Edwin Percy Chase

“ The man who contracted debts does not want to pay them just now, because in most instances he cannot pay them. In every way we have met the crisis which was thrust upon us as though we had nothing to do with producing it. As a matter of fact, we had all to do with producing it. In the proportion that the individual citizen went "haywire" with extravagance and reckless spending, governmental units went on with the same kind of an orgy and whooped our taxes 100 percent in 10 years. ”

“ We insisted that all the various elements of our population should attain that standard, and we instilled into the minds of many people who could not afford it a desire for the things had by others more fortunate in life. Oodles of people who had no more business with an automobile than a wagon has with five wheels bought cars. Oodles of people learned to live beyond their means. ”

“ The only way back to solid ground and to a degree of prosperity and well-being commensurate with common sense and economic soundness will be by the application of thrift and hard work and the balancing of the budget of every individual. ”

“ A lot of other experimental schemes are being worked out by an administration of which the people demand action. We are spending huge sums of money, borrowed for the purpose, in an endeavor to squander ourselves back to prosperity. ”

“ We seem to assume that it is possible for us to get well economically by the waving of some magic wand. We think we can force prosperity, and to the majority of the people of the country prosperity means a return to the hectic days preceding the stock-market crash of 1929. ”

“ We danced and are still paying the fiddler. Like children, we have sought someone to blame for our plight and, also like children, we now seek some magic way to cure our ills and expect the Government to supply the cure. ”

“ But a large percentage of our population still believe in Santa Claus and in good fairies. The cause of the present economic condition of the country in large measure can be ascertained by every citizen by looking in the mirror. ”

“ There is no way of estimating how many hundreds of millions of money the country over went up in smoke and vanished in thin air when it suddenly dawned on us that even the most productive land in a section like ours is not worth $300 or $400 an acre. ”

“ Bond issues were pyramided by communities with the same disregard of the coming of the pay day which characterized the individual. We built great cathedrals of education, with motion pictures and swimming pools and all sorts of gewgaws and frills. We erected public buildings in many cases entirely beyond possible needs of communities for a hundred years. Just as private enterprise overbuilt in every direction, governmental building activities got out of bounds. The people have to pay the bill. ”

“ Here in Iowa, if competent statistics are to be believed, during the ultra-prosperous years of the World War period, when money flowed like water into the coffers of the farmer and the business man and everyone else, some $200,000,000 of good Iowa money for stocks, shares in half-mythical concerns which were worth exactly their value as a piece of printed paper, During that period and shortly thereafter a good many hundreds of millions from the Middle West went into the first-and second-mortgage bonds of apartment hotels and the like, security issued on appraisals inflated to the nth degree. ”

“ The saturnalia of expenditure created fixed taxes, and taxes have a2 habit of certainty in good times and bad times alike. With our incomes and our business revenues depleted, our tax bill in the main has remained the same. ”

“ This theory disregards the fact that those hectic days were created by a false and inflated philosophy. In the creating of this inflation we disregard all natural laws of economics, so it is but natural for us to expect to cure the trouble by the same process. ”

“ It can easily be recalled that during that hectic period it was considered a mark of provincialism not to buy a new automobile every year. A lot of fur coats and a lot of diamonds and a lot of expensive clothes for both men and women were indulged by all classes. ”