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Great was their perturbation, long the ashes protruding from their cigars. How long could the New York banks stand the strain? One answer to that question was suggested when the bankers summoned to their presence a short, stocky athletic man of 64, Daniel Ellis Woodhull, president of American Bank Note Co. The bankers asked him to print $250,000,000 worth of scrip for the New York Clearing House to use in case they needed it.
At midnight they poured out of the Federal Reserve Bank and 16 of the biggest of them mounted into five waiting limousines, sped northward up silent lower Broadway past the slumbering warehouses of Lafayette Street, up Park Avenue, among the taxis of night-club-goers to the home of Governor Lehman who was patiently staying home for them, having given up his trip to the inauguration.
Meanwhile in Chicago a similar group had gathered in the Federal Reserve Bank: Melvin Traylor (First National). Stanley Field (Continental Illinois), Philip Clarke (City National), Solomon Smith (Northern Trust), Howard Fenton (Harris Trust), Charles G. Dawes and their fellows. Theirs were similar problems: $350,000,000 had been drawn from the Chicago banks in two weeks, much of it by banks in neighboring territory where the banking disease was bad. Governor Henry Horner of Illinois sat with them till 5 p.m., then retired to the Congress Hotel to sleep. At 1:45 a.m. he was aroused by telephone and taxied back to the Reserve Bank on South LaSalle Street. Shortly afterward a long distance telephone call announced that Governor Lehman had declared a two-day banking moratorium in New York. Governor Horner followed suit: the two Jewish Governors had the unhappy distinction of closing the banks of the country's two largest financial centres.
But gentile Governors were not allowed to sleep. Before dawn that Saturday morning there were moratoria in Iowa. Missouri, Minnesota, with others following fast. Before 10 a.m. the closing of all the security and commodity exchanges of Chicago and New York had been announced— all except the Livestock Exchange in Chicago, for livestock is perishable, its distribution must go on. By that hour the three-block-long factory of the American Bank Note plant in The Bronx was roaring with activity, with police at the doors to keep the inquisitive away. At 1 :oo p.m. 100,000 citizens whose banks were closed saw Citizen Roosevelt transformed to President.
Ten a.m. on a bright Sunday morning and a very worried little Mr. Woodin scurried into the Treasury Building. A score of bankers rather the worse for wear after a night on the train on top of several previous nights of worry straggled up the steps—prominent bankers but the same group who were familiar in the Treasury-Department during the late Hoover regime. Of special note was George W. Davison of Central Hanover Bank who fathered the great scrip issue of 1907. Standing by from the Hoover regime were Eugene Meyer, Ogden Mills, Under-Secretary Ballantine, Assistant Secretary Jim Douglas.
After a hasty lunch, Mr. Woodin went to the first meeting of the new Cabinet, to tell his fellows what progress had been made. At 3 p.m. he emerged smiling: "I feel ten years younger than when I entered the conference and discussed the problem with the Cabinet."