In today’s peek at the local news of 79 years ago, the St. Paul post office could collapse within 30 days — physically, that is; President Hoover backs a tariff law that critics call a monstrosity for the benefit of big corporations; the stock market has grown to a point that would have been unimaginable 15 years earlier; wheat farmers are getting their worst fleecing in a generation; and New York financial brokers get what they deserve for making a courier boy carry more than half a million dollars through the streets.

From the Minneapolis Morning Tribune, Sept. 25, 1929:

Hoover Asks Flexible Tariff

President Hoover today threw himself squarely in to the senate dispute over the retention of the flexible principle in the Hawley-Smoot tariff bill, which Democratic leaders hope to eliminate by the aid of votes of some of the Republican independents.

Speaker Says Tariff Bill Is Monstrosity

Northfield, Minn., Sept. 24 — The tariff bill, as it stands today in the senate, is a monstrosity for which the Republican party cannot afford to take responsibility, Governor Clyde M. Reed of Kansas asserted here tonight …

Free Trade Not Issue in Tariff, Simmons Says

… A reasonable tariff, based upon scientific rules, yes; but — “Tariffs are not levied for the purpose of creating billionaires or millionaires. No man or corporation has a right to ask the government to guarantee or safeguard through the tariff an unreasonable profit. Neither are excessive and unreasonable profits conducive to the public welfare … ” [comment by Sen. Furnifold M. Simmons of North Carolina]

Everybody’s Business

[N]early $5,000,000,000 of market value are represented in stock securities now. Fifteen years ago it could scarcely have been thought of. No industry is important or big enough to stand still and let the procession pass.

Terms St. Paul Postal Station Near Collapse

Testimony by the city building inspector that the St. Paul commercial post office building, for which the government is paying $10,000 a month rent under a non-cancellable lease, “may collapse in 30 days,” and by a private engineer that it is “worthless and dangerous to the employes [sic],” enlivened a hearing Tuesday before the federal appraisal commission …

Senators Pile Criticisms on Farm Board

… “In the meantime,” said Senator Wheeler, “wheat farmers of the northwest are suffering the loss of thousands of dollars and nothing is being done about it.” Senator Frazier of North Dakota added: “You say you have done everything you can, yet the hard spring wheat farmer is being fleeced worse than he has been in the past 35 years …”

International Bank Is Seen as Stabilizer

[T]he founding of the international bank simply creates another piece of banking machinery with worldwide scope, but its sphere of influence is limited … Instead of being a superbank as its critics object, it will be a servant bank. Controlled entirely by the world’s central bankers, it will conform necessarily to the wishes of the central banks …

Sending a Boy to Mill

In the wise lore of downeast Yankeedom there is a saying: “Don’t send a boy to mill.” New York financial brokers, it appears, have been doing just this for some time, when they employed a messenger 18 years of age to transport heavy sums in money and securities. One result was the theft of $512,000. The boy is the goat for a neatly arranged theft audaciously executed. … It is unfair to any boy to make him responsible for more than a half million dollars in money on a city street. …

 

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