On Sat, 26 May 2007 21:54:57 GMT, "Steven P. McNicoll"
wrote in
.net:


"Larry Dighera" wrote in message
.. .

Unfortunately, it seem others here still echo Hoover's crass
insensitivity toward their fellow Americans. I believe that those who
think that way would have no qualms about re-instituting slavery in
our nation if they thought they could get away with it.


Hoover's crass insensitivity? What are you referring to? WWI food relief?
Mississippi flood relief?


If you had bother to read the content of the article to which you are
following up, you would have found the answer to your question:



http://home.att.net/~history240/hist...epression.html
Aggravating the nation’s economic problems was the passage of the
Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act of 1930, intended to protect American industry
from foreign competition. As the highest tariff in the history of the
United States, it is named after the Republican Congressman (Willis C.
Hawley) and Republican Senator (Reed Smoot), who jointly sponsored its
passage, which was immediately signed into law by President Herbert
Hoover. The tariff brought immediate revengeful tariffs against the
United States, which resulted in a severe decrease in foreign trade,
thus intensifying the harsh effects of the Great Depression worldwide.
Hoover maintained that status quo insofar as his policy agenda was
concerned; in other words, he failed to take action to correct a
rapidly deteriorating economic situation, depending instead on private
enterprise and corporations to pick themselves up and correct the
situation.

Despite rapidly increasing evidence to the contrary, President
Hoover continued to deny that the economy was in crisis. On December
2, 1930, after the passing of the first year of the Great Depression,
President Herbert Hoover delivered his message to the Congress,
insisting that “the fundamental strength of the economy is
unimpaired.”

Later, a critic of the President pointed out evidence to the
contrary of Hoover’s continued assertions, stating that there are
great numbers of unemployed men selling apples in a desperate effort
to earn just a little money. Defending his position, the President
responded by contending that these men were simply engaged in “free
enterprise.” According to Herbert Hoover, “Many people have left
their jobs for the more profitable one of selling apples.”

Meanwhile, “Hoovervilles” sprung up across the United States.
Hooverville was the name given to shantytown built on the outskirts of
American communities during the Great Depression, to house poor and
dispossessed
people in the 1930s.


------------------------------------
The “Bonus Expeditionary Force” of 1932, was composed of unemployed
World War One veterans, who, largely independent from one another,
congregated at Washington, D.C., to demand passage of the Patman Bill
that proposed the immediate issue of promised government bonuses
rather than wait thirteen years for the planned date of issue.

Pursuant to the demands of these veterans, and as the result of
intense and successful lobbying to that end by veterans’ advocates,
including the American Legion, the Congress passed the Veteran Bonus
Act of 1924 over the veto of President Calvin Coolidge. Acting in
accordance with the new law, the Federal government issued
certificates in 1924, guaranteeing payments of $1,000 per veteran on
average, to be made in 1945.

During the crisis of the Great Depression, many desperate and
unemployed American veterans demanded early payment to meet their
financial needs. In an effort to meets such exigencies, Wright Patman
of the U.S. House of Representatives, introduced a bill to speed up
the payment of the veterans’ bonuses.

Calling for the passage of the Patman Bill, veterans converged on
Washington D.C. in the spring of 1932, taking up residence in a tent
city near where the Pentagon stands today. Having passed through the
House of Representatives, the bill was killed in the Senate in mid
June 1932.

When the camped out Bonus Expeditionary Force, as the veterans were
called, refused to break camp and depart, President Herbert Hoover
ordered their eviction and dispersal of the members of the Bonus
Expeditionary Force, and the destruction of their tent city. These
orders were carried out by the U.S. Army, under the command of General
Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964).

A few months earlier (January 4, 1932), Time magazine reported a quote
from President Herbert Hoover, who still denied the depths of the
nation’s economic crisis. The President, according to the article,
was even proud of the fact that “the nation’s needy have gone through
three hard winters without a dollar’s worth of direct aid from the
Federal Treasury” (as a supposed indication that welfare socialism was
unnecessary).

According to the President, “Nobody’s actually starving. The hoboes,
for example, are better fed than they have ever been. [And, with
reference to the lines of people waiting to be fed at the soup
kitchens, he stated:] One hobo in New York got ten meals in one day.”

Either in a continued state of denial or a sense of his own importance
and grandiosity, Herbert Hoover decided to run for reelection in the
autumn of 1932. In this reelection bid, Hoover is astonished when his
presidential train is regularly battered with eggs and tomatoes as it
passes through communities along the campaign trail.

As his train passed through cities and towns in the Upper Mid-West,
unprecedented numbers of people appeared to greet the President with
placards and chants of “Hang Hoover.” Such a clamoring crowd thronged
the route that his limousine took from the train station to Detroit’s
Olympic Station.

Referring to such discontented hordes, and the success of the various
police forces at keeping them at bay, President Hoover praised his
administration, stating, “Thank God we still have a government in
Washington that still knows how to deal with a mob.”

Facing incessant criticism from all sides, a beleaguered President
Herbert Hoover found his only solace and escape from the problems at
hand through fishing. Eighteen years later, on May 19, 1947, Herbert
Hoover affirms the comfort of that activity, stating that “[t]here are
only two occasions when Americans respect privacy, especially in
Presidents. Those are prayer and fishing.” To him, fishing is
sacred. He states, that the sport “is discipline in the equality of
men – for all men are equal before fish.”

The only answer to the ongoing and worsening situation nationally was
that of statism, and one that President Hoover refused to consider.
Statism is the belief or idea that the power and authority of the
state supersedes individual, group, and corporate authority of any
form. Statist ideals stress the importance of state intervention in
behalf of the rights of its citizenry, when situations emerge leading
to social and economic imbalances, such as the Great Depression.

The Democratic Presidential candidate was a patrician New York
attorney, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945). Pledging to bring
about a “New Deal” for the American people, though his plans for
national recovery appeared vague and unspecific, President Hoover
criticized his ideas as being a “radical departure” from all that was
deemed American. Having failed to resist social change, while at the
same time bringing the national economy down to new depths,
traditional conservatism took a back seat to liberal social reform
under the leadership of a new President, Franklin D. Roosevelt.