sihhi
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered
Searching via Hemphill's full name sees him as a retired manager from the Atlanta Federal Reserve - local branch of the lender of last resort the Federal Reserve. He becomes an associate of Irving Fisher - and in 1934 writes the foreword to Fisher's 100% Money - (a manifesto for outright gold-backed currency one-dollar must equal one fraction of an agreed gold weight, no gold no banks).
It is supported by a group of University of Chicago economists who in late 1933-early 1934 attack Roosevelt's proposals for serious Keynesian reform.
Its thrust is clear: "Our government has, in a significant sense, allowed the commercial banks to usurp its primary function of controlling the currency. Bank credit has become the predominant element in our circulating medium. Until the Civil War we tried 'free banking' with respect to note issue; at present we are still trying 'free banking' with respect to deposit currency. The latter system, like the former, gives us an unreliable and unhomogeneous medium; and it gives us a regulation or manipulation of currency which is totally perverse. Money is created when it should be destroyed, and destroyed when it should be created. Our much heralded achievements in control (witness the Federal Reserve System), being designed to yield greater "elasticity" of credit, have served only to aggravate the underlying difficulty."
ie credit should be restricted - that's what all this talk of usury amounts to - stop credit but carry on capitalism, its language is for "the outright abolition of deposit banking on the fractional-reserve principle."
FIsher's position is anti-Federal Reserve and anti-nationalisation of all banking (a standard demand of the CPUSA and its slowly but steadily growing "front" organisations). Fisher says "There is much talk today of nationalizing our entire banking system. I believe this would be a mistake. All I would do is to take over the monetary work of banks, leaving real banking to bankers. This is the true American way. Banking, ie money lending, should be left to individual enterprise just as much as railroading or insurance or farming or the grocery business. But banking should not include the manufacture of money"
Hemphill and Fisher are part of the "respectable" intellectual opposition to Roosevelt, likewise the business community and army is making plans in secret in case the trade unionisation drives become too serious.
At the same time as all this we have an essentially religious Christian - (Protestant and Catholics unite) - social movement - Father Coughlin's Social Justice on the back of his radio broadcasts - supportive of Huey Long popularising him well beyond Louisiana. As it grows it comes into conflict with the Catholic church (a basically conservative body) - its only recourse is to focus on non-Christian enemies. By 1936, Coughlin is wholly against Roosevelt who is a "great betrayer and liar ... who promised to drive the money changers from the temple, but has succeeded only in driving the farmers from their homesteads and the citizens from their homes in the cities."
It urges the Dixiecrats "to purge the man who claims to be a Democrat, from the Democratic party, and I mean Franklin Double-crossing Roosevelt." It also begins using open antisemitism in the face of the threat of "foreign entanglements" from about 1937 onwards.
Hemphill - a supporter of Fisher and member of the “Healthy Currency” movement as it's called - has no objection to writing for Social Justice in spite of its other antisemitic articles. 'I just do Environment News for the UKIP e-newsletter' - a tenable position?
This is the kind of stuff Hemphill is producing in a 9 May 1938 issue of Social Justice - 'Britain is doing well because it doesn't have the Federal Reserve':
It's generic US right-wing populism - empty on its own terms, but able to create buzz. Even in its antisemitic phase over the years 1937-1940, after the failure of the 1936 populist candidate (when it was higher), Social Justice was able to command over a million subscribers - it wasn't empty fluff - the antisemitic resurgence in the late 1940s is explained in part by magazines like it.
