Some Oklahomans used to scrip and save

By Bryan Painter

Published: November 9, 2008

EDMOND — It’s not the type of anniversary that calls for re-enactments and proclamations.

This is the 75th anniversary of the issuance of scrip in some areas of Oklahoma. Recently, I came across an article in a back copy of The Chronicles of Oklahoma titled "This is Not United States Currency, Oklahoma’s Emergency Scrip Issues during the Banking Crisis of 1933.”

So I went searching for the author, Loren Gatch, a professor of political science at the University of Central Oklahoma.

Gatch had written that there were about three dozen experiments in local currency in 1933. But the most notable came during the Bank Holiday of that year.

Private employers were denied access to their bank balances during this holiday, so they worked with civic leaders and banks to come up with a legal replacement for U.S. currency that would be accepted by the public.

I asked Gatch: Do you think it worked?

Its success varied

He added that smaller amounts were successfully used in Bristow, Seminole, Cushing and some other towns.

"Stamp scrip for unemployment relief was much less successful,” Gatch said.

"People didn’t like to use it, in part because it was inconvenient. Stamps had to be placed on the back of each scrip note every time it was used.”

In bigger cities, scrip was a way to provide people with access to some of their bank deposits. In Guthrie, it allowed the city to pay its employees when accounts were frozen, Gatch said.

True, we’re in an economic crisis again. But we’re talking about 75 years.

"Our financial system is much more sophisticated now than it was then, but that isn’t always a good thing,” Gatch said.

"The problem now is that we don’t know where all the bad assets, and the risks, are hiding in a global financial system. On the other hand, policymakers are much more vigorous in their response to our current problems than they were in the 1930s.”

Certainly, the 1933 issuance of scrip was not the first experiment with money in the nation’s history. So 75 years down the road, does this professor think we could see scrip again someday? Not really.

"I would think that is unlikely that scrip would be issued in the United States in the present day,” Gatch said. "We make far greater use of electronic funds transfers than we do paper money.”

Policymakers are much more vigorous in their response to our current problems than they were in the 1930s.”

Loren Gatch
University of Central Oklahoma political science professor

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