In 1933, newly inaugurated President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued an executive order that all the nation’s banks would close until further notice. The national bank holiday was necessary so that people would not run to the banks to withdraw all their money and cause financially sound banks to collapse, similar to what happened to the First National Bank of Ridgeway in 1930.
According to an article in the Ridgeway Journal on March 9, 1933 titled “Business Almost as Usual in Ridgeway”, the national closing of the banks barely caused a ripple in Ridgeway. The Farmers National Bank remained open on the Saturday that people first started the run on the banks in larger cities and only closed on the Monday due to the executive order. The bank was in “sound financial condition”. Some merchants were prepared, but “not all Ridgeway merchants or others had laid in a supply of money of various denominations” and had to resort to “scurrying around to get the necessary small change to handle their daily business.”
Other businesses had to change their practices due to the bank’s closing. Armour and Swift immediately announced they would no longer buy eggs, not having storage space for them and unable to sell them to their customers in the cities. Egg prices dropped to 5 cents per dozen.
The bank holiday began on March 6 and ended on March 13 for the federal reserve banks and on March 15 for all other banks which then had to apply for a license, per an article in Wikipedia. Two thousand banks didn’t reopen, but thankfully for Ridgeway customers, the Farmer’s National Bank announced that they were “open for the usual transaction of business” in an ad in the Journal on March 16, 1933
