The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1932-06-20

reelection.
BY RODNEY BUTCHER
I washington Correspondent Of The Times
and NEA Service.
TTERBERT HOOVER, whose re-
IL nomination by the Republicans
makes him a candidate for re-elec-
ton. has had worse luck than any
President who ever got out OF the
House alive.
The depression has over-shadowed
everything else in his administra-
ton. It has made impossible many
of the things he had hoped to do
any tended to minimize many Of
/ the things he actually has done.
Hoover ran plop into slump Of
unprecedented depth and duration,
in which values have been deci-
mated, factories closed, business
slowed to crawl, banks gone bust,
farm prices shot below pre-war
figures and seven or eight million
persons thrown out of work.
incidentally, the depression and
its worries have matched the Presi-
dents hair with white.
He will be reelected this year if
the voters, believe, as his friends
insist, that he has given an inspir-
ing example of wise and courageous
leadership, holding the ship of state
on an even keel and, by the use of
every sound measure possible, saving
US from a panic that might have
been far worse than the one we have
had.
TINE other extreme picture of
4 Hoover is that he has been
weak vacillating, unfit, moving
only when frightened into action, a
detrimental force through his failure
to understand the situation and his
attempts to minimize it, stolidly in
different to widespread suffering,
utterly reactionary and violently
partisan though politically inept.
If the voters accept that picture,
as painted by the Democrats, this
will be Hoover's last term.
The going has been especially
painful for Hoover and the Re-
publicans, because in 1928 they sold
themselves to the country as per-
petual guarantors of prosperity.
Hoover was sure prosperity had
come to stay; he was the super
man" who would lead us to new
heights and abolish poverty.
But Hoover'S political stock is
now we'll above it's lowest point
despite the continued business re-
cesSion.
Once there was real doubt that
he could be renominated. At times,
but not for several months, Repub-
lican leaders have believed that
only miracle could re-elect him
that deadly, blind resentment
would cause voters to bury him in
November
Now, however, there is hope The
Democrats and their presidential
possibilities haven't been setting
the country on fire.
Hoover's encounters with congress
have increased his popular prestige
such encounters always do. No
one knows whether the electorate
really is sore enough to effect a
change at all costs.
HERE is a brief sketch OF Hoo
4 4 ver's record in regard to the
great depression:
When the stock market crashed
late in October, 1929, neither Hoo
yer nor any one else foresaw what
was yet to come.
Temporary palliatives were APP
piled as a business decline followed,
but for many months Hoover and
his SubordinateS in government -
'along with most industrialiStS and
financiers-poured out a stream of
bedtime stories to the effect that
the country was about to turn, was
turning, or actually had turned the
corner of prosperity. Innumerable
devices were used to revive conf
dence.
Hoover had acted quickly and
impresSively at the outset. The ma
ton cheered at his vigorous, I'M
precedented action.
He summoned leaders of industry,
labor, finance, state and municipal
government.
He urged business as usual" the
maintenance of planned construc-
ton, expansion of public works and
a policy of no wage cuts and no
strikes. The leaders promised CO.
operation.
At Hoover's behest congress
promptly passed a $160,000000 tax
cut measure as a business restora-
tive.
Later, also on his recommended
ton, it expanded appropriations for
public works which ran into added
hundreds of millions before it was
decided that the nation could no
longer afford that method of relief.
The net effect of Hoover'S early
measures can not be computed. Re
publicans say they were extremely
effective.
n n
SUBSEQUENTLY a great number
~ of committees, boards and con-
ferenceS have been created in con-
nection with various of the depres-
sion's phases-too numerous to
count or mention, including two on
unemployment relief, others on
boarding, drought relief, unemploy-
ment statistics and so on.
Every one eventually began to get
the point that this was a real de-
preston of uncertain duration, but
Hoover for long time continued
to hold out for preservation of wage
scales and relief through public
works.
He held conference after confer
ence, personally and by telephone,