20-Year Plan

A special Chesapeake & Ohio train late one night last week picked up President Hoover at Orange, Va., whither he had motored from his Rapidan camp, and carried him across the Appalachians and the Alleghenies on what was widely recognized as the opening of his campaign for re-election next year. His special whisked him through West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio, all States that had turned against him last year, and on to Indiana. At Indianapolis he detrained, was greeted by Governor Harry Guyer Leslie. His first address was delivered in the evening to 5,000 members and guests of the Indiana Republican Editorial Association dining at the State Fair Grounds.

As Prosperity was the Republican text in the 1928 campaign, so Depression is generally expected to be its theme in 1932. Therefore the President spoke on this subject as "dominant before the country today." Excerpts:

Causes. "The main causes of this Depression came from outside the U. S. . . . our wild speculation, our stock promotion, our loose and extravagant business methods, our unprecedented drought . . . the malign inheritances of the Great War . . . huge taxes . . . mounting armament . . . over-rapid expansion of production, collapse in price of many foreign raw materials ... the demonetization of silver. . . .

Doughnut's Hole. "Repeated shocks stimulate fear and hesitation among our businessmen. These fears and apprehensions are unnecessarily increased by that minority of people who would make political capital out of the Depression through magnifying our unemployment and losses. Other small groups make their contribution to distress by raids on our markets to profit from depreciation of securities and commodities. Both groups are within the law; they are equally condemned by public and business opinion.

. . . With no desire to minimize the realities we must appraise the other side of this picture. We must not look only at the empty hole in the middle of the doughnut. . . . Our people are working harder. . . . Savings are the largest in our history. . . . Consumption is proceeding at a higher rate. . . . Stability is on the ascendancy. The underlying forces of recovery are asserting themselves. . . ." Ship Steadying. "We have assured the country from panic. . . . We have steadily urged the maintenance of wages. . . . We have sustained the people in 21 [drought] States. . . . We are saving our farmers and workmen through the tariff. : . . We are holding down taxation. . . . We are rigidly excluding immigration. . . . We shall keep this ship steady in the storm. . . . We will prevent any unnecessary distress. . . . We will recover from the Depression."

Patent Medicines. "We are confronted with scores of theoretical panaceas which would inevitably delay recovery. . . . Some . . . agitate for economic patent medicines from foreign lands. . . . Others [believe] that by some legerdemain we can legislate ourselves out of a world-wide Depression. . . . Nothing can be gained in recovery of employment by detouring capital into the Treasury by taxes or loans, on the assumption that the Government can create more employment than industry and commerce. . . .-- We have had one proposal after another which amounts to a dole from the Treasury. The largest is that of unemployment insurance. . . . The net results of Governmental doles are to lower wages and to endow the slacker. ... It is proposed that we can expedite recovery by another [tariff] revision. Nothing would more prolong Depression than a session of Congress devoted to this purpose. . . ."

Plan. "Many citizens insist we produce an advance 'plan' for the future development of the U. S. I presume the 'plan' idea is an infection from the slogan '5-year-plan' through which Russia is struggling to redeem herself from ten years of starvation and misery. I am able to propose an American plan to you. We plan to take care of 20,000,000 increase in population in the next 20 years. We plan to build for them 4,000,000 new and better homes, thousands of new and still more beautiful city buildings, thousands of factories; to increase the capacity of our railways; to add thousands of miles of highways and waterways; to install 25,000,000 electrical horsepower; to grow 20% more farm products. We plan to provide new parks, schools, colleges and churches. We plan more leisure for men and women. . . . We plan to secure a greater diffusion of wealth, a decrease in poverty and a great reduction in crime. . . . We should have full faith and confidence in those mighty resources, those intellectual and spiritual forces which have impelled this Nation to a success never before known in history. . . . Under the guidance of divine Providence they will return to us a greater and more wholesome prosperity than we have ever known."

Thus by offering his auditors a Plan in dramatic form did President Hoover envisage the country's surging advance through the next two decades. Next morning President Hoover breakfasted on Indiana strawberries and cream at the executive mansion. His special train then carried him into Ohio and to the white marble tomb of Warren Gamaliel Harding at Marion./-

The day to dedicate this $800,000 memorial had come at long last. What, if anything, would the President have to say about the scandals of the Harding era? Would he ignore them and thus stultify himself? Or would he name names and thus antagonize Republican Ohio?

With the 30th President standing by, the 31st President delivered a speech on the 2gth President which was altogether felicitous for the occasion. Excerpts:

''It was [Harding's] mission to compose the prejudices and conflicts at home, to lessen the threats of renewed war. When in two years he died, new peace treaties had been made; tranquillity had been restored; employment had been renewed and a long period of prosperity had begun. . . . My first meeting with Warren Harding was during the War. Late one evening the then Senator came to my office. When he was announced, there flashed into my mind the thought that here was some complaint or request. . . . Instead the Senator said simply: 'I've not come to get anything. I just want you to know that if you wish the help of a friend, telephone me what you want. I am there to serve and to help.' That statement was typical of him.

"I accompanied the President to Alaska. . . . We came to know that here was a man whose soul was being seared by a great disillusionment. We saw him gradually weaken from mental anxiety. Warren Harding had a dim realization that he had been betrayed by a few of the men whom he had trusted, by men who he had believed were his devoted friends. It was later proved in the courts that these men had betrayed not alone | his] friendship and trust but their country. That was the tragedy of the life of Warren Harding. . . . The breakdown of the faith of the people in the honesty of the Government [is] a crime for which punishment can never atone. . . . Warren Harding was a man of delicate sense of honor, of sympathetic heart, of transcendent gentleness of soul ... of passionate patriotism ... of deep religious feeling." P: After a year's trial President Hoover last week exiled dial telephones from the White House.

P: President Hoover's name was last week posted on the bulletin board of Washington's fashionable Racquet Club for failure to pay a 25-c- house bill. Telephone calls by Son Allan accounted for the bill. Payment was quickly made and a clerk reprimanded.

P: By executive order last week President Hoover opened confidential income tax returns of the U. S. to officials of States with local income tax laws. Purpose: to help States catch evaders of local levies. No one below a governor could request the inspection privilege.

P: Last week President Hoover gave a garden party to 800 disabled War veterans. To a man in a wheel chair who said he was soon returning to California, the President remarked: "Fine! I'm not a native but I've lived there long enough to know what's the best place for a disabled veteran. It isn't often a Californian can be happy anywhere else very long."

*This was President Hoover's retort to William Randolph Hearst's $5,000,000,000 public works bond issue.

/-lnto his Cabinet in 1921 Harding brought what he called "best minds." After a decade Secretary of State Hughes is Chief Justice of the U. S.; Secretary Mellon still sits in the Treasury; Attorney General Daugherty is a political outcast; Postmaster General Hays is cinema tsar; Secretary of the Interior Fall is on the penitentiary doorstep; Secretary of Commerce Hoover is in the White House; Secretary of Labor Davis is in the Senate from Pennsylvania. Dead are Secretaries of War Weeks, of the Navy Denby, of Agriculture Wallace.

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