9 The Plot to Seize the White House


4


Butler detected an odor of intrigue.  Some kind of outlandish scheme, he was
convinced, was afoot.  Knowing little about the gold standard, why
Roosevelt had taken the country off it or who stood to gain by its restoration
and why, he began thumbing through the financial pages of newspapers and
magazines-sections of the press he had never had any occasion to read.
 The first important fact he learned was that the government no longer
had to back up every paper dollar with a dollar’s worth of gold.  This meant
that the Roosevelt Administration could increase the supply of paper money
to keeps its pledge of making jobs for the unemployed, and give loans to
farmers and homeowners whose property was threatened by foreclosure.
Banks would then be paid back in cheapened paper dollars for the goldbacked
dollars they had lent.


Conservative financiers were horrified.  They viewed a currency not
solidly backed by gold as inflationary, undermining both private and
business fortunes and leading to national bankruptcy.  Roosevelt was
damned as a socialist or Communist out to destroy private enterprise by
sapping the gold backing of wealth in order to subsidize the poor.
 Butler began to understand that some wealthy Americans might be
eager to use the American Legion as an instrument to pressure the Roosevelt
Administration into restoring the gold standard.  But who was behind
MacGuire?
 A short while after MacGuire’s second visit, he returned to see Butler
again, this time alone.  MacGuire asked how he was coming along in
rounding up veterans to take with him to the convention.  Butler replied
evasively that he had been too busy to do anything about it.  He then made it
clear that he could no further interest in the plan unless MacGuire was
willing to