The big building enterprises in which the church was engaged were a heavy tax on the people, and constant urging was necessary to keep them up to the requirements. Thus we find an advertisement in the Wasp dated June 25, 1842, and signed by the "Temple Recorder," saying, "Brethren, remember that your contracts with your God are sacred; the labor is wanted immediately." Smith referred to the discontent of the laborers, and to some other matters, in a sermon on February 21, 1843. The following quotations are from his own report of it. "If any man working on the Nauvoo House is hungry, let him come to me and I will feed him at my table... and then if the man is not satisfied I will kick his backside.... This meeting was got up by the Nauvoo House committee. The Pagans, Roman Catholics, Methodists and Baptists shall have place in Nauvoo--only they must be ground in Joe Smith's mill. I have been in their mill... and those who come here must go through my smut machine, and that is my tongue."* The difficulty of carrying on these building enterprises at this time was increased by the financial disturbance that was convulsing the whole country. It was in these years that Congress was wrestling with the questions of the deposits of the public funds, the United States Bank, the subtreasury scheme, and the falling off of customs and land-sale revenues, with a threatened deficit in the federal treasury. The break-down of the Bank of the United States caused a general failure of the banks of the Western and Southern states, and money was so scarce at Nauvoo that one Mormon writer records the fact that "when corn was brought to my door at ten cents a bushel, and sadly needed, the money could not be raised." * Millennial Star, Vol. XX, p. 583.