Petition from Baltimore City to Senator Millard Tydings Opposing Stock Exchange Regulation
3/29/1934
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Maryland petitioners of stock exchange regulation wrote to their senator to condemn the Securities Exchange Bill as "vicious legislation." They expressed their disapproval of this bill in particular, but they also voiced a philosophical disagreement with New Deal governance as a whole. Believing that government should not meddle in people's individual pursuits, they called the legislation "destructive to elemental human liberties - even the liberty to lose one's money in one's own way." The petitioners believed that the Roosevelt administration's support of the bill intended "to curb speculation and market manipulation" was hypocritical. Probably referring to Roosevelt's 1933 executive order to take the United States off the gold standard, the petitioners accused the administration of having a policy of "gigantic speculation" and of "deliberately rigging the market for commodities and gold."
Text adapted from “Letter to the Senate Banking Committee about Wall Street Reform Legislation during the New Deal” in the October 2009 National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) publication Social Education.
This primary source comes from the Records of the U.S. Senate.
National Archives Identifier:
5557817Full Citation: Petition from Baltimore City to Senator Millard Tydings Opposing Stock Exchange Regulation; 3/29/1934; (SEN 73A-J8); Committee Papers, 1913 - 2011; Records of the U.S. Senate, Record Group 46; National Archives Building, Washington, DC. [Online Version, https://docsteach.org/documents/document/petition-from-baltimore-city-to-senator-millard-tydings-opposing-stock-exchange-regulation, December 6, 2024]