The oldest Parliament in the world sat up all one night last week—that is from 7 p.m. until 5 a.m., for at this time of year two-thirds of the 24 hours is night in Iceland.
On the carpet were called the Island Kingdom's foremost capitalists, the Directors of the Bank of Iceland. They did not come shivering, for the kindly Gulf Stream makes Reykjavik winters temperate. In fact "Iceland" is a complete misnomer for a land abounding in volcanoes and hot springs (many a farmer warms his house with hot water radiators piped directly from his spring). But though the Directors of the Bank of Iceland did not come shivering they came shamefaced.
Since 1925, when a dividend of 5% was paid, the Bank has shown no profit. Meanwhile the country at large has been hugely prosperous, swiftly progressive. Proportional to the number of her 103,000 inhabitants, that is per capita, Iceland now has the largest foreign trade of any nation whatsoever ($19,912,400 exports in 1928, and $15,008,000 imports, thus leaving a favorable trade balance of $4,904,400 which is more than frugal Iceland's na- tional debt). Moreover, neither France nor England has as many telephones per capita as Iceland. Amid such evidence of soundness and prosperity there was simply no proper reason, last week, why the Bank of Iceland should be on the brink of ruin —except mismanagement.
Vainly the Directors sought to defend their policies. They asked the "Mother of Parliaments" to tide them over with a loan of $402,000 and to guarantee their liabilities, this to stop a run which had started on the Bank. Gravely legislators whose Parliament has stood for just five months less than 1,000 years pondered the Directors' plea. It was in June 930 that the Parliament, or Althing, was founded. In June 1930 two complete steamerloads of Icelandic-Americans will sail from Manhattan for Reykjavik, bearing a $50,000 goodwill statue of Leif Ericson, gift of the baby Congress at Washington, still in its teething* stage at the age of 131.
After ten consecutive hours of deliberation and debate, the Althing at 5 a.m. dealt harshly with the Bank of Iceland. Ordered was a searching investigation which Icelandic economists are certain will prove that the Bank is bankrupt. In this case, by decree of the angry Althing, it will be liquidated and its business probably transferred to the prosperous Farm Bank of Reykjavik.
Most prosperous of all Iceland institutions is the Icelandic Association for the Promotion of the Fishing Trade—one of the few instances of a successful national monopoly. Through this association all Icelandic fishermen present a united front to European buyers of cod and herring. Experience has shown that by this method they can demand and get higher prices than ever before. Jealously guarded are Iceland's lucrative fisheries. Day and night they are patrolled by the country's two icebreakers, the Thor and the Odin. Trespassing trawlers are hauled before a civil court, and up to the present time fines imposed on such fish poachers have sufficed to pay the expenses of the patrol.