The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1928-10-25
For President
Hoover Crowns Himself World
Emperor
Emperor

Ela1DGECE
Herbert Hoover's speech Monday night at
Madison Square Garden, New York, was cam
paign bunk of the most dishonest sort. But
it would be a mistake to pass it off as moth
ing more than that. For it is evident that
Hoover and his managers look upon that
speech as a sort of program of empire for
whole decade. Hoover, direct heir of the Cool
idge dynasty speaks with the assurance of
an emperor already secure in his throne
for is not Wall Street already betting odds on
his election as against Wall Streets alterna-
tive candidate, Al Smith, and is not even the
little Socialist preacher Norman Thomas
spending half his time shouting that Hoover
is already as good as elected? At any rate
Hoover speaks with the air of monarch;
and the meaning of his speech is the pro-
clamation of an empire.
This is not precisely new in American
politics. During the past six or eight years
the American bourgeoisie has been convinc-
ing itself that the building Of a world-empire
permanently holding the entire world in
bondage is its mission. Writers in financial
papers long ago began to write of the United
States as the modern Roman Empire" and
to speak openly of tribute to be paid in
endless golden streams from all nations of
the earth" to the cosnic sovereign-the CAPT
talist class of the United States.
There is something of this dilirium in
Hoover's speech. He has gathered all of the
wild dreams of Wall Street 'idealists' into
his engineers notebook, has built with it an
imperialst Utopia and has crowned himself
king of this Utopia, emperor of the world.
But even the Wall Street Roman Empire"
fanciers cannot but know that there is such
thing as working class, such thing as
the depressions and crises in industry which
are generated by the very same prosperity"
itself, such thing as unemployment such
thing as wars for redivision of the world be-
tween rival imperialistS and-Such thing as
Revolution. But those who spin the web of
fancy of permanent capitalism tell them
selves they have an answer to this, too. And
in the recent years of the New Roman En-
pire" theory there has been an accompany
ing flood of discoveries" by bourgeois pro-
fessors and economists to prove that
America has solved the class struggle" that
"the workers are all becoming capitalists"
that there twill be no proetariat in the
United States pretty soon" Hoover makes
of halucination.
And none other than Herbert Hoover him
self has come forth as the man whose "en-
gineer's head" has solved the problem of econ
omic crisis. First the Federal Reserve Bank
had brought the elements of crisis under
control; and then, when this proved not to be
true, Hoover becomes the New Messiah whose
wizard hand alone could guard the delicate
web" of capitalist social organization for the
safe sucking of the blood of the world.
But there is working class, and there is
sharp, uncomfortable poverty growing side by
side with the most colossal accumulation of
and concentration of wealth ever known in
all history. This dark cloud must also be
@dspelled so that the fat American bourgeois
can peacefully sleep to dream of his Roman
Empire"
Hoover, again, is the one who volunteers
to dispel the cloud.
Hoover announces his messianic mission
ito abolish poverty
Never before has so much pure Cheek
been combined as in this creed of the fat
engineer messiah of capitalism. Hoover will
abolish poverty under the capitalist system
which presuppOses and cannot exist without
poverty on the part of millions who must be
driven by that poverty to submit to exploita-
ton. Of course the republican candidate
reaches the point of insane gibberish at this
point. But this servant of finance-capital
is no fool and is not insane; there is method
in his madness. He is teaching the doctrine of
Imperialism to the unconscious American
proletariat and petty -bourgeoisie. 1t is not
an accident that he quotes the slavish formu-
Las of Samuel Gompers.
Hoover is fat, but no fool. Hoover has
beer in the territory of the Union of So
cialist Soviet Republics fact which he
tries now to use by making false and hypo-