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Herbert Hoover (1874-1964)
Herbert Hoover was raised in Oregon and became one of Stanford’s first graduates. He became a successful mining engineer, working in several countries including China and Australia. In 1914, he headed an international relief program in Belgium. After the US entered World War I, President Wilson appointed him to oversee food production throughout the country. After the war, he returned to Europe to supervise the American Relief Administration in Eastern Europe. He ran for the Republican nomination for president in 1920 but lost out to the better-connected Warren Harding.
Hoover became Secretary of Commerce under Harding and stayed on after Calvin Coolidge succeeded him in 1923. Hoover was widely praised for his administrative acumen, and the Republican Party chose him as its nominee in 1928. He easily defeated Democratic nominee Al Smith in the 1928 general election. His presidency was preoccupied with attempting to help the US recover from the Great Depression of 1929. Unwilling to engage in extensive borrowing to restart the economy, Coolidge chose to support high tariffs to protect American industry from international competition. This led to a trade war that worsened the US economy, and by 1932 public opinion had turned strongly against the Republicans. Hoover was routed by Franklin Roosevelt in the general election that November.
After leaving the White House, Hoover continued to be involved in politics, criticizing the New Deal as an assault on individual freedom. He also opposed American involvement in Europe, backing the isolationist wing of the Republican Party. He lived for 31 years after serving as President, which is second only to Jimmy Carter.
This Challenge to Liberty (1936)
Hoover backed republican Alf Landon’s challenge to Franklin Roosevelt in 1936. He portrayed the New Deal as inimical to American values, suggesting that Democratic policies were undermining individual freedom and weakening the ability of Americans to succeed on their own. Much like William Graham Sumner, Hoover suggested that government intervention in the economy had created a new class of recipients of government assistance who shared the Roosevelt’s administration’s interest in government control of the economy. Alluding to the fact that unemployment had peaked at 25%, he argued that free enterprise should not be shackled when it had worked well for the remaining 75%. He claimed that Roosevelt’s massive expansion of the federal government would enslave Americans to high taxes and extensive government control over their lives, and promised to continue fighting even though it was clear that Roosevelt would win the 1936 election in a landslide–which he did.
…Through four years of experience this New Deal attack upon free institutions has emerged as the transcendent issue in America.
All the men who are seeking for mastery in the world today are using the same weapons. They sing the same songs. They all promise the joys of Elysium without effort. But their philosophy is founded on the coercion and compulsory organization of men. True liberal government is founded on the emancipation of men. This is the issue upon which men are imprisoned and dying in Europe right now.
The rise of this issue has dissolved our old party lines. The New Deal repudiation of Democracy has left the Republican Party alone the guardian of the Ark of the Covenant with its charter of freedom. The tremendous import of this issue, the peril to our country has brought the support of the ablest leaders of the Democratic Party. It is no passing matter which enlists side by side the fighting men who have opposed each other over many years. It is the unity demanded by a grave danger to the Republic….
Freedom does not die from frontal attack. It dies because men in power no longer believe in a system based upon Liberty.
[I]llegal invasions of the Constitution are but the minor artillery with which this New Deal philosophy of government is being forced upon us. They are now using a more subtle and far more effective method of substituting personal power and centralized government for the institutions of free men. It is not by violation of the Constitution that they are making headway today. It is through taking vast sums of the people’s money and then manipulating its spending to build up personal power. By this route relief has been centralized in their hands. By this route government has entered into business in competition with the citizen. In this way a score of new instruments of public power have been created. By this route the ordinary functions of government have been uselessly expanded with a double bookkeeping to conceal it. Public funds are used right and left to subsidize special groups of our citizens and special regions of the country. At public expense there is a steady drip of propaganda to poison the public mind.
Through this spending there grows a huge number of citizens with a selfish vested interest in continuing this centralization of power. It has also made millions of citizens dependent upon the government.
Thus also have been built huge political bureaucracies hungry for more power. This use of money has enabled the independence of Congress to be sapped by the pork barrel. It has subtly undermined the rights and the responsibility of States and local governments. Out of all this we see government daily by executive orders instead of by open laws openly arrived at.
The New Deal taxes are in forms which stifle the growth of small business and discourage new enterprise. By stifling private enterprise the field is tilled for further extension of government enterprise. Intricate taxes are interpreted by political bureaucrats who coerce and threaten our business men. By politically managed currency the President has seized the power to alter all wages, all prices, all debts, all savings at will. But that is not the worst. They are creating personal power over votes. That crushes the first safeguard of liberty.
Does Mr. Roosevelt not admit all this in his last report on the state of the Union: “We have built up new instruments of public power” which he admits could “provide shackles for the liberties of the people.” Does freedom permit any man or any government any such power? Have the people ever voted for these shackles?
Has he abandoned this “new order,” this “planned economy” that he has so often talked about? Will he discharge these associates of his who daily preached the “new order” but whom he does not now allow to appear in this campaign?
Is Mr. Roosevelt not asking for a vote of confidence on these very breaches of liberty?
Is not this very increase in personal power the suicide road upon which every democratic government has died from the time of Greece and Rome down to the dozen liberal governments that have perished in Europe during this past twenty years?
I gave the warning against this philosophy of government four years ago from a heart heavy with anxiety for the future of our country. It was born from many years’ experience of the forces moving in the world which would weaken the vitality of American freedom. It grew in four years of battle as President to uphold the banner of free men….
I rejected the notion of great trade monopolies and price fixing through codes. That could only stifle the little business man by regimenting him under his big brother. That idea was born of certain American Big Business and grew up to be the NRA.
I rejected the schemes of “economic planning” to regiment and coerce the farmer. That was born of a Roman despot fourteen hundred years ago and grew up into the AAA.
I refused national plans to put the government into business in competition with its citizens. That was born of Karl Marx.
I vetoed the idea of recovery through stupendous spending to prime the pump. That was born of a British professor.
I threw out attempts to centralize relief in Washington for politics and social experimentation. I defeated other plans to invade State rights, to centralize power in Washington. Those ideas were born of American radicals.
I stopped attempts at currency inflation and repudiation of government obligation. That was robbery of insurance policy holders, savings banks depositors and wage earners. That was born of the early Brain Trusters.
I rejected all these things because they would not only delay recovery but because I knew that in the end they would shackle free men….
Our people did not recognize the gravity of the issue when I stated it four years ago. That is no wonder, for the day Mr. Roosevelt was elected Recovery was in progress, the Constitution was untrampled, the integrity of the government and the institutions of freedom were intact. It was not until after the election that the people began to awake. Then the realization of intended tinkering with the currency drove bank depositors into the panic that greeted Mr. Roosevelt’s inauguration. Recovery was set back for two years, and hysteria was used as the bridge to reach the goal of personal government.
I am proud to have carried the banner of free men to the last hour of the term my countrymen entrusted it to me. It matters nothing in the history of a race what happens to those who in their time have carried the banner of free men. What matters is that the battle shall go on.
The people know now the aims of this New Deal philosophy of government. We propose instead leadership and authority in government within the moral and economic framework of the American System.
We propose to hold to the Constitutional safeguards of free men.
We propose to relieve men from fear, coercion and spite that are inevitable in personal government.
We propose to demobilize and decentralize all this spending upon which vast personal power is being built. We propose to amend the tax laws so as not to defeat free men and free enterprise.
We propose to turn the whole direction of this country toward liberty, not away from it.
The New Dealers say that all this that we propose is a worn-out System; that this machine age requires new measures for which we must sacrifice some part of the freedom of men. Men have lost their way with a confused idea that governments should run machines. Man-made machines cannot be of more worth than men themselves. Free men made these machines. Only free spirits can master them to their proper use.
The relation of our government with all these questions is complicated and difficult. They rise into the very highest ranges of economics, statesmanship, and morals.
And do not mistake. Free government is the most difficult of all government. But it is everlastingly true that the plain people will make fewer mistakes than any other group of men no matter how powerful. But free government implies vigilant thinking and courageous living and self-reliance in a people.
Let me say to you that any measure which breaks our dykes of freedom will flood the land with misery….
We realize that one-quarter of our people are not able today to have the standards we desire. But we are proud of a system that has given security and comfort to three-quarters of our families and in which even the under quarter ranks higher than that of any nation in the world.
National wisdom and national ideals require that we constantly develop the economic forces which will lift this one-quarter of our people. It requires that we at the same time attain greater stability to employment and to agriculture in the other three-quarters.
This is no occasion to elaborate the details of a program. But surely we must dump the whole New Deal theory of restriction of production, of code monopolies, of constantly higher prices for manufactured goods. We must reject their currency and credit policies, which will repeat our calamities of booms and depressions with greater heights and depths. We must reduce spending and amend the forms of taxation which now destroy enterprise and employment. We hold over-swollen fortunes must be distributed through pressure of taxes….
It may be that some super mind can tell us what to do each day for our own good or can even force us to do it. But we haven’t seen any indication of such mind among the New Dealers. This country moves forward because each individual of all these millions, each thinking for himself, using his own best judgment, using his own skill and experience, becomes expert in bettering his family and his community. To do that they must captain their own souls….
You might think that reform and change to meet new conditions of life are discoveries of the New Deal. Free men have always applied reform. We have been reforming and changing ever since George Washington. Democracy is not static. It is a living force. Every new idea, every new invention offers opportunity for both good and evil.
We are in need of reform every day in the week as long as men are greedy for money or power. We need a whole list of reforms right now, including the reform of these people who have created a gigantic spoils system as a method of seizing political power.
Many of the problems discussed in this campaign concern our material welfare. That is right. But there are things far more important to a nation than material welfare. It is possible to have a prosperous country under a dictatorship. It is not possible to have a free country. No great question will ever be settled in dollars and cents. Great questions must be settled on moral grounds and the tests of what makes free men. What is the nation profited if it shall gain the whole world and lose its own soul?
We want recovery. Not alone economic recovery. We must have moral recovery. And there are many elements in this.
We must re-establish truth and morals in public life. No people will long remain a moral people under a government that repudiates its obligations, that uses public funds to corrupt the people, that conceals its actions by double bookkeeping.
We must have government that builds stamina into communities and men. That makes men instead of mendicants. We must stop this softening of thrift, self-reliance and self-respect through dependence on government. We must stop telling youth that the country is going to the devil and they haven’t a chance. We must stop this dissipating the initiative and aspirations of our people. We must revive the courage of men and women and their faith in American liberty. We must recover these spiritual heritages of America.
All this clatter of class and class hate should end. Thieves will get into high places as well as low places and they should both be given economic security-–in jail. But they are not a class. This is a classless country. If we hold to our unique American ideal of equal opportunity there can never be classes or masses in our country. To preach these class ideas from the White House is new in American life. There is no employing class, no working class, no farming class. You may pigeonhole a man or woman as a farmer or a worker or a professional man or an employer or even a banker. But the son of the farmer will be a doctor or a worker or even a banker, and his daughter a teacher. The son of a worker will be an employer-–or maybe President. And certainly the sons of even economic royalists have a bad time holding the title of nobility.
The glory of our country has been that every mother could look at the babe in her arms with confidence that the highest position in the world was open to it.
The transcendent issue before us today is free men and women. How do we test freedom? It is not a catalogue of political rights. It is a thing of the spirit. Men must be free to worship, to think, to hold opinions, to speak without fear. They must be free to challenge wrong and oppression with surety of justice. Freedom conceives that the mind and spirit of man can be free only if he be free to pattern his own life, to develop his own talents, free to earn, to spend, to save, to acquire property as the security of his old age and his family.
Freedom demands that these rights and ideals shall be protected from infringement by others, whether men or groups, corporations or governments.
The conviction of our fathers was that all these freedoms come from the Creator and that they can be denied by no man or no government or no New Deal. They were spiritual rights of men. The prime purpose of liberal government is to enlarge and not to destroy these freedoms. It was for that purpose that the Constitution of the United States was enacted. For that reason we demand that the safeguards of freedom shall be upheld. It is for this reason that we demand that this country should turn its direction from a system of personal centralized government to the ideals of liberty.
And again I repeat that statement of four years ago–-“This campaign is more than a contest between two men. It is a contest between two philosophies of government.”
Whatever the outcome of this election that issue is set. We shall battle it out until the soul of America is saved.