U.S.A. POLITICS

Hokitika Guardian, 28 May 1936, Page 2

U.S.A. POLITICS

STATEMENT BY PRESIDENT. PREDECESSOR’S RESENTMENT NEW YORK, May 23. The charge made by President Roosevelt that lie found the country in ruins, financially and economically, is warmly resented by his predecessor. Mr Hoover, who has been silent while at least four aspirants, including Senator Borah, have been contending for the Republican -nomination, emerged recently to defend his administration. “Mr Roosevelt,” said Mr Hoover, -“is anxious that the American people shall believe that the nation was ‘in ruins’ when •he took office. From the panic of bank depositors, which greeted his inauguration, he concludes that the Republicans, did it. The United States was recovering from the depression in the middle of 1932; almost alone, of all the great nations, rt was set back after Mr Roosevelt’s election.”

Mr Hoover said he had tried, without success, to persuade Mr Roosevelt, before the latter took office, to give some assurance that he would keep his campaign promises that there would be no tampering with the currency, and that the Budget would be balanced. “In a word, I asked,” he said, “that the whispers of speculators that Mr Roosevelt did not keep his campaign promises be stopped by an emphatic confirmation of those promises.

“That those speculators and ‘insiders’ were right was plain later on. The first contact of the ‘money dangers’ with the New Deal netted those who removed their money from the country a profit up to 60 per cent when the dollar was debased. “You will remember Mr Roosevelt’s promises of quick restoration of employment,” he said. “The ‘New Dealers’ said everyone was to be at work On Labour Day, 1933. The Federation of Labour now reports 12,600,000 mi employed, as against 11,600,000 which they reported when Mr Roosevelt was elected. Yet the expenditure was raised from a billion to three. and a-half bil lion dollars a year, including half a billion a year as overhead for the Federal political machine. Yet Mr Roosevelt promised the voters that’Tie would reduce Government expenses by 2o per cent.

“Your days before his election in 1932 Mr Roosevelt said that the gold clause was more than a contract—it was a covenant. The Republican Administration respected that covenant as a matter of national honour. Mr Roosevelt repudiated it.” Mr Hoover’s efforts to sustain the blinking and credit structure were sharply attacked by" Mr Roosevelt in his election campaign. Yet he retained and expanded every one of the agencies utilised by the Republicans. These lheasures saved 10,000 institutions, retained millions at work and saved farmers from foreclosure. “The ‘New Dealers’ now choose to forget whence these agencies came,” said Mr Hoover. “The Republican Administration reduced the number of officials by 10,000. They were increased by 325,000 by the Roosevelt Government The regimentation of the farmer has failed. And so, after three we start all over again,” >