to Texas from Washington, D.C., where he had been negotiating, local greeters mobbed the train depots in Marshall, Texas and Conroe, with a few brandishing "Jesse Jones for President" signs. At Union Station, 50,000 Houstonians staged a homecoming for Jones, replete with marching bands, bunting, and banners. They staged a parade from Union Station to the Jones home at the Lamar Hotel. This hero's welcome preceded the decision by the Democratic Convention to select a site, though Walter Lippman and the New York Evening Post predicted that Houston would be chosen. Reconstruction Finance Corporation After President Hoover signed the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) bill in 1932, the Republican chose Jones as one of the three to serve on its first board of directors, and managed Defense Plant Corporation. When Hoover sought advice from ranking Democrats about candidates for the board, Jones was the sole recommendation of House Speaker John Nance Garner. The Hoover RFC was an ambitious program. Upon opening, the RFC had 300 staff positions available. Soon it conveyed hundreds of millions in loans, including $300 million () to the railroads, $90 million to prop up the Chicago bank of Charles Dawes, and $65 million to Bank of America. However, Hoover sold the RFC as a program to assist smaller institutions. Bank of America retired its loan with the RFC, paying interest and principal within two years. Other loans were not successful. Jones opposed a loan to the Missouri Pacific, concerned that the taxpayers would be stuck with their bill. Without Jones's support, the RFC board approved $23 million for the railroad, but it did not prevent the company from failing the next year. In 1933, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt made him the Chairman of the RFC, while also expanding the RFC's powers to make loans and bail out banks. This led some to refer to Jones as "the fourth branch of government." The next year, Congress issued an additional $850 in loans, after which President Roosevelt intimated to Jones that he would have the authority to invest the new appropriations and reinvest revenue from loan repayments. Jones criticized Hoover's execution of the RFC as too little and too late. Congress and the new president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, created a new Emergency Banking Act on March 9, 1933. President Roosevelt announced a "bank holiday," a moratorium on banking activity while federal bank inspectors examined the books in order to