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OLBERMANN: James Thurber rarely wrote about politics, per se, yet - amazingly - he published
something 80 years ago next month that could have been pulled from this week's headlines.
It not only shows that the House of Representatives was pretty much the same then as it is now.
But also, that big banking was pretty much the same then as it is now. And, unbelievably,
that ship captains were pretty much the same then as they are now.
Tonight, I'm reading from "People Have More Fun Than Anybody," a collection of Thuber's
magazine pieces, and this originally appeared in the New Yorker in 1932 - the February 13th
issue, to be precise.
"Thoughts from Mr. Tierney," by James Thurber.
"Last Monday, when I was just sitting around without a constructive or helpful thought
in my head, up popped a communication from my Representative in Congress, the honorable
William L. Tierney. Like myself an old Connecticutian of a fine family. If it hadn't been for his
speech - it was a speech he sent me - I should have spent the day flipping over the pages
of a Photoplay magazine and leering at the pictures of the lady stars.
Mr. Tierney's speech, however, gave me something to think about. It also stirred up an idea
or two of my own, which maybe be of help to Mr. Tierney and to Congress and indirectly
to the millions of Americans whose happiness, the gentlemen from Connecticut points out,
is handicapped by paralysis.
Mr. Tierney's speech is the first speech I have read in a long time. Ordinarily, I pay
no attention to what goes on in Congress, until one of the representatives calls another
one a cockeyed so-and-so and the two go for each other right on the floor. That, it seems
to me, is something. Speeches, as a rule, are nothing.
Mr. Tierney's, however, has a number of interesting points. It takes only about 15 minutes to
read and he gets immediately into what he has to say without any preamble. He starts
right off: 'Mr. Chairman, I desire to make a few observations in support of the Reconstruction
Finance Co-operation Bill, now reported out of my Committee on Banking and Currency under
the new title of "A Bill to Provide Financial Facilities for Financial Institutions to Aid
in Financing Agriculture, Commerce, and Industry and for Other Purposes."'
Here was something which I saw, at a glance, it was my duty as a citizen to grasp. It gave
me the guilty realization that - for months - I have been letting finance bills go along
without even knowing that their titles had been changed. That kind of laxity is bound
to let a citizen in for trouble.
Imagine at a dinner party, saying something to the lovely lady on your right about the
Reconstruction Finance Corporation Bill, only to have her come back - after a peal of cold
and silvery laughter - with the withering question, 'Are you perhaps trying to say the
"Bill to Provide Financial Facilities for Financial Institutions To Aid in Financing
Agriculture, Commerce, and Industry and for Other Purposes"?'
You might weather such a withering, but I couldn't. For when I'm embarrassed at dinner
parties, the front of my shirt begins to rise. And when I push it down, it goes 'plop,' then
comes right up again, with the result that I have to hold it down with both hands, and
thus get nothing to eat.
The body of Mr. Tierney's speech was rather depressing for Monday reading. But, as a citizen,
I felt I ought to go ahead with it. It was mostly about the bad shape everything was
in, particularly the banks.
Mr. Tierney pointed out that the banks are under stress and peril owing to 'war conditions.'
'While not at war,' he said, 'our financial institutions are under a like pressure and
peril. In fact, we are at war.'
This reasoning, while colorful, is - it seems to me - misleading. And likely to cause people
to enlist, to kiss each other goodbye, to compose march songs and to go around bragging
that 'they won the Depression.'
I don't see that any good can come from twisting things around so that it appears that banks
have got us into war. It would have been simpler and more convincing to get up a swell simile
about banks and ships, because - after all - they both go down in much the same way,
with treasure on board, and are not heard of again. Except possibly as derelicts drifting
around a lonely sea or standing empty and forlorn at the corner of 5th Avenue and some
cross street.
Had my Representative taken this slant, he could have touched on another idea which the
bank-ship simile calls up. That is, why doesn't the president of a bank go down with his bank?
The way the skipper goes down with his ship.
Certainly, there is nothing one can think of that a bank president could do if he didn't
have a bank. He could ride a horse in Central Park for a while, but not forever. He could
sit around his club forever, of course, but that would be mortifying, with nobody to order
around but waiters. It would be much better for him simply to go down with his bank.
Of course, it would be harder, in a way, for a banker to go down with his bank than for
a captain to go down with his ship. For when a bank closes, the bank building itself is
at the disadvantage of still being where it was. In this connection, I would offer the
suggestion that - when a bank closes and all of the clerks and tellers and vice presidents
leave and the light and the heat is turned off, and the charwomen come no more to fill
the water coolers - the president just stay in the old, abandoned building alone.
This would give the city something of the fascination and mystery of the sea. It would
build up legends. And we need legends. For years, it would be rumored, say, that President
Hotchkiss Gay Zegafeld of the 31st National, who went down with his bank in 1929, was still
to be seen on moonlit nights prowling around the inside of the old building. He would become
known as 'The Prowling Dutchman,' and mothers would hush their children to sleep with tales
of his eerie flitting about in the tellers' cages.
This, however, is getting away from Mr. Tierney's speech, in which - on Page Three - he says
what seems to me another unfortunate thing. Namely, that about a billion dollars in currency
is now out of circulation and 'between the mattresses.'
A billion dollars tucked way under the bedclothes of the nation? What kind of tip is that to
give to the desperately hard-up citizens of this country?
It is one thing to spend years and years becoming a fake butler in order to get at the drawing-room
safe. Only your inveterate criminal does that. But it is another to pop into a bedroom, pull
up a mattress and get away with a roll of bills. Anybody could do that. And thousands
of people probably will.
Mark my words, Tierney. That tip of yours is going to lead to a wave of second-story
work, the sending of mysterious theater tickets to get people away from home, catcalling and
cries for help in the backyard to get people out of bed, fake fires, bedroom farces and
pernicious harlequinade generally.
One thing in Mr. Tierney's speech, toward the end, is calculated to give me hope in
case I ever want to run for Congress. I can never remember names or faces, a misfortune
which is intensified by the fact that I am always sure I have met everybody I see. Mr.
Tierney shows that weakness of memory about names is negligible in Congress, in referring
to an eminent gentlemen who testified at a Senate hearing. He says he thinks it was either
Mr. Ecker, the president of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company or a Mr. Morgan Brainard,
president of the Aetna Insurance Company in Hartford.
If that's as close as you have to come, we could be a congressmen right now. Of course,
this uncertainty of Mr. Tierney's - while comforting to a would-be congressmen - is
rather disconcerting to an earnest-minded constituent, trying to find out what conditions
really are. Maybe, for example, the billion dollars isn't under the mattress but behind
the print of the Rosa Bonheur's 'The Horse Fair' in the front hall. I mean, I can't be
ransacking the whole house."
"Thoughts from Mr. Tierney," by James Thurber.
Editor's note: nine months after that article was written in 1932, Congressman Tierney was
not re-elected.
I'm Keith Olbermann. See you tomorrow night at 6:30 Eastern for our live coverage of the
South Carolina Republican Primary. Good night and good luck.