Sign Maine Banking IOU Now

Industry sign banking maine iou now

good afternoon and welcome back to our conversation about south carolina history when we stopped last week we were talking about south carolina and world war one and the years after the war war but particularly the 1920s which were a very hard time for south carolina with the collapse of cotton prices the bowl weevil and drought the agricultural economy of south carolina just pretty much disappeared cash was very difficult to come by credit disappeared and stores across the state posted the sign cash and carry only no credit there were bank failures everywhere now this is in 1919 and 1920 we haven't even gotten to the great depression yet in 1919 in the state there were 78 national and 387 state chartered banks many of them small local banks before president roosevelt was inaugurated in 1933 273 of those state banks had folded and 34 of the national banks in the fall of 1928 within six weeks five of the eight banks in arlington county closed and seven out of the eight of those in chesterfield county failed why some malfeasance but mainly under capitalization bad loans and crop failures if a farmer didn't produce a cotton crop and have income he couldn't repay the loan to the bank or to the country store which then couldn't repay its loan to the bank state government by 1925 was facing a deficit of about 330 million dollars in today's dollars by 1931 that deficit had ballooned to almost a billion dollars that's incredible the property tax was the main source of revenue for the state of south carolina but the general assembly created all sorts of what it called user taxes on a well bewildering array of items as one critic said they've taxed everything from bow legs to custard doors and then we come to the great depression october the 24th 1929. in south carolina that happened to be big thursday clemson and carolina in the fourth quarter clemson rallied to win 21-14 but it took a while actually several days for carolinians to realize that it was really black thirsty and the stock market crash carolinians had thought things couldn't possibly get worse and worse after the agricultural collapse of the 1920s but they were mistaken cotton prices dropped to their lowest level since 1894. the depression brought down the financial empire of john t woodside from greenville textile mills and he had built and owned the ocean forest hotel at myrtle beach woodside literally lost everything per capita income in the state went in today's dollars from about 3 800 to um less than three thousand dollars per year now that's in today's dollars imagine trying to live off of three thousand dollars per year there were more bank failures including the largest people state bank with its 44 branches collapsed this started a run on other banks the city of charleston's deposits including its payroll accounts were lost with the collapse of people's state bank there was a bank robbery in walterboro two men broke into the bank it was closed all they took from the bank they somehow cracked the safe was the amount of money that they had had in the bank and left and made no bones about what they had done no jury would indict them and they were considered folk heroes it was their money not the banks there was a move to slash the state budget which they did and some employees were paid in script the state printed a basically an iou to pay state employees school districts did the same thing in greenville and charleston and the city of columbia and of course merchants discounted those pieces of script so it might say on the value 50 but all you might be able to get is 30 when you went to the store there was no social safety net south carolina only provided financial assistance to confederate veterans confederate widows and faithful slaves by 1936 it was only one of six states in the country without old age pensions one of only 14 without assistance for the blind and only one of two states without aid for dependent children finally a referendum which was approved by ten to one margin by voters to change the constitution allowed the creation of public assistance for the blind the aged and dependent children there was unemployment and hunger in 17 of 46 counties including richland rates exceeded 30 percent now we talk about today we've got 15 or 20 depending on how to look at it it was 30 in 17 of the state's 46 counties in 1932 charities in the city of columbia furnished 700 000 meals and we're dealing with a relatively small population in some rural areas citizens were literally dying of starvation and now we come to the new deal it's often been derided by those who do not know their country's history or certainly don't know the history of south carolina folks in 1932 south carolina was pretty much a third world country without the new deal it probably would still be there today in terms of politics as early as 1928 the key state leaders in the democratic party joined the roosevelt camp governor ira blackwood u.s senator jimmy burns state senators dick jeffries edgar brown and charleston mayor bernard maybach all began to support roosevelt before he even announced for the nomination in 1930 democratic state party chair claude sapp began organizing southern roosevelt clubs local papers attacked the godless corporations and banks of wall street as the evil forces that were causing all the problems in the state they mocked the republican party in hoover president hoover kept saying prosperity's just around the corner the lexington dispatched urged the abolition of corners so that prosperity would be able to show itself a camden newspaper reported from where we're standing it's dark as the inside of a bullfrog's belly and it sounds just as dolphin in 1932 south carolina voters gave roosevelt 98 of their votes that was the widest margin of his victory in the country in congress three carolinians were in key positions interestingly remember during world war one when wilson was in president south carolinians had been in key positions particularly in the house in this case it's not just the house it's the senate in the house hampton p fulmer of orangeburg and john s mcswain were extremely powerful committee chairs in the u.s senate jimmy burns became known as president roosevelt's point man on important legislation and despite being junior to senator cotton ed smith he became one of the most powerful men in the senate and the federal programs the alphabet soup that people talked about the first thing passed was the federal emergency relief administration which provided food clothing and financial work relief by august 1933 25 of the population of the state of south carolina was on welfare there were problems with administration because the state had no south carolina had no state or local relief agencies in place there was nepotism there was racism and incompetence that impeded efforts and it was not a population not a popular agency but it literally saved thousands from starvation it was the only state where african american recipients outnumbered whites there was a school lunch program which provided one free meal a day for poor children for some poor children it might be the first meal or the only meal of the day in one of the memoirs taken down oral histories of young people in the depression that's in the carolina library a young man named jim said jim and me take turns at breakfast so one morning one brother would eat breakfast the other would go without as unpopular as the federal emergency relief administration was the civilian conservation corps was popular 180 degrees in terms of popularity young men between the ages of 17 and 25 were eligible eligible to participate for six months stand up to two years so you could you had to be off a little while but that enabled uh young men to have a job youth received in the money of the day 553 a month that's i mean the money of today but remember if the average family income is three thousand dollars just think what an input of over five hundred dollars is going to do to the family and most of that money was sent back home to the family it was not given to the young men of themselves they got to keep about a hundred dollars but again that's still an incredible amount of money by 1939 over 50 000 young men in south carolina have been employed in 30 work camps across the state and many of those camps became the basis for our state park system the agricultural adjustment act representative fulmer of orangeburg was chair of the house agricultural committee um he wasn't excuse me he was very much in favor of it but central cotton ed smith who chaired the senate agricultural committee only reluctantly went along smith didn't like this newfangled idea of helping the farmer the plan was to reduce production of certain crops including cotton and tobacco and farmers would receive a payment for their idle land price subsidies for cotton and tobacco were to guarantee parity the equivalent purchasing power for cotton between 1909 and 1914 and for tobacco between 1919 and 1929. farmers by 1940 was somewhat better well off but prosperity for most of them and most south carolinians was just as elusive as it had been in nineteen thirty two the national industrial recovery act excuse me administ and the national recovery administration the nra blue eagle proudly displayed in local stores everywhere saying we honor the 40-hour workweek the minimum wage in today's dollars would be 7.25 that's pretty close pretty close and child labor was prohibited the supreme court overturned the nra but maine the main provision survived the rural electrification act in the mid-1930s very little power was available to south carolinians outside of the cities and the larger towns only two percent of the state's 168 000 farmers had electricity on their farms as one man said we went to bed with the chickens and got up with chickens the rea changed that and by 1940 about 15 percent of the state's farms had electricity the wpa and the pwa works progress administration and the public's works administration transformed the built landscape of south carolina local workers built roads bridges schools water systems housing projects courthouses greenville got a new airport a new high school and a post office the university of south carolina got mckissick museum and dormitories charleston's decrepit planters hotel became the dock street theater in fact by 1937 there were more than 25 wpa projects in and around the charleston area including an airport and for again buildings for the medical university of south carolina the south carolina writers project of the wpa produced the wpa guide to the palmetto state and the history of spartanburg the wpa's historical project and historical records survey inventoried public records and folks i can tell you as a young graduate student had it not been for these records i couldn't have done much about south carolina history and by the time i was looking at some old church records and old wills on wpa type scripts the originals had disappeared so literally they helped save the historical records of our state they also conducted oral histories of hundreds of carolinians black and white and then as i mentioned they transcribed and copied historical records church registers wills and deeds over a hundred and fifty thousand pages of those records are stored today in the carolina library at the university of south carolina the largest new deal project in the state was santee cooper in 1934 the general assembly created the south carolina public service authority with the power to produce and sell electricity and to develop inland navigation along the santee cooper and congaree rivers there they envisioned the politicians behind it that colombia would become an inland port it didn't happen they tried they tried that's why there are locks in the dams so that folks could get their votes all the way to colombia they also reclaimed swamps and reforested watersheds among the staunchest supporters were state senator jay strom thurman of bacon county dick jeffries of colon charleston mayor bernard maybank and u.s senator james f burns after intense lobbying by burns maybank and governor blackwood remember governor blackwood had been one of the first governors from the south to promote fdr the president okayed the project in 1935. legal challenges came from power companies which delayed the work until 1939 then in less than three years 171 000 acres of land were cleared 200 million feet of wood cut timber cut 42 million cubic yards of earth excavated and 3.1 million tons of concrete poured it was an incredible engineering feat that created lakes marion and moultrie it stopped flooding along the lower santee river it eradicated malaria from inland counties you might be surprised to know that in 1939 the county that had the highest incident of malaria in terms of illness and death wasn't georgetown or beaufort it was orangeburg because of the swamps which through thanks to santi cooper were drained and of course santee cooper generated electricity for charleston's war industries politics in south carolina in the 1920s and 30s was an interesting cast of characters in 1930 burns defeated cold leaves for the u.s senate and hitched his star to fdr and gave him a very mean almost meteoric rise to national prominence ellison d cotton ed smith of lee county time magazine labeled him a conscientious objector to the 20th century um he campaigned not just campaign he wore of course he wore three pieces all the time politicians did but he didn't wear a flower to pay his lapel he wore a cotton bowl and would talk to my sweetheart miss cotton and if you want to hear cottinette give a speech the university has a recording of one of his campaign speeches he had been elected to six terms in the u.s senate the last coming in 1938 despite the opposition of president roosevelt and others in attending the 1936 democratic nomination convention which of course renominated roosevelt an invocation was given by an african-american clergyman and as soon as this man this clergyman appeared behind the podium smith stalked out and boycotted the convention and he liked to tell the story on the stump and the boaters would say we're still doing stunt meetings in every county tell us the philadelphia story ed and he used some projectives and when he rose up i began to walk and he used that story to get reelected in 1938 um but it happened because president roosevelt tried to mix in with the local state election and this is irony today all of our politicians i got an indoors from somebody i got an i need an endorsement from there it was the kiss of death south carolinians used to not want outside folks to meddle in their elections and one of those people who lost to cotton ed that year was olindi johnson he eventually would get to the senate but he lost and he often said had it not been for fdr's meddling either he or s state senator edgar brown from barnville would have won olin d johnson a child of mill village and proud of it he had a spat as governor with the state highway department he actually called out the national guard had machine guns set up around the highway department over who had control over appointing highway commissioners and in south carolina terms and programs he helped push through the general assembly even though it's a legislative state basically many new deal probes many m-a-m-i-n-i not too many although some might say there were too many which helped make real new deal programs more effective and the other very interesting political figure from that time is bernie maybach who is mayor of charleston where he had a powerful political machine he also was a protege of jimmy burns in 1938 he shattered the myth that a charlestonian couldn't be elected governor it was often commented on the stump because mayor maybank had a thick charleston brogue if you could remember how fritz hollings talked that was how maybach talked he was a very energetic speaker and in the upcountry folks would say we don't know what that young man's saying but he says it was such force we believe it they couldn't understand it as charleston broke south carolinians a few were beginning to turn on the new deal even by 1936 and jimmy burns was up for re-election and his opponent former mayor of charleston thomas p stoney ade the new deal a referendum burns countered in only three years 1933-1936 south carolina had sent in today's dollars just 61 million dollars in federal taxes and from washington have received more than 3.8 billion in return he said the new deal was good a good for south carolina and 87 of the people voting agreed and voted for jimmy in 1936 roosevelt up for reelection carried south carolina 113 791 votes to 1646 for the republican candidate the victory masked the growing discontent with the new deal and washington particularly from the press the news and courier and the state newspaper both after 1936 had turned on the administration some of the opposition was based upon states rights some of it was based upon class there was great discontent particularly with both the state and the news and courier that the er er nra would bring in a minimum wage they didn't think that that was necessary but a lot of the opposition folks quite frankly was based on race northern black voters have become an important part of the new deal coalition interestingly the person that with the democratic party that recruited african-american voters for the democratic party because you got to remember since 1866 the republican party was the party of choice for black americans because of abraham lincoln but the national democratic party hired a young man named julian d rainey and julian d rainey was the son of joseph rainey a south carolina man of color who had been in congress as part of one of south carolina the first black members of of congress northern congressional uh delegates security congressmen supported anti-lynching legislation which southern congressman opposed and there was dismay at the prominence of african americans in the administration mary mcleod bethune a native of maysville was the director of negro division of the national youth administration appointments were an indication to some of equality and that rifled and then there was the loss of power in the county seat the county seated leaps as they called them the merchants bankers and lawyers who controlled small towns once they had been the only source of employment financing and credit now government agencies dispensed those they hired people the social safety net freed mill operatives tenant farmers and sharecroppers from total dependence on their old bosses disenchantment did not mean that states white's voters would switch the republican party when fdr ran for a third term his percentage had dropped from 98 percent of the vote to 95 of the vote war in europe led to burns and others returning to support the president in 1939 camp jackson opened as fort jackson for training thousands of gis army air corps bases and remember it was still the army air corps there was no air force it was the army air corps open bases in lexington and sumter counties the basis for the columbia metropolitan airport was an old army air base the charleston navy yard was ordered to increase production and in 1941 launched 12 new destroyers in january 1941 senator burns guided the lynd lease act through the senate and in june of 1941 the president nominated burns to the supreme court the nomination was approved by the senate in eight minutes and i think i'll stop there and next time we'll pick up with south carolinians and world war ii