The Barre daily times. (Barre, Vt.) 1897-1959, 1917-06-04
WHY POLITICIANS ARE
BLOCKING HOOVER
Because He Is Working Without Com
pensation and 1t Makes the Seek
ers After That Government
Job Angry.

The general public, which has accept
ed the work of Herbert Hoover in Bel
gium as evidence of his ability to cope
with the less acute but no less impor
tant situation here, has not quite grasped
the nature of the opposition to him
which is evident from the reports 60
ing out from Washington. The criticism
that he is man newly risen into prom
inence has had no weight with the man
in the street, who knows much less OF
many people who have been longer in the
public eye. And in the absence of any
person more conspicuously qualified, crit
icism OF Mr.. Hoover's experience fall fiat.
Three years of feeding a nation during
war time is at least three years more
than anybody else in America has had.
Reasoning thus the general public has
been disposed 20 credit the opposition
which occasionally shows itself to politi-
cal uneasiness, or to that kind OF inep-
titude which deliberate bodies can be
counted on to provide in any crisis. just
about so much fumbling is to be ex
pected anyway, argues the man in the
street, and goes on accepting Hoover as
the sole authority on food conditions.
Opposition to a food controllership on
Democratic grounds would be better I'M
derstood, but the truth is that Mr.. Hoov-
er's opposers dare not make very much
of that, because his whole conception of
food administration is much more
Democratic thing that the regime which
his detractors advocate.
At first the idea of new department
Of .Ip mis- 4 Yf.,Y
meant, among other things, the creation
of some eight or ten thousand salaried
departmental jobs, which meant hand
some increase Of political patronage. 1t
meant also that people holding such po
sitions would probably be unwilling to
surrender them at the close of the war,
and might involve the establishment OF
a permanent department with possibly
a cabinet portfolio for its head.
But presently it developed that Her
bert Clark Hoover was not at all the |
sort of man under whom such bureau
cratic arrangement could prosper Mr.. |
Hooyer's method is much simpler much |
more the method of everyday affairs. |
His experience in Europe has made him /
distrustful of departmental clerks in po-
sltlons OF great puOllc responsibility. |
Therefore he cut the ground under all
hopes of a bureau of food administration
by STIMULATING that neither he nor his
associates should receive any salaries.
1t is not widely known, if known at
al, that Mr.. Hoover, has conducted the
whole Belgian relief on that basis. Nei
her he nor his staff has received any
Mr.. Hoover even paid the
'ent of the house occupied by the c. r.
B. in Brussels ont of his own pocket
'ather than divert any of the relief
unds to that use. This, of course, APP
,lied only to the administrative work.
and clerks received their
customary wages, but even these were
'ften paid for out of the private means
# the people who employed them.
Naturally an administration staff
made up in this way would not have
my room for politicians and their bench
men. And this, consciously or not, is the
ource of much of the criticism of Hoov-
RS plan which is heard at Washington. .
BY Charles Hanson Towne of the Vigil /,
antes.