Before President Roosevelt had assumed office in March 1933, American economy had been undergoing its worst recorded depression. Beginning from the autumn of 1929 till the date of his inauguration, the recession in business progressively worsened. To it was added the flight, from commodities and equities, to gold. The result was a double debacle; to the diminishing demands for production was superadded the further pressure from the panic to liquefy existing supplies into gold. The net effect was to bring raul estate, industries, commodities and all equities to an all-time nadir, in terms gold.
Now, as the President had shown, it was not a question only of meeting the Government's obligations of note and bond issue, but a $75,000,000,000 debt or credit structure of the nation's individual finances, which if debtors were perforce to meet, would work out to just a few cents gold to the dollar,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.