Hoover to The People

President Hoover does not like to make speeches to the People. Last week, however, he traveled some 2,000 mi. to address them on four occasions in five days. For the first 16 months of his term he was too preoccupied with Congress and new legislation to leave Washington. Later he was held close to his White House by the necessity of staffing the Federal machine with new appointments, directing drought relief. Now, with summer over and a congressional campaign coming on, he was moved to go to the People with a series of addresses which he bunched together like an unpleasant duty to be got over with quickly.

He chose as his audiences: Capital at Cleveland, Labor and Veterans at Boston, Plain Citizens at Kings Mountain, S. C. The themes he selected were economics, social welfare, patriotic inspiration, prosperity.

To Capital. President Hoover naturally addressed the American Bankers' Association meeting at Cleveland on the Business Depression. By a coincidence Prime Minister Mussolini at Rome the day before had made a speech to the National Council of Corporations (Italy's Labor and Capital) on the same subject (see p. 22). Signore Mussolini had said: "No intelligent or honest man can expect miracles. Up to today not even President Hoover has been able to work miracles and he is the most powerful man in the world at the head of the richest country in the world." If President Hoover could not work miracles, he could at least analyze the Situation, explain things to the bankers.

The President's thesis: "We have had a severe shock. . . . This depression is worldwide. . . . We can make a very large degree of recovery independently of what may happen elsewhere. . . . We shall need mainly to depend upon our own strong arm for recovery as other nations are in greater difficulty than we are. . . .* We must assure a higher degree of business stability . . . any recession in American business is but a temporary halt in the prosperity of a great people."

Twice last spring President Hoover predicted economic upturns which did not occur. Last week he conspicuously refrained from any forecast as to when the depression would end./-

The nearest the President came to answering Democrats who twit him on the slump was when he said: "There are . . . several folks in the political world who resent the notion that things will ever get better and who wish to enjoy our temporary misery. To recount to these persons the progress . . . in amelioration . . . to mention that we are suffering far less than other countries, only inspires the unkind retort that we should fix our gaze solely upon the unhappy features of the decline."

President Hoover's advice to bankers: "This depression will be shortened largely to the degree that you feel you can instill into your clients . . . a feeling of assurance. . . . The very atmosphere of your offices will affect the mental attitude and . . . courage of the individuals who depend upon you for counsel and money."*

To Patriots. President Hoover's speech to the American Legion convention at Boston was a generalized plea for good citizenship and law observance. He did not mention Prohibition by name. He reminded the legionaires of the $900,000,000 the U. S. is spending each year to care for 700,000 World War Veterans, declared that their "demands upon the government should not exceed the measure that justice requires and self-help can provide."

Declaring that "nearly half the globe is in a state of great unrest or revolution," the President praised the Kellogg-Briand and London naval treaties, promised "a preparedness for defense that is impregnable yet that contains no threat of aggression." Of the "practical preservation of peace," he said:

"It requires that every American shall realize that men and women of other nations have the same devotion to their flags and are as sensitive to the dignity of their country as we."/-

To Labor. In his speech to the American Federation of Labor convention at Boston, President Hoover reverted to the Depression and its effect upon employment. He recited the White House agreements of last year (no wage cuts, no strikes), declared that these "have been carried out in astonishing degree."** Public works and private construction, he said, have thus far this year risen $500,000,000 over last year; whereas there were some 2,000 labor disputes in the last slump, there have been less than 300 in this. Declared the President:

"We still have a burden of unemployment. Although it is far less than one-half in proportion to our workers than in either England or Germany . . . our greatest economic problem [is] stability in employment. . . ."

The President passed on to "what we nowadays call technological unemployment"--industrial workers displaced by scientific inventions and labor saving devices. He argued that Labor should welcome these changes because it gained "through increase of wage or reduction of cost of living or shortened hours."

Cheerfully concluded President Hoover: "Nationwide cooperation and team play and the absence of conflict during this depression have increased the stability and wholesomeness of our industrial and social structure. . . . We find inspiration in the courage of our employers . . . which gives confidence for the future and confirms our belief in fundamental human righteousness."

To Plain Citizens. To the Carolina citizens who clustered about him to celebrate the victory of provincial backwoodsmen over British loyalist militia at Kings Mountain 150 years ago, President Hoover spoke of the "ideals and ideas of America."

He reverted to his 1928 campaign theme: "The door of opportunity and. the ladder to leadership should oe free for every new generation. . . . This is the American system. . . . We have seldom tried even to name it. . . . Some have called it Liberalism but that term has become corrupted by political use. Some have called it Individualism. . . . By its enemies it has been called Capitalism and yet under its ideals capital is but an instrument, not a master. Some have called it Democracy, yet Democracy exists elsewhere under social ideals which do not embrace equality of opportunity. . . .

"From experiences in many lands I have sometimes compared some of these systems to a race. In the American system ... we train the runners, we strive to give to them an equal start, our government is the umpire. . . . Socialism or its violent brother, Bolshevism, would compel all the runners to end the race equally; it would hold the swiftest to the speed of the most backward. Anarchy would provide neither training nor umpire. Despotism or class government picks those who run and also those who win. . . ."

Again he rang the Republican challenge on U. S. advantages: "In proportion to our population, we have one-fourth more of our children in grade schools than the most advanced other country in Europe. . . . Today we have more of our youth in institutions of higher learning than all the rest of the 1,500,000,000 people of the world put together. . . "Twice the number of homes owned . . . four times as much electricity . . . seven times as many automobiles . . . four times as many telephones and radio sets . . . etc."

* Compare Mussolini: "There is no reason for satisfaction for us to see that economic depression is growing more acute in all countries."

/- Compare Mussolini: "The passage from the present state to one of comparative prosperity is a cycle which will require at least three years."

* In the positive section of his speech, Mussolini flayed speculators and jugglers of high finance. "They truly deserve death," cried he.

/- Compare the speech of Dwight Whitney Mor row when he left Mexico last month: "If we could all get clearly into our heads that other men have as much pride in the dignity of their nations as we have in our own, the solution of international problems would be less difficult"(TIME, SEPT. 22).

* First big strike under auspices of the A. F. of L. since the White House conferences occurred last week, when 4,000 textile workers walked out of the Riverside & Dan River cotton mills at Danville, Va.

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