HOOSIER BANKER HERITAGE: 1930-1939 The 1930s is most famously known as the decade of the Great Depression. It hit the United States in 1929 and did not completely abate until 1939, as heartening signs of recovery were interrupted by a double-dip recession in 1937. The worst of the Great Depression was from 1932 to 1933, with more than 4,000 U.S. banks failing in 1933 alone. In response, the Emergency Banking Act of 1933 authorized President Franklin D. Roosevelt to declare a national banking holiday. A slew of other acts and agencies also grew out of the Great Depression, including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Federal Home Loan Bank Board and banks. Additionally the decade saw the founding of the Independent Community Bankers of America, the 1916 - 2016 YEARS creation of credit unions and the passage of The Banking Act of 1935. This sweeping act established the FDIC as a permanent government agency, strengthened the Federal Reserve System and reformed the Federal Open Market Committee. Despite the tumultuous nature of the 1930s, perusing the pages of Hoosier Banker from this period does not reveal a sense of panic or defeat. Instead, bankers did then what they continue to do now – they worked methodically and patiently with their customers and communities to make the future brighter. t 12 Hoosier Banker March 2016 1930 An article about Indiana’s first skyscraper, located in Fort Wayne, opened with,“As the Empire State building, now under construction in New York, will be the tallest in the world, so is the Lincoln Bank Tower, now completed, the tallest in Indiana.” Hazel Haase, chief telephone operator of Clinton, was credited for her “cool-headed use of the telephone” in the tracking and capture of a group of bandits who had robbed Citizens’s Bank, Clinton, and led a manhunt to Sidell, Illinois.The robbers were shot and killed, and their loot of $15,000 was recovered.“Miss Haase was not directly on the firing line,” the article read,“but the telephone surely had its important role to play in the stirring drama.” 1931 1932 An advertisement extols the virtues of A.B.A. Cheques,“the official travel cheque of the American Bankers Association.” The ad copy explained,“Her lost purse was never returned – but she got back the $120 which was in A.B.A. Cheques.” The winners of the 1933 “state shoot,” organized to help armed bankers compare their marksmanship, were the members of the Parke County Bankers Association.Annual shoots took place at Fort Benjamin Harrison in central Indiana. 1933
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