HOOVER'S EXIT

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21470, 19 April 1933, Page 13

HOOVER'S EXIT

ADMINISTRATIVE RECORD DIFFICULTIES OF OFFICE \'• • • PUBLIC OPINION CHANGED [from our own correspondent] NEW YORK, March 16 In liis first message to Congress, early in 1929, President Hoover, deploring tho development of organised crime, said, "Our foundations have subsided." In his last message, a week before he surrended office, he strove desperately to halt universal fear of financial disaster, with banking business suspended in 21 States. In the four years that lay between, tho simple record of his accomplishments will rank more than favourably with any of his predecessors. Yet, lightly, without regret, he is relegated to the scrap-heap. For such is the system in the American pattern of democracy. When Mr. Hoover entered White House, around him, in tho United States, was tho highest level of prosperity his country or the whole world had ever known. When ho welcomed his incoming successor, it is doubtful if one could conceive a lower level of depression than was prevailing. The socalled world slump was well into the third year. Tho gold suspension period, which is now hovering dangerously near for the United States, was in its second year. President Hoover, ; who brought to his job a wider acquaintance with the world than his predecessors, realised fully the incidence of events happening around him. How often, during these four years, Congress, that changed horses in the stream midway during his incumbency, thwarted plans he devised to restore his country to an oven economic keel or to assimilate his forcgin policy with that of the Old World! One wonders if Hoover ever sighed for Mussolini's powers. Dictatorship, never popular in American tradition, is now freely canvassed as a cure for the ailing body, politic. Under Hoover's lead, the status of the gangster was amended from social hero to public enemy. Chicago, the city that made gunmen famous, issued a list of 22 "public enemies," and to-day proudly points to the fact that not one of them is at large. Hoover's spirited advocacy brought to fruition the Kellogg-Briand peace pact, and an accepted method of providing a yardstick to measure naval strength. He implemented his promise, given to LatinAmerican countries during his preinauguration tour, to withdraw United States marines from their territory. A mouth before he left White House, Sandino laid down his arms. In his war on crime, Mr. Hoover left the nation a legacy in the form of the most comprehensive examination yet made into law enforcement in this country. The Wiekcrsham Commission, aside from its prohibition inquiry, issued twelve full-length reports on crime statistics, prosecution, the juvenile offender, procedure, prisons, police, judges, law courts, deportation, third degree, and foreign-born offenders. Mr. Hoover is not so staunch an advocate of prohibition and high tariffs as when he took office. Yet he was sincere, throughout, in his advocacy, believing that his country could work out its destiny through temperance and that industry and agriculture wotdd benefit, as they did formerly, from the tariff. He leaves.the scene with the assurances of the "Wets" that, with the repeal of prohibition, organised crime will disappear.