.38 The social composition and location of depositors shifted over the course of the 1920s. While the depression of 1920–1921 initiated a brief period of declining deposits, this event also caused a new group of depositors to seek out the Post Office. The postwar economic downturn inaugurated a lingering agricultural depression that contributed to numerous bank suspensions in rural areas of the Midwest.39 Residents of agricultural midwestern states responded to these closures by patronizing the government’s savings bank in increasing numbers. Postal savings also began to occupy a significant place in parts of the South for the first time. Insider abuse created a banking crisis in Florida during the summer of 1926 and a flurry of bank failures in neighboring Georgia. Florida experienced further banking panics in 1927 and 1929.40 Like their midwestern counterparts, residents of these southern states also sought security in postal savings. By 1929 this increase of depositors in the Midwest and South had combined with the enactment of laws restricting immigration to raise the proportion of native-born depositors above 61 percent.41 Coal miners were a group of both native-born and immigrant workers who demonstrated particular interest in the safety that postal savings offered. In 1921 over 90 percent of the money on deposit at the post office in Logan, West Virginia, belonged to miners.42 Constantly living with the threat of injury—or even death—compelled miners to take a keen interest in safeguarding their savings. In 1909 the United Mine Workers of America district in downstate Illinois insisted that “the highest degree of security for the savings of the workers to provide a fund against the inevitable day of sickness, death, accident and unemployment will be secured by the inauguration of Postal Savings Banks.”43 Following the establishment of this service, miners numbered among its most committed patrons. A sharp decline in postal savings deposits in 1922 was attributed to miners drawing upon their funds during a strike.44 Political beliefs provided an additional motivation for some miners to patronize the government’s savings bank. Depositing their savings in the institution gave socialist miners a means of expressing their ideals.45 By 1930 postal savings deposits totaled $175 million. Although there were significant deposits in Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina, the South remained the region with the sparsest patronage. New England’s strong savings bank tradition reduced the number of postal savings depositors in parts of that region as well.46 While postal savings only had a slight presence in some areas, there were sizable deposits in such northern cities as New York, Boston, Chicago, and Philadelphia. However, it was people living in parts of the rural West and Midwest who were most likely to patronize the institution. Residents of mining towns and isolated agricultural communities were particularly inclined to deposit their money in the government’s savings bank. The number of accountholders at the post office in Roundup, Montana—a coal mining community that serviced a remote agricultural county—equaled almost one third of the town’s total population.47 The Banking Crisis The banking crisis of the early Great Depression transformed the Postal Savings System. No longer was it an institution whose financial importance was limited to certain places and particular groups. Between 1930 and 1933, the nation experienced over nine thousand bank failures.48 Americans dreaded the prospect of their life savings suddenly vanishing. In 1931 a West Virginia glass worker reported, “What a bank failure really means to a community was forced on us here.” “Now,” he observed, “when men who for years have worked, planned and saved so that in old age they may have a little with which to purchase the necessities of life, are brought face to face with the fact (through no fault of their own) they are penniless . . . such men are then reduced to a condition of desperation.”49 Bank suspensions resulted from varying factors that included falling asset values, loan defaults, heavy withdrawals, illiquidity, and mismanagement.50 Depositors were alert to the part that white-collar crime played in bringing down banks. Following an investigation of one closed Philadelphia bank, the district attorney reported that its looting was “so startling that we really don’t know when we will get to the bottom of the sordid, dirty mess.”51 Figure 1: View largeDownload slide Per Capita Postal Savings Deposits, 1930. Source: House, Report of Operations of the Postal Savings System, 1930. Figure 1: View largeDownload slide Per Capita Postal Savings Deposits, 1930. Source: House, Report of Operations of the Postal Savings System, 1930. Table 1 Highest Per Capita Postal Savings Deposits, 19301 Roundup, Mont. $211.86 Christopher, Ill. $104.28 Gregory, S.D. $179.30 Leadville, Col. $102.20 Thief River Falls, Minn. $166.61 Milbank, S.D. $101.90 Roslyn, Wash. $132.86 Wilburton, Okla. $100.16 Star Junction, Penn. $128.26 Estherville, Iowa $99.71 Langdon, N.D. $124.39 Kincaid, Ill. $99.46 Red Lodge, Mont. $120.18 Emmetsburg, Iowa $94.45 Astoria, Ore. $119.74 Vero Beach, Fla. $84.17 Nokomis, Ill. $116.59 Benid, Ill. $80.52 Milaca, Minn. $105.25 Lewistown, Mont. $77.04 Roundup, Mont. $211.86 Christopher, Ill. $104.28 Gregory, S.D. $179.30 Leadville, Col. $102.20 Thief River Falls, Minn. $166.61 Milbank, S.D. $101.90 Roslyn, Wash. $132.86 Wilburton, Okla. $100.16 Star Junction, Penn. $128.26 Estherville, Iowa $99.71 Langdon, N.D. $124.39 Kincaid, Ill. $99.46 Red Lodge, Mont. $120.18 Emmetsburg, Iowa $94.45 Astoria, Ore. $119.74 Vero Beach, Fla. $84.17 Nokomis, Ill. $116.59 Benid, Ill. $80.52 Milaca, Minn. $105.25 Lewistown, Mont. $77.04 Source: House, Report of Operations of the Postal Savings System, 1930; Bureau of the Census, 15th Census of the United States: Population, Volume I (Washington, D.C., 1931). 1 This table includes post offices with a minimum of $100,000 on deposit. Because Star Junction, Pennsylvania, was unincorporated its population is based on an estimate. In the town’s absence, Spirit Lake, Iowa, would rank 20th in per capita deposits. Table 1 Highest Per Capita Postal Savings Deposits, 19301 Roundup, Mont. $211.86 Christopher, Ill. $104.28 Gregory, S.D. $179.30 Leadville, Col. $102.20 Thief River Falls, Minn. $166.61 Milbank, S.D. $101.90 Roslyn, Wash. $132.86 Wilburton, Okla. $100.16 Star Junction, Penn. $128.26 Estherville, Iowa $99.71 Langdon, N.D. $124.39 Kincaid, Ill. $99.46 Red Lodge, Mont. $120.18 Emmetsburg, Iowa $94.45 Astoria, Ore. $119.74 Vero Beach, Fla. $84.17 Nokomis, Ill. $116.59 Benid, Ill. $80.52 Milaca, Minn. $105.25 Lewistown, Mont. $77.04 Roundup, Mont. $211.86 Christopher, Ill. $104.28 Gregory, S.D. $179.30 Leadville, Col. $102.20 Thief River Falls, Minn. $166.61 Milbank, S.D. $101.90 Roslyn, Wash. $132.86 Wilburton, Okla. $100.16 Star Junction, Penn. $128.26 Estherville, Iowa $99.71 Langdon, N.D. $124.39 Kincaid, Ill. $99.46 Red Lodge, Mont. $120.18 Emmetsburg, Iowa $94.45 Astoria, Ore. $119.74 Vero Beach, Fla. $84.17 Nokomis, Ill. $116.59 Benid, Ill. $80.52 Milaca, Minn. $105.25 Lewistown, Mont. $77.04 Source: House, Report of Operations of the Postal Savings System, 1930; Bureau of the Census, 15th Census of the United States: Population, Volume I (Washington, D.C., 1931). 1 This table includes post offices with a minimum of $100,000 on deposit. Because Star Junction, Pennsylvania, was unincorporated its population is based on an estimate. In the town’s absence, Spirit Lake, Iowa, would rank 20th in per capita deposits. Pervasive distrust of banks prompted Americans to make use of the Post Office Department. Rather than the usual two windows at Milwaukee’s main post office, four windows accepted deposits on July 19, 1932. Long lines of unnerved residents reacted to a banking crisis in the city by depositing $100,000. It was the busiest single day in the history of Milwaukee’s postal savings department.52 Similar scenes occurred throughout the nation between 1930 and 1933. For example, lines formed daily at the postal savings window in Helena, Arkansas, following the failure of the town’s two banks.53 The process of depositing money in the Postal Savings System was distinctive. Rather than passbooks, depositors were issued certificates bearing their name and account number in denominations of $1, $2, $5, $10, $20, $50, $100, $200, and $500. It was possible to save amounts of less than $1 by purchasing 10¢ savings stamps and affixing them to a savings card. Once ten stamps had been collected the card would be accepted as a $1 deposit.54 One depositor in New York City called “the machinery for accommodating depositors . . . very clumsy” and observed that issuing certificates required “a great deal of writing on the part of the clerk.”55 A fellow New Yorker complained that long wait times resulted from a “lengthy and involved process.”56 Alongside these frustrations, however, was an innovation that made depositors’ lives easier. A Pennsylvania congressman had observed that a worker “can go to the post office at 6 o’clock in the evening and make his deposit. . . . The banks close at 3 or 4 o’clock, and he does not come in touch with the banks, because he is working during banking hours.”57 Yet another New Yorker remembered that “[w]eekly pay envelopes were distributed late in the afternoon.” He explained that this practice presented workers with “an element of risk,” but fortunately the post office remained open so “the few dollars not required to meet immediate needs could be deposited.” While acknowledging that “between five and six o’clock on Friday evenings, the line at the savings window usually was a long one,” this depositor also noted, “if one had patience he could breathe more freely on his homeward journey.”58 During the early years of the Great Depression, those Americans who still had money to deposit in postal savings had reason to be thankful. The hard-won resources of coal miners in downstate Illinois steadily disappeared as mines cut back production and banks failed. The more fortunate avoided ending up on relief rolls thanks to money they had set aside in postal savings. This reserve at least forestalled the need to scrape by through the piece-by-piece sale of personal possessions.59 As banking conditions deteriorated following Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929, ever-increasing numbers of Americans entrusted their savings with the Post Office. A North Carolinian revealingly wanted “the post-office inspector [to] be a bank examiner also.”60 Bankers faced a burgeoning economic competitor as small savers patronized the government’s savings bank in unprecedented numbers. Between 1930 and 1933, bank deposits fell from $59.8 billion to $45.9 billion, while postal savings funds skyrocketed from $164 million to $902 million.61 In February 1933, total postal savings deposits surpassed $1 billion. While the number of depositors rose sharply throughout the nation, there was an especially steep increase in the urban Midwest.62 During the early 1930s residents of Chicago, Detroit, Toledo, and other midwestern cities suffered exceptionally high bank deposit losses. Amid the storm of the Great Depression, postal savings extended Americans a lifeline. Figure 2: View largeDownload slide Per Capita Postal Savings Deposits, 1934. Source: House, Report of Operations of the Postal Savings System, 1934, 74 Cong., 1 sess., 1935, H. Doc. 20. Figure 2: View largeDownload slide Per Capita Postal Savings Deposits, 1934. Source: House, Report of Operations of the Postal Savings System, 1934, 74 Cong., 1 sess., 1935, H. Doc. 20. A Reform Heritage For two decades bankers had confronted the political possibility of the Postal Savings System’s expansion. Now the Great Depression raised the profile of proposals for extending postal savings. Working people had long wanted a postal savings bank that would make affordable loans.63 Credit presented an obstacle to farmers and aspiring homeowners. A 1912 investigation conducted by the Department of Agriculture found that slightly less than half of farmers were able to secure needed loans despite holding good security.64 Mortgage loans presented additional difficulties. Farm mortgages were issued for just three to five years with no certainty of renewal upon their expiration.65 In some western states farm mortgage loan interest rates averaged more than 10 percent per year.66 Home mortgages involved comparable barriers. The typical mortgage was between only one and five years with a sizable lump-sum payment due at the conclusion of the loan. This arrangement could place borrowers in an especially unfavorable position if the money supply was tight upon their mortgage’s expiration.67 A steelworker’s son recalled the significance of homeownership to working people and the sacrifices that it required. His father had “put every dime into a roof over his old age—into a wall between him and the American Poor House.”68 Immediately after the Postal Savings System was established, farmers and workers pushed to expand the government’s savings bank into a lending institution. Organized agriculture and labor gave voice to grassroots demands for postal banking. “We want the Postal Banks to do our banking business for us,” avowed the president of the Farmers Equity Union.69 In 1913 the Washington State Grange declared its support for “the enactment of such postal savings laws as will enable the farmer to borrow money at as low a rate of interest as is consistent with safe business methods.”70 Later that year, the American Federation of Labor resolved to pursue “an act authorizing the deposits in the postal savings banks to be loaned directly to borrowers, preferably to working farmers and wage-earners trying to secure homes.”71 Due to the aggressive opposition of the banking fraternity, only one attempt to expand postal savings met with success: raising the deposit limit on individual accounts. Postal savings proponents repeatedly attacked the institution’s restrictive $500 deposit ceiling. Reform proposals varied. The New York State Grange recommended a modest increase to $2,000, while the Farmers National Congress resolved in favor of eliminating any limitation on deposits.72 The idea’s supporters argued that accepting larger deposits could deter hoarding, which in turn would protect against financial crises by keeping more money in circulation.73 The Post Office Department supported the campaign to raise the deposit ceiling.74 By 1918 Congress had increased the limit to $2,500, in spite of the resistance of bankers.75 Efforts to expand the Postal Savings System continued into the 1920s. Postmaster General Albert S. Burleson stimulated a new drive to increase the service’s utility in 1920, when he recommended “a slight increase in the rate of interest paid to depositors.”76 Both the National Grange and American Federation of Labor endorsed paying 3 percent interest on deposits.77 In 1921 Representative Halvor Steenerson (R-MN) introduced legislation to raise the interest rate to 3 percent, which was reported out of committee with an amendment to increase the deposit limit as well.78 The American Federation of Labor’s Executive Council pledged “its assistance to all measures introduced in Congress which will in any manner make the Postal Savings Banks of greater service and value to the people.”79 The emerging Farmer-Labor Party assumed a more definite stand on postal savings: it appealed to voters with a proposal for checking accounts and loans at 2 percent interest.80 Reform Demands The push to extend the Postal Savings System intensified during the Great Depression. A few months after the Great Crash, Representative John T. Buckbee (R-IL) introduced a bill to double the postal savings deposit limit to $5,000.81 Widespread bank suspensions generated strong public support for such proposals. Daniel Webster Hoan, Jr., the socialist mayor of Milwaukee, pointed out that the Postal Savings System was “the only bank in the country that cannot fail, because the credit of the country is behind it.”82 Postal savings offered hope to Americans contending with mass bank failure. In 1932 Representative Martin L. Sweeney (D-OH) proposed raising the deposit limit still higher to $10,000.83 The Post Office Department testified in favor of this increase.84 The American Bankers Association predictably opposed any such action.85 The National Federation of Post Office Clerks reported that bankers “carried on an active fight, deluging members of Congress with telegrams.”86 Bankers also combated proposals to have the Postal Savings System offer checking accounts. In 1931 both the Public Ownership League and the Chicago Federation of Labor resolved that in order “to stabilize . . . the financial basis of the nation” it was necessary to take “immediate steps . . . for the enlargement and extension of the Postal Savings Bank System, increasing the allowed amounts of deposit and adding . . . the necessary provisions for checking accounts.”87 The Washington State Federation of Labor declared it would “insist” on checking accounts.88 Senator Clarence C. Dill (D-WA) seized political leadership on the issue. In 1932 he introduced legislation to raise the deposit ceiling to $5,000 and permit checking accounts.89 A number of labor organizations endorsed the measure, including the Central Labor Council of Buffalo, Montana State Federation of Labor, Niagara Falls Central Labor Union, and Central Labor Council of Portland, Oregon.90 In addition to wiping out many Americans’ savings, the banking crisis also left prospective borrowers struggling to obtain loans. Farmers and homeowners were particularly desperate for credit. Between 1928 and 1932, farm and home foreclosures more than doubled.91 “Money has never been scarcer for us farmers than it is today,” lamented one Idaho farmer.92 A Chicagoan protested that homeowners confronted “foreclosure owing to [their] inability to refinance . . . present maturing mortgage obligations.”93 Ordinary citizens began to insist that postal savings offered a remedy to the nation’s financial debacle. “Why not a bill to make it unlawful for anyone to loan money at interest except the government?” asked a California farmer. “The postoffices could be enlarged to carry on this banking business.”94 “The sane thing to do,” argued one Coloradan, “is for the government to extend the postal banks and take over the banking business, instead of leaving it to crooked individuals and corporations.”95 Such appeals confronted bankers with an alarming prospect. In 1931 the midwestern banking journal Commercial West recognized the trend of public opinion and warned that “[t]here is always the danger of expansion of the postal savings system.”96 However, key political actors in Washington, DC, inhibited such an outcome. The Hoover administration’s limited financial efforts were directed toward buttressing the existing private banking system.97 This approach left the formulation of structural banking reform legislation to Senator Carter Glass (D-VA), the bankers’ foremost legislative supporter.98 Glass actually favored restricting postal savings, but he did not include “such a provision in the Glass bank bill” because it “would encounter . . . intense hostility in Congress.”99 The auspicious economic circumstances for expanding postal savings during the Hoover Administration did not align with the legislative context. But the 1932 presidential election ushered in new political possibilities. The future of postal savings remained to be determined. The New Deal Banks were in such dire straits by March 1933 that President Franklin D. Roosevelt acted immediately upon assuming office. His March 6 national bank holiday declaration provided belated official acknowledgment of the private banking system’s collapse.100 The insurgent farmers who read Farm Holiday News likely approved of its claim that during the bank holiday “[t]he sensible thing—the wise thing—the progressive thing for the president to have done would have been to place check books at the postoffices, lifted the $2,500 limit of deposits—and forgot the wrecked banks.”101 The Roosevelt administration’s decision to rehabilitate the existing banking system had elicited this protest. During the bank holiday, Senators Robert M. La Follette, Jr., (R-WI) and Edward P. Costigan (D-CO) on their own initiative, and John Dewey as spokesman for the leftist academics and intellectuals of the League for Independent Political Action, had presented Roosevelt plans that used postal savings to help establish government banking systems.102 The president thought sweeping banking reform was unnecessary, however, believing that implementing monetary reform would relieve the nation's financial plight.103 Ernest H. Gruening, editor of the Nation, objected that “the money changers whom Mr. Roosevelt drove out of the temples in his inaugural [were] congregating in the White House and telling him what to do.”104 “I’ve had every assurance of co-operation from the bankers,” Roosevelt stated.105 The administration’s plan to rescue the banks was hurried into legislative form and enacted on March 9.106 While the Emergency Banking Act resuscitated the private banking system, comprehensive legislation remained imperative. Banking reform had been fruitlessly debated in Congress since the onset of the Great Depression. During the public discussion of financial reform that followed the bank holiday there was a national clamor to let postal savings provide the solution. One Minnesotan called for existing bank charters to be rescinded. “Let Uncle Sam use the post offices throughout the country to conduct the banking business.”107 An Arizona railroad worker proposed establishing “a United States Bank in all postoffices . . . to loan money to home owners, farmers . . . at not to exceed 2 per cent interest per annum.”108 “[M]ake our postoffice department the loan bank and loan farmers and home owners through the postoffices,” similarly urged a Kansas City grocer.109 Even the more moderate of these proposals entailed far-reaching reform. A Californian insisted that removing the deposit limit and introducing checking accounts would permit postal savings “to function in the way common sense would seem to dictate.”110 The disgraced bankers never had been so politically vulnerable.111 Legislation shortly was introduced to raise the postal savings deposit limit: one bill proposed $5,000, another $7,000.112 Other voices advanced the idea of eliminating the deposit ceiling entirely. The influential reformer Norman Hapgood saw “no reason whatever why he [depositor] should not . . . use the government’s savings banks without limit.”113 The American Federation of Labor asserted that the “$2,500 limit should be abolished and the Postal Savings System thrown open to all citizens regardless of the amount they desire to deposit.”114 Support for postal savings checking accounts had grown as well. Dill’s bill was gaining new supporters in Congress.115 In April the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers endorsed the idea.116 Recent developments made postal savings advocates optimistic that the service would be expanded. “The Illinois Bankers Association is very much perturbed because Uncle Sam persists in protecting the deposits of the people through the Postal Savings Bank,” scoffed a Chicago postal clerk. “They call it ‘socialistic usurpation’ by the Federal Government. Let us have more of it.”117 Bankers were acutely aware of the public support for postal savings, and they feared that the government’s savings bank posed a threat to their businesses. One New York banker expressed an anxiety that was widely shared within the banking fraternity. “If the alarming rate of increase in the Postal Savings System continues, it will ultimately result in the destruction of our entire banking system.”118 Small town bankers were particularly perturbed. A Texas banker who decried the “Postal Savings Menace” argued that “the law ought to be repealed outright” because of “the serious encroachment which this iniquitous system is making upon the banking business.”119 The American Bankers Association’s Economic Policy Commission accordingly wanted to see “the postal savings system . . . progressively restricted.”120 Recent events made such a development highly unlikely. At the close of 1932, postal savings opponent Senator Frederick Steiwer (R-OR) confessed that because of public opinion he would “hesitate to initiate a movement to reduce the maximum deposits or to repeal the law.”121 By May 1933, one seasoned politician had concluded: “There is no chance . . . of it being repealed or curtailed.” Senator Peter Norbeck (R-SD) foresaw a very different outcome: “Rumor has it that there is more likelihood of its being extended.”122 Financial Reform Legislation Although such Washington insiders as the political columnist Drew Pearson indicated that postal savings might be extended, this development never occurred.123 New Deal reforms confronted banking issues that many workers and farmers had envisioned postal savings resolving, but the Roosevelt administration did not take steps to expand the Postal Savings System. Rather than inaugurating postal banks, the New Deal settled on an expedient course of action that upheld existing lending arrangements. During the first hundred days, the administration addressed the debt crisis besetting farmers and homeowners through reforms that preserved private lending institutions.124 The banking fraternity accepted the reforms. These new programs enlarged government’s financial role, but bankers much preferred this approach to such proposals as an expansion of the Postal Savings System. Roosevelt moved quickly to aid rural Americans. On April 3, the president sent a message to Congress requesting legislation that would relieve desperate farmers and ranchers.125 The resulting Emergency Farm Mortgage Act authorized $2 billion for refinancing farm mortgages and $200 million to redeem foreclosed farms.126 More than 760,000 farms were refinanced over the following three years.127 The administration also permanently restructured the government’s agricultural credit program. By executive order, the president consolidated all agricultural credit agencies under the newly created Farm Credit Administration.128 The Farm Credit Act of 1933 subsequently established specialized lending institutions to make short-term, intermediate, and long-term loans to farmers and to provide credit to agricultural cooperatives.129 Average farm mortgage rates had not dropped below 6 percent during the previous two decades. In 1934 farm mortgages declined to 5.8 percent, and by 1937 they were under 5 percent.130 Roosevelt also asked Congress to pass legislation that would protect homeowners. A Nebraskan posed a question that workers and farmers had pressed for decades. “If the government really wants to help home-owners why not lend direct through the postal savings department.”131 The administration, however, sought legislation along “the general lines of the farm mortgage refinancing bill.”132 Congress enacted the Home Owners Refinancing Act to fund the purchase of defaulted mortgages from private lending institutions. This law created the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC), which redeemed foreclosed homes, made cash advances for tax payments and home repairs, and refinanced mortgages.133 The agency extended almost $3.1 billion in loans to assist over one million homeowners.134 The HOLC better adapted home mortgage practices to the needs of Americans of modest financial means. The agency made homeownership easier to achieve by restructuring the defaulted mortgages it purchased from private lenders and promoting the issuance of long-term mortgages with uniform payments over the life of the loan.135 One year later the National Housing Act of 1934 created the Federal Housing Administration (FHA).136 This legislation was the product of a committee the administration appointed to formulate housing policy. The head of this group was corporate lawyer Frank C. Walker who wanted to preserve private lending.137 Fellow committee member Marriner S. Eccles agreed with this priority and played a key role in drafting the legislation. “I wanted the housing program to be private in character,” the Utah banker stated.138 The FHA accordingly insured the loans of private mortgage lenders, which reduced their lending risk. Borrowers, as a consequence, benefitted from lower interest rates and smaller down payments.139 New Deal housing reforms made homeownership more attainable: during the first quarter century of the FHA’s operation the percentage of American families living in their own homes increased from 45 percent to 62 percent.140 By providing working people more affordable credit the Roosevelt administration addressed a central concern of postal savings advocates. The New Deal also interceded on behalf of small savers, the group postal savings proponents sought to protect from bank failures. During the Great Depression, bank deposit guaranty emerged as a major subject of debate in Congress. Bankers had bitterly opposed guaranteed deposits ever since William Jennings Bryan promoted the idea following the Panic of 1907. After the bank holiday, the American people emphatically demanded that government guarantee their bank deposits. Although Roosevelt, Glass, and other powerful figures opposed the idea, they acquiesced to including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) in the Banking Act of 1933. Under this law bank accounts were guaranteed up to $2,500 as of January 1, 1934.141 Even though bankers deplored deposit guaranty, some of them identified a silver lining in the new law. During congressional debate on the banking bill, the western financial journal Coast Banker hopefully suggested that “Postal Savings may be eliminated . . . [if] insurance of bank deposits goes through.”142 Bankers were buoyed when Senator Millard E. Tydings (D-MD) secured an amendment permitting postal savings depositors to receive interest payments only if they provided 60-days notice before withdrawing their money.143 In September 1933, Comptroller of the Currency J. F. T. O’Connor provided further encouragement to the banking fraternity when he told the American Bankers Association’s annual convention that once guaranty took effect, “Congress would be justified in repealing the Postal Savings Law.”144 The assembled bankers “vigorously applauded” in response to this remark.145 O’Connor had expressed a sentiment that bankers yearned to hear. Arizona’s leading banker proposed that “simultaneously” to the introduction of deposit guaranty “we should have a complete abandonment of the Postal Savings System . . . in every community where a bank is now located.”146 “As long as the postal savings system stands it is going to be a menace to banking,” observed Commercial West.147 The journal eagerly seized the opportunity to argue that in light of guaranty postal savings was unwarranted. “FDIC should be sufficient. The postal savings system should be wiped out.”148 A. P. Giannini—a valued Roosevelt supporter and personal friend of O’Connor—also insisted that guaranty had made postal savings superfluous.149 The nation’s chief proponent of branch banking recognized that guaranty would reduce the competitiveness of the only financial institution that operated branches throughout the nation: the Postal Savings System. Giannini wanted to expand his Bank of America nationwide, and he claimed that guaranty would “make postal savings banking unnecessary.”150 In October, O’Connor again asserted before an audience of bankers that guaranty had made postal savings redundant.151 Postmaster General James A. Farley hastened to assure Americans there was “not a chance” that postal savings would be discontinued.152 He was not, however, interested in extending this service. Farley opposed “put[ting] my department into the banking business.”153 The recent surge in postal savings deposits had refuted the Post Office Department’s persistent claims that the institution did not compete with banks. While Roosevelt’s postmaster general would defend postal savings against the attacks of bankers, unlike his predecessors he made no recommendations that were designed to enhance the program’s public appeal.154 Farley did not aid reformers who advocated augmenting the role of postal savings. The Heyday Postal savings windows remained busy during the 1930s, notwithstanding the Postmaster General’s lack of interest in the service. In 1936 a postal station in Harlem had 13,500 savings accounts containing $1.5 million. Each day its clerks accepted $5,000 in deposits and issued $3,000 in withdrawals.155 For thousands of Americans, the knowledge that they had deposited their savings with the government brought peace of mind. One young bookkeeper invariably deposited her wages at the local post office in Huron, South Dakota. “It went right into Postal Savings, for fear of using a bank,” Muriel Humphrey explained.156 Thirty years later she would serve as second lady of the United States. A Chicago woman’s conviction that the $75 she had deposited in postal savings was safe allowed her to seek out a better job. “It was a good feeling, having money,” she affirmed. “[I]t gave me confidence to trudge the streets and face closed doors again.”157 Popular agitation to expand the Postal Savings System persisted despite New Deal reforms that guaranteed bank deposits and provided affordable credit to farmers and homeowners. These efforts demonstrated public antipathy toward the private banking system. When an Oklahoman advised his senator to “make it [postal savings] more operative for the small depositor,” he expressed the common conviction that the existing banking system engendered economic instability. This self-described “plain citizen” stressed that the “Nation will allways [sic] endure . . . Depression and Panics as long as the country works under . . . a private owner banking system.”158 Working people and citizen organizations advocated an array of proposals that envisioned a broader purpose for postal savings. “If the government would inaugurate a checking system in postal savings,” suggested one enthusiastic Rochesterian, “they would certainly do a rushing business.”159 “Place the Banking Business with one of the greatest organizations that has ever been noted in History,” urged a New Mexico resident. “That is the Postal System.”160 In 1934 the Wisconsin State Federation of Labor upheld its stand in favor of raising the postal savings deposit limit to $5,000 and instituting checking accounts.161 The following year, the American Federation of Teachers affirmed its previous demand for elimination of the postal savings deposit limit and introduction of checking accounts as an “immediate step” toward establishing “a system of national banks under federal ownership and control.”162 Despite continuing public interest in postal savings, however, demands to expand the program had begun to subside, while bankers remained committed to eliminating the government’s savings bank. Donald Sham, professor of economics at the University of Santa Clara, warned that the banking fraternity wanted “to abolish the postal savings system or to radically curtail its activities.”163 Bankers pursued incremental steps toward achieving this end. In 1934 Chicago Banker reported that “[b]ankers all over are moving to urge a rate reduction on postal savings.”164 But bankers conceded that their ultimate aim was more ambitious.165 The president of the American Bankers Association declared that “[a] serious effort should . . . be made . . . to at least modify, if not abolish, the law governing the Postal Savings System.”166 In 1936 Wall Street banker Winthrop W. Aldrich’s apprehension over the potential for “competition of the Government with banks” led him to insist “there is no further reason for the Postal Savings bank.”167 Concern over the political power of bankers still energized postal savings activism. One Clevelander concluded that with “the Bankers having such a stranglehold on our present Administration, the common man will never get proper relief from this condition until such time as our lawmakers broaden the sphere of our Postal Savings institution to do a general banking business.”168 However, workers and farmers increasingly focused on defending postal savings, rather than expanding the institution. In 1934 the Oklahoma State Federation of Labor protested against “the proposed stopping of payment on postal savings accounts.”169 The National Grange encouraged member meetings to discuss the banking fraternity’s efforts “to destroy an advantage to thousands of rural people who worked hard . . . to secure this privilege.”170 In 1935 the organization combatively resolved that it “reaffirms its support of our system of postal savings, and demands its continuance and enlargement.”171 Public opposition to the banker offensive against postal savings remained formidable. One Indianan voiced the popular resistance to attempts to truncate the Postal Savings System: “Instead of hamstringing the postal savings banks, Congress should open them up so that the people may use them more freely.”172 In 1937 Representative Lyle H. Boren’s (D-OK) sense of public opinion led him to conclude that abolishing postal savings “might be an impossible task.”173 The Postal Savings System continued to flourish through World War II. Abiding distrust of banks had pushed total deposits above $1.3 billion by 1941.174 But the war brought new depositors to the institution at a rate not seen since the banking crisis. Wartime spending generated full employment while federal policies encouraged saving.175 By the end of the war, more than 3.9 million Americans had placed over $2.6 billion on deposit with the government’s savings bank.176 Servicemen accounted for a significant portion of the increase. Unlike most banks, postal savings accepted deposits through the U.S. Mail. Sailors, soldiers, and marines stationed around the world availed themselves of this facility. The Division of Postal Savings contributed $7.9 billion toward financing the war effort.177 However, the increase in Postal Savings System deposits did not revitalize popular political engagement with the institution. Although the economic importance of postal savings was on the rise, its political significance continued to wane. The Decline On the eve of World War II, the president of the North Carolina Bankers Association had called on his fellow bankers to make a “more concerted effort . . . to secure a repeal of the Postal Savings Law.”178 The attack on postal savings escalated following the war. In 1952 Senator Wallace F. Bennett (R-UT)—an ally of business interests—introduced the first in a series of bills that he would present over the coming years seeking to do away with the institution.179 The American Bankers Association’s testimony in support of his legislation objected that postal savings was “in direct competition with private industry” and “no longer serves a needful purpose.”180 Bennett quickly learned that the government’s savings bank retained support. “Are you a banker or interested in some bank,” demanded one indignant Chicagoan.181 Bennett acknowledged that his initial attempt to discontinue postal savings met with “a rough time in the Committee,” but he remained “hopeful that conditions may change.”182 Postal savings adversaries contended that the nation had entered a new era far removed from the financial concerns of previous years. These antagonists routinely dismissed the government’s savings bank as outmoded.183 The campaign to abolish the Postal Savings System was bolstered by endorsements from such figures as former President Herbert C. Hoover, Wall Street financier Bernard M. Baruch, and the chairman of the House Post Office and Civil Service Committee, Tom J. Murray (D-TN).184 Prominent antagonists notwithstanding, postal savings had important allies. In 1955 the American Federation of Labor insisted that “[s]o long as the Public wants this facility it is our belief it should continue.”185 The National Grange maintained its support for the service as well.186 There were rural Americans for whom accessible savings facilities remained a highly relevant issue: a government study found that 76 counties had no banks.187 In 1959 Representative Charles O. Porter (D-OR) surmised that the campaign to discontinue the program was “too brazen an attempt to make the bankers happy.”188 While the Postal Savings System had endured ongoing attacks from bankers who decried the existence of a public alternative to their privately owned, for-profit businesses, it now faced active opposition from within the Post Office Department itself. In 1953 President Dwight D. Eisenhower selected Michigan automobile dealer and Republican Party operative Arthur E. Summerfield to serve as Postmaster General.189 The White House stated that it had been “necessary to get a business man into the Post Office.”190 Summerfield’s ideological commitment to diminishing the role of public institutions is indicated by his announcement that he was “concerned about the future of the private enterprise system in America which is so heavily influenced by our governmental activities.”191 Upon assuming his new post, Summerfield immediately surrounded himself with a team of business executives, appointing them to key positions throughout the department. Among these individuals was his selection to head the Bureau of Finance—which was responsible for the Postal Savings System—Albert J. Robertson, an Iowa banker, who Summerfield revealed had been “recommended to us by the American Bankers Association.”192 Robertson openly opposed the continued existence of postal savings. “I think it would be desirable,” he testified, “if it would dry up.”193 Within months of being appointed, Summerfield announced his intent to “simplify and limit the Postal Savings System.”194 In 1957 he issued an unequivocal call for the abolition of postal savings, arguing, “it is desirable that the Government withdraw from competitive private business at every point.”195 Public use of the government’s savings bank had begun to decline after 1947, when deposits peaked at $3.4 billion.196 The establishment of the FDIC had eliminated a source of competitive advantage that postal savings formerly held over banks. But the Postal Savings System also labored under a number of handicaps. The institution long suffered from lack of public exposure. No appropriations to publicize the service had ever been made available.197 This constraint was exacerbated during Summerfield’s tenure. The program’s only publicity consisted of a poster displayed in the lobbies of those post offices that already served as savings depositories. In 1957 postmasters were instructed to remove these signs.198 “If there is one basic reason why the Postal Savings System has not . . . increased in accounts,” Representative Arnold Olsen (D-MT) contended, “it is the obvious fact that the Post Office Department has made no effort to encourage new accounts.”199 Postal savings also was significantly handicapped by its low interest rate, which remained statutorily frozen at 2 percent. Deposit rates at other savings institutions averaged well over 3 percent by the end of the 1950s.200 A Detroiter acknowledged that “years ago, I stopped using Postal Savings because of low interest rates.”201 In 1956 the influential personal finance columnist Sylvia Porter told her readers that due to its low interest rate and the FDIC, “the Postal Savings System is utterly, even ridiculously, outdated now.”202 Porter wrote for an increasingly important audience: a growing middle-class that was prospering under the postwar economic order and lacked incentive to pursue banking reform.203 Postal savings no longer inspired visions of a transformed banking system; it was routinely dismissed as an irrelevant relic. In 1962 average deposit rates at private savings institutions surpassed 4 percent.204 The United Federation of Postal Clerks proposed increasing the postal savings interest rate to 4 percent and raising the deposit limit so it matched the $10,000 that the FDIC covered.205 No action was taken to address either of these issues. By 1965 the Nation observed that “[a]s far as the affluent and knowledgeable middle class is concerned, the postal savings system is as extinct as a dinosaur.”206 Figure 3: View largeDownload slide Per Capita Postal Savings Deposits, 1960. Source: House, Report of Operations of the Postal Savings System, 1960. Figure 3: View largeDownload slide Per Capita Postal Savings Deposits, 1960. Source: House, Report of Operations of the Postal Savings System, 1960. Even though the Postal Savings System labored under significant disadvantages, total deposits remained above $1 billion until 1960. A large proportion of deposits were still found in the urban North. Chicago alone had 121,612 depositors. A postal union official noted that the savings window in working-class, Polish-American Wicker Park was remarkably busy and that it saw particularly heavy patronage after 4 o’clock, when most banks already had closed. While depositors remained concentrated in the Midwest and parts of the West, over the years the traditional regional differences in postal savings patronage had grown less pronounced. Both the West and the South had moved closer to the national norm. Western states that had experienced substantial population growth due to in-migration saw a decrease in their per capita deposits. And while the South remained the region where the service was utilized least, this disparity in comparison to the rest of the nation had grown less stark.207 In early 1966, a postal union official noted that there were “l million Americans who are, as a matter of right and free choice, depositors in the Postal Savings System.”208 These people had no advocate of their own. In 1964 the prominent liberal Carey McWilliams asked President Lyndon B. Johnson to consider whether his War on Poverty might benefit from “some upward adjustment in the interest rates on postal savings.”209 McWilliams’s suggestion elicited an uninterested reply from Johnson, who responded that the Postal Savings System was “no longer fully adapted to modern needs.”210 Solitary voices still exhibited concern about the issue. A husband and wife in Fresno, California, pleaded with their senator to “voteagainsttheabolitionofPostalSavings.”211 However, the involvement of organized labor and agriculture with the issue was a shadow of what it had once been. Labor unions representing the interests of postal workers favored preserving the government’s savings bank. But postal savings had ceased to be a pressing political issue for any organized group other than the bankers. In March 1966, Congress passed legislation to liquidate the Postal Savings System.212 The banking fraternity finally had achieved its longstanding goal of extinguishing the institution.213 The termination of postal savings was more than a legislative triumph for bankers. The influential right-wing commentator Russell Kirk celebrated an ideological victory. “Governments rarely perform economic functions satisfactorily,” he pronounced. “It is even conceivable that we might transfer post offices to private hands altogether.”214 When Representative Ernest Lundeen (FL-MN) had contemplated banking in 1933, he concluded that “the desired reforms in our banking system might come about through legislation widening the scope of the postal savings bank activities.”215 The Postal Savings System’s disappearance made it harder for Americans living during the later 20th century to imagine banking alternatives. New Deal regulations that emphasized economic stability governed the postwar financial order. By the 1980s, however, bankers were achieving financial deregulation that had social costs for ordinary citizens. As the political power of bankers grew, their mounting legislative ambitions were unrestrained by any possibility that a public backlash could lead to an expansion of postal savings. The unchecked influence of banking interests allowed for deregulatory reforms that in 2008 produced the largest financial crisis since the Great Depression. While deregulation certainly could have proceeded even as the Postal Savings System continued to operate, its abolition did remove a latent political restraint. The Americans who had championed postal savings advanced an economic vision that transcended this humble institution.216 Footnotes I thank the editor, the anonymous reviewers, Robin L. Einhorn, Jake Lewis, Charles Postel, John Richard, Christina D. Romer, and Jan de Vries. 1 American Bankers Association, Proceedings of the 36th Annual Convention (New York, 1910), 47. 2 American Bankers Association, Proceedings of the 41st Annual Convention (New York, 1915), 417. 3 Major works that examine the thought of ordinary people include Jonathan Rose, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes (New Haven, CT, 2001); David D. Hall, Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England (New York, 1989); Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error, trans. Barbara Bray (New York, 1978); Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution (New York, 1972); E. J. Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movements in the 19th and 20th Centuries (New York, 1965). For recent studies that attend to the political economic dimensions of popular thought in an American context, see Heath W. Carter, Union Made: Working People and the Rise of Social Christianity in Chicago (New York, 2015); Elizabeth Fones-Wolf and Kenneth Fones-Wolf, Struggle for the Soul of the Postwar South: White Evangelical Protestants and Operation Dixie (Urbana, IL, 2015); Kyle G. Wilkison, Yeomen, Sharecroppers, and Socialists: Plain Folk Protest in Texas, 1870–1914 (College Station, TX, 2008). 4 John Brophy, A Miner’s Life, ed. John O. P. Hall (Madison, 1964), 100–3; John Brophy interviewed by Dean Albertson, 1955, 250, Oral History Research Office, Columbia University, New York City. 5 “Banking for Farmers,” National Grange Monthly 10, no. 4 (1913): 8 6 Congressional Record, May 31, 1916: 8958, June 1, 1916: 9030–31. 7 Roy M. Harrop to William Lemke, November 11, 1931, Box 11, William Lemke Papers, Department of Special Collections, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks. 8 Charles W. Calomiris and Stephen H. Haber, Fragile by Design: The Political Origins of Banking Crises and Scarce Credit (Princeton, NJ, 2014); Jill M. Hendrickson, Regulation and Instability in U.S. Commercial Banking: A History of Crises (New York, 2011); Charles W. Calomiris, U.S. Bank Deregulation in Historical Perspective (New York, 2000); Lynne Pierson Doti and Larry E. Schweikart, Banking in the American West: From the Gold Rush to Deregulation (Norman, OK, 1991); George J. Benston, The Separation of Commercial and Investment Banking: The Glass-Steagall Act Revisited and Reconsidered (New York, 1990); Richard H. Timberlake, Jr., The Origins of Central Banking in the United States (Cambridge, MA, 1978). 9 Works that reveal grassroots influence on early 20th century public policy include Edwin L. Amenta, When Movements Matter: The Townsend Plan and the Rise of Social Security (Princeton, NJ, 2006); Robert D. Johnston, The Radical Middle Class: Populist Democracy and the Question of Capitalism in Progressive Era Portland, Oregon (Princeton, NJ, 2003); H. Shelton Stromquist, “The Crucible of Class: Cleveland Politics and the Origins of Municipal Reform in the Progressive Era,” Journal of Urban History 23 (1997): 192–220; Lizabeth Cohen, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919–1939 (New York, 1990); Alan Brinkley, Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression (New York, 1982); Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward, Poor People’s Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail (New York, 1977); John D. Buenker, Urban Liberalism and Progressive Reform (New York, 1973). 10 On the 1930s roots of postwar right-wing politics, see Ahmed A. White, The Last Great Strike: Little Steel, the CIO, and the Struggle for Labor Rights in New Deal America (Oakland, 2016); Kathryn S. Olmsted, Right Out of California: The 1930s and the Big Business Roots of Modern Conservatism (New York, 2015); Kimberly Phillips-Fein, Invisible Hands: The Businessmen’s Crusade Against the New Deal (New York, 2010). On this political movement’s rise, see also Donald T. Critchlow, The Conservative Ascendancy: How the Republican Right Rose to Power in Modern America, 2nd ed. (Lawrence, KS, 2011). 11 On postwar liberalism’s de-emphasis of economic questions, see Alan Brinkley, The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War (New York, 1995). 12 In 1861 the first post office savings bank commenced operations in England and Wales. On this institution, see M. J. Daunton, Royal Mail: The Post Office since 1840 (London, 1985), 92–106. During the Panic of 1873, the International Workingmen’s Association submitted an early memorial to Congress favoring postal savings (Congressional Record, January 12, 1874: 568). 13 Knights of Labor, Record of the Ninth Regular Session of the General Assembly (n.p., 1885), 12; American Federation of Labor, Report of Proceedings of the 13th Annual Convention (n.p., 1893), 37; National Grange, Journal of Proceedings, 31st Session (Mechanicsburg, PA, 1897), 185–86; Kirk H. Porter and Donald Bruce Johnson, eds., National Party Platforms, 1840–1956 (Urbana, IL, 1956), 91, 105. 14 New York State Knights of Labor, Official Journal and Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Session (n.p., 1896), [19]. 15 Herbert Adams Gibbons, John Wanamaker, 2 vols. (New York, 1926), 1:284–87. In 1871 John A. J. Creswell became the first postmaster general to propose a postal savings system. See Post Office Department, Annual Report of the Postmaster General, 1871 (Washington, DC, 1871), xxxvi–xxxvii. 16 On the Panic of 1907, see Robert Sobel, Panic on Wall Street: A History of America’s Financial Disasters (New York, 1968), 297–321; Louis Filler, Crusaders for American Liberalism (Yellow Springs, OH, 1950), 312–15; Wesley Clair Mitchell, Business Cycles and Their Causes (Berkeley, 1950), 75–107; Gustavus Myers, History of the Great American Fortunes (New York, 1936), 627–28. 17 National Grange, Journal of Proceedings, 41st Annual Session (Concord, NH, 1907), 112-113; Dallas Morning News, January 10, 1908, 2; American Federation of Labor, Report of the Proceedings of the 27th Annual Convention (Washington, DC, 1907), 335, 342. 18 “Postal Savings Banks,” St. Louis Labor 6, no. 354 (1907): 4. 19 “The Duty of Citizenship,” Shoe Workers’ Journal 8, no. 12 (1907): 31. 20 Wayne E. Fuller, RFD: The Changing Face of Rural America (Bloomington, IN, 1964), 269; William L. Bowers, The Country Life Movement in America, 1900–1920 (Port Washington, NY, 1974), 99–100. 21 “Postmaster in Convention,” Collier’s, November 9, 1907, 28; Sheldon M. Garon, Beyond Our Means: Why America Spends While the World Saves (Princeton, NJ, 2012), 107–8. On postal savings as an expression of globalization’s influence on U.S. government policies, see Eric Rauchway, Blessed Among Nations: How the World Made America (New York, 2006), 117–18. For the significance of European ideas to American reform during this era, see Daniel T. Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Cambridge, MA, 1998). 22 George von L. Meyer, “The Need of Postal Savings-Banks,” American Review of Reviews 39, no. 1 (1909): 47–48; “Meyer Promises Big Improvement,” Philadelphia Public Ledger, October 27, 1907, 10; Post Office Department, Report of the Postmaster-General, 1907 (Washington, DC, 1907), 6–8. On the cultural authority of thrift, see James Davison Hunter, “Thrift and Moral Formation,” in Thrift and Thriving in America: Capitalism and Moral Order from the Puritans to the Present, ed. Joshua J. Yates and James Davison Hunter (New York, 2011), 242–63. 23 George von L. Meyer to W. Murray Crane, November 20, 1907, Box 10, George von L. Meyer Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston; Theodore Roosevelt, The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, ed. Elting E. Morison, 8 vols. (Cambridge, MA, 1951–1954), 6:1076–77; “President Wants Four Planks,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 16, 1908, 2; “Cannon Rouses President’s Ire,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 18, 1908, 2; Porter and Johnson, National Party Platforms, 159, 147. 24 Henry F. Pringle, The Life and Times of William Howard Taft: A Biography, 2 vols. (New York, 1939), 1:517–20. 25 Congressional Record, December 7, 1909: 32. 26 American Bankers Association, Proceedings of the 34th Annual Convention (New York, 1908), 304. 27 A. E. Rice, “Direful Effects of a Postal Savings Bank,” Banking Law Journal 26 (1909): 151. 28 Statutes at Large 36 (1910): 814–19. The centrality of postal officials to the establishment of postal savings is emphasized by Daniel P. Carpenter, The Forging of Bureaucratic Autonomy: Reputations, Networks, and Policy Innovation in Executive Agencies, 1862–1928 (Princeton, NJ, 2001), 149–63; Garon, Beyond Our Means, 105–113. On the important role that legislators who represented agricultural regions played in the law’s passage, see Jean Reith Schroedel and Bruce D. Snyder, “People’s Banking: The Promise Betrayed?,” Studies in American Political Development 8 (1994): 173–93; M. Elizabeth Sanders, Roots of Reform: Farmers, Workers, and the American State, 1877–1917 (Chicago, 1999), 232–35. Taft’s influence on the measure’s enactment is stressed by Kenneth W. Hechler, Insurgency: Personalities and Politics of the Taft Era (New York, 1940), 158–62; Richard T. McCulley, “The Origins of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913: Banks and Politics During the Progressive Era, 1897–1913” (PhD diss., University of Texas, Austin, 1980), 271–78. For detailed accounts of the act’s path through Congress, see Donald Sham, “The Origin and Development of the United States Postal Savings System” (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1942), 203–68; James F. Marran, “The Postal Savings Banks: A Study in the Origin and Development of the Postal Savings Movement in the United States, 1861–1910” (Master’s thesis, University of Maryland, 1957), 48–61. 29 Nora C. Quebral, “Farm Journal and American Agriculture, 1877–1965” (PhD diss., University of Illinois, 1966), 51, 69; “Farmers’ Problems,” Farm Journal 34, no. 9 (1910): 442. 30 From 1900 to 1910, savings bank dividend rates averaged 3.80 percent (Sidney Homer and Richard E. Sylla, A History of Interest Rates (Hoboken, 2005), 361). The law also allowed postal savings funds to be invested in government securities. 31 “Postal Savings Legislation,” Shoe Workers’ Journal 11, no. 7 (1910): 26. 32 Edwin W. Kemmerer, Postal Savings (Princeton, NJ, 1917), 70–72. 33 Senate, Postal Savings, 64th Congress, first session, 1916, S. Rept. 65, 7; Ira Rosenwaike, Population History of New York City (Syracuse, 1972), 93. 34 Mark Wyman, Round-Trip to America: The Immigrants Return to Europe, 1880–1930 (Ithaca, 1993), 59–61. 35 Frederic J. Haskin, “The Postal Savings System,” Atlanta Journal, February 1, 1915, 6. 36 Kemmerer, Postal Savings, 57–59. 37 Senate, Postal Savings, 29. 38 Post Office Department, Annual Report of the Postmaster General, 1919 (Washington, DC, 1919), 87. 39 Christopher W. Shaw, “‘We Must Deflate’: The Crime of 1920 Revisited,” Enterprise & Society 17 (2016): 618–50; James H. Shideler, The Farm Crisis, 1919–1923 (Berkeley, 1957); Thomas J. Morain, Prairie Grass Roots: An Iowa Small Town in the Early Twentieth Century (Ames, IA, 1988), 223–26; Federal Reserve Bulletin 23, no. 9 (1937): 868. 40 Raymond B. Vickers, Panic in Paradise: Florida’s Banking Crash of 1926 (Tuscaloosa, AL, 1994). The lower rate of postal savings patronage in the South was consistent with lower usage of financial institutions in this region generally. 41 Vernon M. Briggs, Jr., Mass Immigration and the National Interest (Armonk, NY, 2003), 83–86; House, Report of Operations of the Postal Savings System, 1929, 71 Cong., 2 sess., 1929, H. Doc. 199, 2. While small town post offices serving agricultural counties often had high per capita postal savings deposits, less than 2 percent of the numerous fourth-class offices located in the very smallest communities were designated as depositories, which reduced the service’s rural patronage. The practice of not extending postal savings to the smallest offices was adopted as an economizing measure in 1914, before the fledgling service became self-supporting. See Sham, “Origin and Development,” 278; Post Office Department, Annual Report of the Postal Savings System, 1914 (Washington, DC, 1914), 3. 42 John A. Kelly, “Logan Coal Operators,” Coal Review 3, no. 22 (1921): 15. 43 UMWA, Proceedings of the 20th Annual Convention of District No. 12 (n.p., 1909), 40. On the dangers that coal miners faced at work, see Maier B. Fox, United We Stand: The United Mine Workers of America, 1890–1990 (Washington, DC, 1990), 196–211. For insight on how mine owners established a “disaster-prone” coal industry, see Anthony F. C. Wallace, St. Clair: A Nineteenth-Century Coal Town’s Experience with a Disaster-Prone Industry (New York, 1987), 249–313. 44 “Coal Miners Strike Affects Postal Savings,” Union Postal Clerk 18, no. 7 (1922): 35. On the Coal Strike of 1922, see Melvyn Dubofsky and Warren R. Van Tine, John L. Lewis: A Biography (New York, 1977), 81–91. 45 On socialist coal miners, see John H. M. Laslett, “Swan Song or New Social Movement? Socialism and Illinois District 12, United Mine Workers of America, 1919–1926,” in Socialism in the Heartland: The Midwestern Experience, 1900–1925, ed. Donald T. Critchlow (Notre Dame, IN, 1986). 46 On the preponderance of savings banks in New England, see Weldon Welfling, Mutual Savings Banks: The Evolution of a Financial Intermediary (Cleveland, 1968), 39–42. 47 House, Report of Operations of the Postal Savings System, 1930, 71st Congress, third session, 1930, H. Doc. 542. 48 Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Banking and Monetary Statistics (Washington, DC, 1943), 283. 49 American Flint 22, no. 5 (1931): 43. 50 Gary Richardson, “Categories and Causes of Bank Distress During the Great Depression, 1929–1933: The Illiquidity Versus Insolvency Debate Revisited,” Explorations in Economic History 44 (2007): 588–607. 51 Nicholas B. Wainwright, History of the Philadelphia National Bank: A Century and a Half of Philadelphia Banking, 1803–1953 (Philadelphia, 1953), 209. For studies that reveal the role of banker criminality in the era’s bank suspensions, see Raymond B. Vickers, Panic in the Loop: Chicago’s Banking Crisis of 1932 (Lanham, MD, 2011); Timothy Messer-Kruse, Banksters, Bosses, and Smart Money: A Social History of the Great Toledo Bank Crash of 1931 (Columbus, OH, 2004). 52 “Postal Savings Mount,” Milwaukee Journal, July 20, 1932, II-6. 53 “No Bank Here,” Wall Street Journal, January 7, 1931, 19; “Depends on Postal Savings,” Wall Street Journal, January 19, 1931, 6. 54 Post Office Department, Postal Laws and Regulations, 1932 (Washington, DC, 1932), 572–83. 55 D. Emstadt, “Postal Savings Facilities,” New York Times, March 28, 1933, 18. 56 Dorsey Bland, “Postoffice Delays,” New York Times, September 18, 1936, 22. 57 House Committee on Post Office and Post Roads, Postal Savings System, 68th Congress, first session, (Washington, DC, 1924), 8. 58 Thomas G. Morgansen, “Postal Savings System,” Evening Star (Washington, DC), July 26, 1965, A-8. 59 Malcolm Johnston Brown and John N. Webb, Seven Stranded Coal Towns: A Study of an American Depressed Area (Washington, DC, 1941), 132. 60 H. W. Lamm, “Suggested Remedy,” News and Observer (Raleigh), March 11, 1933, 4. 61 Board of Governors, Banking and Monetary Statistics, 17, 519. 62 House, Report of Operations of the Postal Savings System, 1933, 73 Cong., 2 sess., 1934, H. Doc. 132. 63 In the 1890s, postal savings presented a potential lending mechanism for Populists who wanted the national government to provide farmers with credit. See Charles McArthur Destler, American Radicalism, 1865–1901 (New London, CT, 1946), 186. 64 U.S. Department of Agriculture, Report of the Secretary of Agriculture, 1912 (Washington, DC, 1912), 26. 65 William I. Myers, Cooperative Farm Mortgage Credit, 1916–1936 (Washington, DC, 1936), 4. 66 Carl W. Thompson, Costs and Sources of Farm-Mortgage Loans in the United States, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Bulletin No. 384 (1916), 2. 67 Federal Home Loan Bank System, The Federal Home Loan Bank System, 1932–1952 (Washington, DC, 1952), 2–3; Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York, 1985), 196–97; Jonathan D. Rose, “The Incredible HOLC? Mortgage Relief during the Great Depression,” Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking 43 (2011): 1080. 68 James D. Rose, Duquesne and the Rise of Steel Unionism (Urbana, IL, 2001), 66. 69 C. O. Drayton, “Real Competition,” Colman’s Rural World 66, no. 4 (1913): 14. 70 Washington State Grange, Proceedings of the 25th Annual Session (Olympia, 1913), 125. 71 American Federation of Labor, Report of the 33rd Annual Convention (Washington, DC, 1913), 384. 72 New York State Grange, Journal of Proceedings, 43rd Annual Session (Syracuse, 1916), 109; Farmers National Congress, Proceedings of the 34th Annual Session (n.p., 1914), 167. 73 “Limits on Postal Savings,” Morning Oregonian, May 6, 1914, 10; “Would Increase Postal Savings,” Duluth News Tribune, September 10, 1915, 5. 74 Adrian N. Anderson, “Albert Sidney Burleson: A Southern Politician in the Progressive Era” (PhD diss., Texas Technological College, 1967), 171–72. 75 Statutes at Large 40 (1918): 754; American Bankers Association, Proceedings of the 40th Annual Convention (New York, 1914), 444–47. 76 Post Office Department, Annual Report of the Postmaster General, 1920 (Washington, DC, 1921), 111. 77 National Grange, Journal of Proceedings of the National Grange, 54th Annual Session (Springfield, MA, 1920), 168; National Grange, Journal of Proceedings of the National Grange, 55th Annual Session (Springfield, MA, 1921), 153; American Federation of Labor, Report of Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Convention (Washington, DC, 1922), 325. 78 Congressional Record, August 20, 1921: 5301, November 22, 1921: 8154; House, Amendment of Law Relating to Postal Savings System, 67th Congress, first session, 1921, H. Rept. 489. Neither Steenerson’s nor similar legislation introduced in subsequent congressional sessions was enacted. 79 American Federation of Labor, Report of Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Convention, 354. 80 Porter and Johnson, National Party Platforms, 333. 81 Congressional Record, December 12, 1929: 574. 82 “People Must Run Things to End Graft Says Mayor Hoan,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, October 7, 1932, 8. 83 Congressional Record, January 11, 1932: 1754. 84 Subcommittee of House Committee on Appropriations, Post Office Appropriation Bill, 1933, 72nd Congress, first session (Washington, DC, 1932), 96. 85 “Postal Saving Limit Increase Is Fought,” Washington Post, January 26, 1932, 2. 86 “Higher Limit Refused For Postal Savings,” Union Postal Clerk 28, no. 3 (1932): 16. 87 “Bank Failure Epidemic and Postal Saving Discussed,” Federation News 26, no. 15 (1931): 10. 88 Washington State Federation of Labor, Proceedings of the 31st Annual Convention (n.p., 1932), 18. 89 Congressional Record, February 23, 1932: 4489. 90 John C. Johnston to Robert F. Wagner, June 6, 1932, Walter A. Koske to Robert F. Wagner, June 3, 1932, Box LE 210, Robert F. Wagner Papers, Special Collections, Georgetown University, Washington, DC; Montana State Federation of Labor, Official Year Book, 1932 (n.p., 1932), 6; Oregon Labor Press 30, no. 23 (1932): 4. 91 U.S. Department of Agriculture, Major Statistical Series of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, vol. 6, Agriculture Handbook No. 118 (1957), 11; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970, 2 vols. (Washington, DC, 1975), 2: 651. 92 J. E. Wilferth, “Money Scarce,” Progressive 2, no. 48 (1931): 2. 93 W. F. Warren, “Home Loan Banks,” Chicago Daily News, June 7, 1932, 14. On the credit market’s breakdown, see Ben S. Bernanke, “Nonmonetary Effects of the Financial Crisis in the Propagation of the Great Depression,” American Economic Review 73 (1983): 257–76. 94 G. A. McJunkin, “Government Banks,” Progressive 3, no. 64 (1933): 2. 95 C. M. D., “Holds Uncle Sam Should Go Into the Banking Business,” Labor 13, no. 31 (1932): 4. 96 “Postal Savings Stir Up New Protest Against Government Competition,” Commercial West 62, no. 21 (1931): 12. 97 On President Hoover’s financial program, see Susan Estabrook Kennedy, The Banking Crisis of 1933 (Lexington, 1973), 22–45; Lester V. Chandler, America’s Greatest Depression, 1929–1941 (New York, 1970), 87–90; Gerald D. Nash, “Herbert Hoover and the Origins of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 46 (1959): 455–68. 98 On Carter Glass’s banking legislation, see Sue C. Patrick, Reform of the Federal Reserve System in the Early 1930s: The Politics of Money and Banking (New York, 1993), 90–96. For insight on Glass’s economic opinions, see A. Cash Koeniger, “‘Unreconstructed Rebel’: The Political Thought and Senate Career of Carter Glass, 1929–1936” (PhD diss., Vanderbilt University, 1980), 236–42; Allan A. Michie and Frank W. Ryhlick, Dixie Demagogues (New York, 1939), 179–80. 99 Carter Glass to W. W. Gasser, December 15, 1932, Box 296, Carter Glass Papers, Special Collections, University of Virginia, Charlottesville. 100 Franklin D. Roosevelt, The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, ed. Samuel I. Rosenman, 13 vols. (New York, 1938–1950), 2: 24–26. For an overview of the 1933 banking crisis, see Charles C. Colt and Nathaniel S. Keith, 28 Days: A History of the Banking Crisis (New York, 1933). 101 “Why Save the Wreckage,” Farm Holiday News 1, no. 3 (1933): 2. On the Farmers Holiday Association, see John L. Shover, Cornbelt Rebellion: The Farmers’ Holiday Association (Urbana, IL, 1965). 102 Robert M. La Follette, Jr., and Edward P. Costigan to Franklin D. Roosevelt, March 8, 1933, Box 11, Series C, La Follette Family Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC; John Dewey to Franklin D. Roosevelt, March 8, 1933, Reel 11, Howard Y. Williams Papers, Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul. On the League, see Eugene M. Tobin, Organize or Perish: America’s Independent Progressives, 1913–1933 (Westport, CT, 1986), 203–44. Immediately following the bank holiday, Socialist Party of America leader Norman Thomas presented a government banking plan to President Roosevelt that utilized postal savings. See “Offer Roosevelt Socialist Program,” New York Times, March 15, 1933, 36; Norman Thomas, “A Socialist Program for Banking,” Nation 136, no. 3533 (1933): 309. 103 The bank holiday provided Roosevelt with an opening to escape the straitjacket of the gold standard. See Eric Rauchway, The Money Makers: How Roosevelt and Keynes Ended the Depression, Defeated Fascism, and Secured a Prosperous Peace (New York, 2015), 36–44. On the effectiveness of the administration’s expansionary monetary policy, see Christina D. Romer, “What Ended the Great Depression?,” Journal of Economic History 52 (1992): 757–84. 104 Ernest Gruening to Norman Thomas, March 9, 1933, Reel 1, Norman Thomas Papers, New York Public Library, New York City. 105 Marquis W. Childs, I Write From Washington (New York, 1942), 21. 106 Lawrence Sullivan, “Broad Powers For President Are Soon Used,” Washington Post, March 10, 1933, 1. For an account of the Roosevelt administration’s response to the banking crisis, see Frank Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt, 4 vols. (Boston, 1952–1973), 4: 214–29. On the administration’s adherence to orthodoxy, see James E. Sargent, Roosevelt and the Hundred Days: Struggle for the Early New Deal (New York, 1981), 102–3; Helen M. Burns, The American Banking Community and New Deal Banking Reforms, 1933–1935 (Westport, CT, 1974), 99; Kennedy, Banking Crisis of 1933, 168; Barton J. Bernstein, “The New Deal: The Conservative Achievements of Liberal Reform,” in Towards a New Past, ed. Barton J. Bernstein (New York, 1968), 267–68. 107 W. N. C., “Wants Uncle Sam to Become Nation’s Banker,” Labor 14, no. 33 (1933): 4. 108 E. C. Whitesitt to Wright Patman, March 24, 1933, Box 62B, Wright Patman Papers, Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library and Museum, Austin, TX. 109 W. D. Forlow, “For Big Emergency Loans,” Kansas City Star, March 9, 1933, 11. 110 M. E. Carroll, “Postal Banking Possibilities,” Christian Science Monitor, April 19, 1933, 14. 111 On low public esteem for bankers during the Great Depression, see John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash, 1929 (Boston, 1955), 120. 112 Congressional Record, March 15, 1933: 501, May 15, 1933: 3442. 113 Norman Hapgood, “Protect the Depositor,” Nation 136, no. 3532 (1933): 283. 114 “Safety for Savings,” American Federation of Labor Weekly News Service 23, no. 1 (1933): 1. 115 “Postal Savings to Open for Checking If Law Is Adopted,” Minnesota Union Advocate 37, no. 10 (1933): 1; “Bill For Postal Savings Banks Is Gaining Support,” Progressive 3, no. 68 (1933): 2. 116 “Minimum Bank Reforms,” Journal of Electrical Workers & Operators 32, no. 4 (1933): 164. 117 Union Postal Clerk 29, no. 6 (1933): 59. 118 William A. Kielman to Robert F. Wagner, May 15, 1933, Box LE 217, Wagner Papers. 119 J. E. Woods, “The Postal Savings Menace,” Southern Banker 60, no. 5 (1933): 13. 120 Utah Bankers Association, General Bulletin, May 12, 1933, Box 218, Marriner S. Eccles Papers, Special Collections, University of Utah, Salt Lake City. 121 Frederick Steiwer to Richard Shore Smith, December 30, 1932, Box 7, Frederick Steiwer Papers, Oregon Historical Society, Portland. 122 Peter Norbeck to First National Bank, White Rock, SD, May 8, 1933, Box 1, Peter Norbeck Papers, Archives & Special Collections, University of South Dakota, Vermillion. 123 Drew Pearson and Robert S. Allen, “Washington Merry-Go-Round,” San Francisco Chronicle, December 26, 1933, 17. 124 On economic orthodoxy guiding Roosevelt’s approach to providing credit to farmers and homeowners, see James S. Olson, Saving Capitalism: The Reconstruction Finance Corporation and the New Deal, 1933–1940 (Princeton, NJ, 1988), 84, 91–96; Sargent, Roosevelt and the Hundred Days, 148, 224–26. 125 House, Refinancing of Mortgage and Other Farm Indebtedness, 73rd Congress, first session, 1933, H. Doc. 14 126 Statutes at Large 48 (1933): 41–51. 127 Myers, Cooperative Farm Mortgage Credit, 16. 128 House, Executive Order Reorganizing the Agricultural Credit Agencies of the United States, 73rd Congress, first session, 1933, H. Doc. 7. 129 Statutes at Large 48 (1933): 257–73. 130 U.S. Department of Agriculture, Major Statistical Series, 6: 22. For the New Deal’s impact on agricultural credit, see Theodore Saloutos, The American Farmer and the New Deal (Ames, IA, 1982), 269. 131 J. F. Nelson to George Norris, March 4, 1933, Box 174, George W. Norris Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC. 132 House, Protect Small Home Owners From Foreclosure, 73rd Congress, first session, 1933, H. Doc. 19, 1. 133 Statutes at Large 48 (1933): 128–32. 134 Federal Home Loan Bank Board, Sixth Annual Report (Washington, DC, 1938), 69. 135 Thomas B. Marvell, The Federal Home Loan Bank Board (New York, 1969), 24; Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, 196–97. For the HOLC’s impact on housing and the economy during the 1930s, see Price V. Fishback, Jonathan D. Rose, and Kenneth A. Snowden, Well Worth Saving: How the New Deal Safeguarded Home Ownership (Chicago, 2013), 7-8. 136 Statutes at Large 48 (1934): 1246–65. 137 Paul L. Simon, “Frank Walker, New Dealer” (PhD diss., University of Notre Dame, 1965), 180–89. 138 Marriner S. Eccles, Beckoning Frontiers: Public and Personal Recollections (New York, 1951), 149; Sidney Hyman, Marriner S. Eccles: Private Entrepreneur and Public Servant (Stanford, CA, 1976), 141–46. 139 Gail Radford, Modern Housing for America: Policy Struggle in the New Deal Era (Chicago, 1996), 179–80. 140 Kenneth T. Jackson, “Federal Subsidy and the Suburban Dream: The First Quarter-Century of Government Interventions in the Housing Market,” Records of the Columbia Historical Society 50 (1980): 426–28. 141 Christopher W. Shaw, “‘The Man in the Street Is For It’: The Road to the FDIC,” Journal of Policy History 27 (2015): 36–60; Paul W. Glad, The Trumpet Soundeth: William Jennings Bryan and His Democracy, 1896–1912 (Lincoln, NE, 1960), 92-93; Edgar A. Hornig, “Campaign Issues in the Presidential Election of 1908,” Indiana Magazine of History 54 (1958): 243–45. 142 “Postal Savings Banks,” Coast Banker 50, no. 5 (1933): 218. 143 Congressional Record, May 25, 1933: 4177–78; Statutes at Large 48 (1933): 182. This provision of the Banking Act of 1933 proved irrelevant to postal savings depositors because interest already was paid quarterly, and the Post Office Department responded to the new statute by recharacterizing all deposits as automatically renewing three-month time deposits. See Post Office Department, United States Official Postal Guide, 1932 (Washington, DC, 1932), 109; Postal Bulletin 54, no. 16208 (1933): 1; Postal Bulletin 54, no. 16218 (1933): 1. 144 Trust Companies 57, no. 3 (1933): 316. As a former bank officer, J. F. T. O’Connor was addressing his recent colleagues. See Alice Jane Johnson, “The Public Career of J. F. T. O’Connor” (Master’s thesis, University of North Dakota, 1956), 101. 145 Ferdinand Lundberg, “Bankers Split Over Effects Of ‘New Deal,’” New York Herald Tribune, September 10, 1933, II-1. 146 Walter R. Bimson, “How the New Deal Will Affect Future of Banking,” Coast Banker 51, no. 5 (1933): 230. 147 “A Moot Question,” Commercial West 66, no. 6 (1933): 6. 148 “Something We Can Do Without,” Commercial West 67, no. 4 (1934): 6. 149 On A. P. Giannini’s support of Roosevelt in 1932, see Felice A. Bonadio, A. P. Giannini: Banker of America (Berkeley, 1994), 207–10; Matthew Josephson, The Money Lords: The Great Finance Capitalists, 1925–1950 (New York, 1972), 145-146. On Giannini’s friendship with O’Connor, see Gerald D. Nash, A. P. Giannini and the Bank of America (Norman, OK, 1992), 112–13. 150 W. A. Lyon, “A. P. Giannini Praises Bank Deposit Plan,” New York Herald Tribune, September 16, 1933, 17. On Giannini’s branch banking ambitions, see Marquis James and Bessie Rowland James, Biography of a Bank: The Story of Bank of America N.T. & S. A. (New York, 1954), 268–92; Frederick Lewis Allen, The Lords of Creation (New York, 1935), 320–25. 151 “Postal Savings Guaranteed by the Government,” Boston Evening Transcript, October 19, 1933, 5. 152 “Postal Savings System to Stay,” Christian Science Monitor, October 24, 1933, 11. 153 James A. Farley, Jim Farley’s Story: The Roosevelt Years (New York, 1948), 40. 154 James A. Farley to Franklin D. Roosevelt, March 1, 1937, Box 13, Official File 19, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, Hyde Park, NY. 155 Edgar T. Rouzeau, “College Station!,” Afro-American (Baltimore), May 7, 1936, 12. 156 Carl Solberg, Hubert Humphrey: A Biography (New York, 1984), 53. 157 Era Bell Thompson, American Daughter (Chicago, 1946), 263. 158 George L. Miller to Elmer Thomas, March 12, 1937, Box 30, Elmer Thomas Papers, Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center, University of Oklahoma, Norman. 159 R. L., “Cheaper to Risk Theft Than To Put Money Back,” Labor 15, no. 44 (1934): 4. 160 J. L. Crossley to George Norris, January 15, 1936, Box 55, Norris Papers. 161 Wisconsin State Federation of Labor, Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Convention (Milwaukee, 1934), 93. 162 American Federation of Teachers, Report of the Proceedings of the 18th Annual Convention (Chicago, 1935), 128. 163 Donald Sham to John L. Lewis, November 14, 1936, Box 78, Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America Records, Center for Labor-Management Documentation & Archives, Cornell University, Ithaca. 164 Chicago Banker 78, no. 26 (1934): 3. 165 Southern Banker 62, no. 6 (1934): 10; “Limitation Advocated On Annual FDIC Assessment,” Wall Street Journal, January 22, 1935, 1; Trust Companies 61, no. 5 (1935): 513. 166 R. S. Hecht, “Through the Bankers’ Eyes,” California Banker 16, no. 11 (1935): 461; American Bankers Association, The Postal Savings System of the United States (New York, 1937). 167 Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, Proceedings of the 14th Annual Meeting of Stockholders (n.p., 1936), 20. 168 H. E. Fox to George Norris, December 5, 1935, Box 55, Norris Papers. 169 Oklahoma State Federation of Labor, Official Proceedings of the 30th Annual Convention (n.p., 1934), 36. 170 “Building Grange Programs,” National Grange Monthly 31, no. 12 (1934): 2. 171 National Grange, Journal of Proceedings, 69th Annual Session (Springfield, MA, 1935), 169. 172 M. B., “Indiana Solon Would Hamstring Postal Savings,” Labor 17, no. 15 (1935): 4. 173 Lyle H. Boren to C. P. Ellis, April 15, 1937, Box 6, Lyle H. Boren Papers, Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center, University of Oklahoma, Norman. 174 House, Operations of the Postal Savings System, 1945, 79th Congress, second session, 1946, H. Doc. 393, 6–7. 175 On World War II fiscal policy, see J. R. Vernon, “World War II Fiscal Policies and the End of the Great Depression,” Journal of Economic History 54 (1994): 850–68. On wartime saving, see Garon, Beyond Our Means, 204–10. 176 House, Operations of the Postal Savings System, 1945, 6–7. 177 Donald B. Schewe, “A History of the Postal Savings System in America, 1910–1970” (PhD diss., Ohio State University, 1971), 163–67. 178 R. L. Pope, “Repeal of Postal Savings,” Bankers’ Magazine 138, no. 6 (1939): 538. 179 Congressional Record, June 10, 1952: 6893, January 23, 1953: 513, April 1, 1955: 4184, February 26, 1957: 2574, February 3, 1965: 1895. Wallace Bennett had served as president of the National Association of Manufacturers. On his congressional activities, see Marcia Abramson, Wallace F. Bennett: Republican Senator from Utah (Washington, DC, 1972). 180 Senate Committee on Post Office and Civil Service, S. 573, 83rd Congress, first session, 1953, 18. 181 J. B. Stenhouse to Wallace F. Bennett, May 15, 1952, Box 623, Subseries A, Series 2, Wallace F. Bennett Papers, Special Collections, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT. 182 Wallace F. Bennett to George S. Eccles, June 9, 1953, Box 623, Subseries A, Series 2, Bennett Papers. 183 “Dump This Antiquity,” Deseret News, February 9, 1965, A-12; Guthrie Baker, “Postal Savings in ’62: A 2% Relic of 1911,” New York Herald Tribune, February 11, 1962, D4; George E. Sokolsky, “Government’s Agencies Need Complete Overhaul,” Milwaukee Sentinel, February 16, 1960, I-8; Adam J. Zaun, “The Postal Savings System,” in Present Day Banking, 1954, ed. William R. Kuhns (New York, 1954), 494–95. 184 E. Graeme O’Geran to Dwight D. Eisenhower, February 5, 1958, Box 304, White House Central Files, General File, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum, Abilene, KS. 185 American Federation of Labor, Report of Proceedings of the 74th Convention (n.p, 1955), 148. 186 National Grange, Journal of Proceedings, 91st Annual Session (Baltimore, 1957), 170; National Grange, Journal of Proceedings, 90th Annual Session (Baltimore, 1956), 152; National Grange, Journal of Proceedings, 89th Annual Session (Baltimore, 1955), 190. 187 Subcommittee No. 2, House Committee on Banking and Currency, Regulation of Bank Mergers, 86th Congress, second session (Washington, DC, 1960), 137. 188 Congressional Record, April 23, 1959: 6610. 189 George Kennedy, “Hard Work Led Summerfield to Postmaster General,” Sunday Star (Washington, DC), January 11, 1953, A-3. 190 James C. Hagerty to Robert W. Brown, February 20, 1953, Box 295, White House Central Files, General File, Eisenhower Presidential Library. 191 Arthur E. Summerfield, address to Illinois State Chamber of Commerce, October 15, 1958, Box 295, White House Central Files, General File, Eisenhower Presidential Library. 192 Arthur E. Summerfield with Charles Hurd, U.S. Mail: The Story of the United States Postal Service (New York, 1960), 171. 193 Subcommittee on Intergovernmental Relations, House Committee on Government Operations, Investigation Into Federal Agency Competition with Legitimate Industry, 83rd Congress, second session, 1954, 160. 194 Arthur E. Summerfield, address to Advertising Federation of America, June 15, 1953, Box 295, White House Central Files, General File, Eisenhower Presidential Library. 195 William M. Blair, “U.S. Seeks an End to Postal Saving,” New York Times, March 1, 1957, 21. 196 Post Office Department, Annual Report of the Postmaster General, 1966–Financial Supplement (Washington, DC, 1966), 81. 197 Sham, “Origin and Development,” 325. 198 Postal Bulletin 78, no. 20031 (1957): 5; Senate Committee on Post Office and Civil Service, Discontinuance of the Postal Savings System, 89th Congress, second session (Washington, DC, 1966), 24. 199 Congressional Record, July 17, 1965: 16351. 200 Homer and Sylla, History of Interest Rates, 392. 201 Nation 199, no. 11 (1964): opposite 233. 202 Sylvia F. Porter, “A Silly Way to Save,” New York Post, September 11, 1956, 30. 203 Tracy Lucht, Sylvia Porter: America’s Original Personal Finance Columnist (Syracuse, 2013), 76–83. On postwar mass prosperity, see Robert P. Brenner, “The Political Economy of Rank-and-File Rebellion,” in Rebel Rank and File: Labor Militancy and Revolt from Below in the Long 1970s, ed. Aaron Brenner, Robert P. Brenner, and Calvin P. Winslow, Jr. (London, 2010), 37–74; Frank S. Levy and Peter Temin, “Institutions and Wages in Post-World War II America,” in Labor in the Era of Globalization, ed. Clair Brown, Barry J. Eichengreen, and Michael Reich (New York, 2010), 15–50; Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York, 2003), 112–29; Gary S. Cross, An All-Consuming Century: Why Commercialism Won in Modern America (New York, 2000), 88–109; Claudia Goldin and Robert A. Margo, “The Great Compression: The Wage Structure in the United States at Mid-Century,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 107 (1992): 1–34. 204 Homer and Sylla, History of Interest Rates, 392. 205 United Federation of Postal Clerks, Proceedings of the First Merged Convention (n.p., 1962), 140. 206 “Why Not Modernize It?,” Nation 200, no. 8 (1965): 184. 207 House, Report of Operations of the Postal Savings System, 1960, 87th Congress, first session, 1960, H. Doc. 11; House Committee on Post Office and Civil Service, Providing for the Orderly Dissolution of the Postal Savings System, 85th Congress, first session (Washington, DC, 1957), 38. On postwar economic and demographic developments in the West and the South, see Gerald D. Nash, The Federal Landscape: An Economic History of the Twentieth-Century West (Tucson, 1999); Bruce J. Schulman, From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt: Federal Policy, Economic Development, and the Transformation of the South, 1938–1980 (New York, 1991). 208 Senate Committee on Post Office and Civil Service, Discontinuance of the Postal Savings System, 29. 209 Carey McWilliams to Lyndon B. Johnson, September 21, 1964, Box PO 3, White House Central File, Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library and Museum, Austin, TX. 210 Lyndon B. Johnson to Carey McWilliams, October 3, 1964, Box PO 3, White House Central File, Johnson Presidential Library. 211 Mr. & Mrs. James Callahan to Thomas H. Kuchel, February 22, 1965, Box 514, Thomas H. Kuchel Papers, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. 212 Congressional Record, March 14, 1966: 5595. 213 Statutes at Large 80 (1966): 92–93. 214 Russell Kirk, “A Happy Adieu to Postal Savings!,” Los Angeles Times, February 18, 1965, A6. On the campaign to privatize the U.S. Postal Service, see Christopher W. Shaw, Preserving the People’s Post Office (Washington, DC, 2006). 215 Ernest Lundeen to Maurice W. Murphy, April 4, 1933, Box 62, Ernest Lundeen Papers, Library and Archives, Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, Stanford, CA. 216 On the growth of bankers’ political influence, see Sandra Suarez and Robin Kolodny, “Paving the Road to ‘Too Big to Fail’: Business Interests and the Politics of Financial Deregulation in the United States,” Politics & Society 39 (2011): 74–102; Simon H. Johnson and James Y. Kwak, 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown (New York, 2010); Joseph C. Lewis, “Monster Banks: The Political and Economic Costs of Banking and Financial Consolidation,” Multinational Monitor 26 (2005), 31–34. On the costs of financial deregulation, see Charles W. Murdock, “The Big Banks: Background, Deregulation, Financial Innovation, and ‘Too Big to Fail,’” Denver University Law Review 90 (2012): 505–58; David A. Moss, “An Ounce of Prevention: Financial Regulation, Moral Hazard, and the End of ‘Too Big to Fail,’” Harvard Magazine, Sept./Oct. 2009, 24–29; Gary A. Dymski, The Bank Merger Wave: The Economic Causes and Social Consequences of Financial Consolidation (Armonk, NY, 1999). On the 2008 financial crisis, see Alan S. Blinder, After the Music Stopped: The Financial Crisis, the Response, and the Work Ahead (New York, 2013); Joseph E. Stiglitz, Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy (New York, 2010); Dean Baker, Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy (Sausalito, CA, 2008). © The Author 2017. 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TI - “Banks of the People”: The Life and Death of the U.S. Postal Savings System
JF - Journal of Social History
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