Evening star., 1932-10-05

DES MONIES. October 5.-Herbert
Hoover has come and seen. but whether
he has conquered 1t is too early to tell
He Is whirling homeward today after q
reception on the native heath Of Mrs
Hoover and himself which must have
warmed the cookies of the presidential
heart. All through the stretch Of corn
fields and towns between the Mississippi
and the Iowa capital large and friendly
If not demonstratively enthusiastic
crowds hailed the chief
Their mere presence in serried ranks
especially along the five miles of Des
Moines streets through which the HOO
yer motorcade wended its way, indi-
Gated conclusively that the land that
gave the President birth has not be-
come enemy country as the Democrats
allege, nor was last nights magnificent
Iowa assembly in honor of Herbert
Hoover" as the love feast was officially
designated, anything but eloquent proof
that he is held in high esteem. Yet
it is distinctly premature to suggest
that the President has met the foe al
the 1882 battle of the Marne and al
ready routed him.
Mr.. Hoover has at least done one
thing about which there is no room
for doubt. He has needed the advice
Of his campaign managers and, for
better or for worse, carried the wal
into the heart of the territory where
they said, nothing but his personal In
tervention could save the day. They
called for fighting speech" and they
got it. They wanted Hoover to tear
into Roosevelt, and he did. They urged
him to riddle the major contentious OF
his Democratic opponent on such mat
ters as the tariff, the alleged do-noth-
ing depression program of the Hoover
administration and Republican aid to
agriculture The President did just
that, even though his thrusts at Gov
Roosevelt were of the rapier rather
than the sledge- hammer type. In SO
many words, and at different points
Mr.. Hoover variously called the Gov
ernor a dallier with the truth and q
political quack. And before he came
to the end OF somewhat verbose ad-
dress, the President also paid his re-
spects in stinging accents to the pork
barrel end of the Democratic ticket.
i 4 +
Having thus enacted the John Paul
Jones role and signaled to the opposi-
ton that he's "just begun to fight 1t
remains to be seen whether Mr.. Hoover
has rolled up his sleeves, donned six
ounce gloves and generally assumed the
aggressive in time. This observer
heard typical corn-belter comment, as
the throngs milled out of the Des
Moines Coliseum last night. that the
President had made "a darned good
Speech" but ought to have made 1t
"long ago." There's the rub. Is there
time left during the next five weeks
to undermine and blow up the deep
laid structure OF resentment and revolt
that represent not the pro- Roosevelt
but the anti-Hoover movement here
in the debated and depressed Midwest? ?
Iowa is about to harvest one OF the
greatest corn crops in Its history. Be
tween six and seven hundred million
bushels are ready to be husked. At
the present price of around Is cents a
bushel it hardly pays farmer to tear
his corn from the stalk. Poverty in
the presence of plenty-that's the pic
ture into which Herbert Hoover ran in
Iowa. Multiply it tenfold, and apply
the same yardstick to practically every
other crop the West produces, and you
get an idea of why it'll probably take
something more tangible than an hour
and 40 minutes of the brassest tacks
that ever fell from presidential lips to
sell Hoover" out here at this late stage
Of the game.
Future historians will undoubtedly
hark back to the Des Moines speech In
Asys q eeme foE TIER aMthentic- -