Their total of all loans and discounts including "bought paper" in all of the twelve Federal Reserve Shylockeries stood around from $2,700,000,000 to $3,000,000,000 from January to October, 1920, when the bludgeon pounded hard. Here is the bludgeon. Look at it in action.
And from May 28, 1920, to January 25, 1922—when the slaughtered were piled the highest—the twelve Federal Reserve Shylockeries hammered and battered down their bank credits in the leviathan sum of $2,005,149,000, or from $2,938,031,000 to $932,000,000! And incidentally the circulation of Federal Reserve notes contracted in the same period by the stupendous sum of $923,020,000! So that from May 28, 1920, to January 25, 1922, the Federal Reserve oligarchy—at their will or at their whim or for hidden purposes—contracted bank credits and currency by the titanic total of $2,928,169,000, almost $3,000,000,000, almost 3,000 million dollars. That was the pile driver battering your values down into the mire of loss.
Take now a look at the financial corpses so slaughtered. Here they are. Look 'em over and don't overlook the hands that killed them.
In 1921 there were 19,625 business failures as compared with 6,451 in 1919, or an increase of 13,174—more than three for one. And the liabilities reached the stupendous total of $627,401,000, an increase of $514,000,000 over 1919, more than five for one. In the so-called panic year of 1907, the high tide of business failures, liabilities were only $197,000,000, as against $627,000,000 in 1921. Why, if 1907 was a "panic year," 1921 was a pandemic year!
And here is another destruction meter, absolutely infallible—the suicides. In the first six months of 1921 there were 4,527 men suicides, as against 1,810 for the same period in 1920; 1,982 women as against 961; 214 boys as against 88 and 293 girls as against 137—7,016 suicides for the first six months of 1921 as against 2,996 for the same period of 1920. The enormous increase in men suicides—over two and one-half for one—tells its own story. They came from all classes, bankers, merchants, farmers, laborers and professional men. None know how many of this enormous increase, the largest since statistics have been kept, were driven to desperation and to death from hunger, from unemployment, from the loss of life's toil or from the failure of enterprises in which they had spent their lives. No statistics can summarize human emotions, but they can tell and they do tell of the greatest holocaust of suicides ever ravaging this land—undoubtedly due to industrial tragedies staged by the cold blooded butchery of production. This much is certain. Never before in a given time in this land has there been such a holocaust of failures, of suicides and of unemployment. Never before in this land were such sacrifices laid on the twin altars of Moloch and of Mammon. And they precisely correspond in time with the Tragedy of Drastic Deflation!
During all this time and particularly beginning with the late summer and early fall of 1920, individuals, associations, committees and organizations representing farmers, planters, cattlemen, manufacturers, bankers and merchants—in short, representatives of all industries—were entreating and beseeching Governor Harding of the Federal Reserve Board and his associates to be more mild and more lenient and more reasonable in their drastic tragedy of destruction. They might as well have besought a cyclone or entreated a tornado or prayed to an earthquake. Cold-bloodedly, relentlessly and wantonly loans were called, extensions were refused, renewals were tabooed and bank credit put on the chopping block. The very people whose toil and whose labor and whose real wealth were building the magnificent palaces wherein these Shylockeries were housed and were paying the exorbitant salaries of these money despots were being ruined by their servants! The Federal Reserve System at that very time had a loaning ability of over $2,000,000,000 more than it then used and not only wouldn't use it, but contracted its loans by $2,005,149,000 and currency by over $932,000,000. Instead of aiding production, it throttled it. And instead of aiding the producers of commodities to carry them it forced producers to market them at most ruinous losses! Instead of dropping the curtain on this Tragedy of Drastic Destruction, it ran it to its close! It staged the greatest debacle of blasted credit, number of failures, magnitude of liabilities, suicides and unemployment ever witnessed in this land. It did it deliberately, ruthlessly and as per program too.
Go back over these figures, all taken from official records—all undenied and undeniable—and ask yourself if ever before in human history the industries and credit of a successful nation and successful in the greatest War ever waged, too, were so butchered? These figures indict and convict the Federal Reserve System, as it has been maladministered, as the arch betrayer of a people's trust. It indicts and convicts them as juggling with the symbols of value to the destruction of real values. No sane man can read this record, frozen into Government statistics, and defend the oligarchs who made it. It never was "deflation." That is just a sonorous euphemism to disguise sandbaggery. It was destruction to scores of thousands and to hundreds of thousands of the real producers of real wealth. Billions of dollars of real values were annihilated, not by the trend of the markets, but by artificial "bear" markets artificially created by the throttling of credit. You can't withdraw literally billions of credit and currency—almost three billions of them—the very life-blood of commerce from industry and have it thrive any more than you can tap a man's jugular vein and have him live! That's what really happened in this Tragedy of Drastic Destruction.
And upon whom did this Tragedy bear the hardest? Upon those least able to endure its fearful pressure—the farmers. Bear in mind that farming is not only the largest industry in the U.S.A., but it is the only absolutely basic industry—the keystone upon which rests the entire industrial superstructure.
Here is what this Tragedy of Drastic Deflation did to the farmer as measured for the years of 1919, 1920 and 1921.