SLASHING ATTACK

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 198, 22 August 1932, Page 7

SLASHING ATTACK

ROOSEVELT HITS OUT.

Hoover Administration Rouses Bitter Criticism. PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN. (United P.A.—Electric Telegraph—Copyright) NEW YORK, August 21. In opening his campaign for the Presidential election, at the State Democratic Convention at Columbus, Ohio, yesterday, the Governor of New York, Mr. Franklin D. Roosevelt, launched a slashing attack against the Hoover Administration, paying particular attention to financial and banking conditions. Mr. Roosevelt favoured more stringent banking laws for "the great mass of average Americans, who have been forgotten by those in power." He placed much of the responsibility for the Stock Exchange crash in 1929 upon the Republican party, making the following charges:—"(l) It encouraged speculation and over-production through false economic policies; (2) it attempted to minimise the crash and misled people as to its gravity and (3) it refused to recognise and correct the evils at home which it had brought forth, and delayed relief."

Mr. Roosevelt said that Mr. Hoover had dismissed the objection that higher tariffs had retarded foreign trade. The Smoot-Hawley Bill was passed, and American industry, accelerated by a pace previously unknown, suddenly found the brakes locked on a slippery road. He declared that when the facts could no longer be ignored Washington discovered that the depression came from abroad.

Contending that there would be no relief so long as the country continued with the Hoover Administration, Mr. Roosevelt asked: "Has the Republican elephant, spotted with the mire through which he has wandered blindly during the last four years, suddenly, by; a miracle overnight, become a sacred white elephant of spouess purity, or has he been scrubbed and whitewashed by cunning showmen in the hope that he can deceive a credulcua electorate for four years more?"