The Wolf Point herald. (Wolf Point, Mont.) 1913-1940, 1932-08-26
Roosevelt INpIcrs lie ADMINISTRATION

Frederick E Murphy, owner and editor of the Minneapolis Tri
me who has often proven in practical ways his loyalty to wester
agriculture, and does not always agree with the administration
he Republican party, runs the following comment QUOTED in part
On Candidate Roosevelts Columbus speech made in reply to Hoover
speech of acceptance. The Tribune editorial says:
1T was a shrewd and able address that Governor Roosevelt
made at Columbus Saturday, shrewd because it struck at Mr..
Hoover. where the blows would do most damage and able be
ca,se If was forceful. definite and clear. Mr.. Roosevelt did
not mince words, he did not eQuiyocate, he did not pull ms
punches. The Republican administration, in his opinion, created
the depression in the first place, ignored it in the second place
lied about it in the third place, and took no really conservative
remedial steps in the fourth place, That, in brief is the Dem
ocratic standard-bearer's story and he will stick to it, come what
may, until the campaign closes in November.
"There is not the slightest doubt that if Mr.. Roosevelt is to
win the election, he will have to win it on the issue of depression,
but neither is there the slightest doubt that he will have some
difficulty persuading the American people that Mr.. Hoover de
nberately led the nation, and with it the entire world, into the
severest depression of all times. If the President failed to sense
the signs of the impending cataclysm in 1929, it is no less certain
that no leader of the Democratic arose in his prophetic might
and warned the nation that the crack of economic doom was go
ing to sound. If Mr.. Hoover underestimate the severe and
devasting nature of the crash in 1880, it is still not in record
that there va numbered, within The Democratic party a sing
seer or soothsayer who could fOretel the course that it would
take. And if the Republican administration failed to deal with
the depression as constructively and as infalHbly as Mr.. Roose-
Welt. with his rare gift of hindsight, could wish, it is still not
on record that the Democratic leadership as typified by Mr.
Garner in the lower house, came forward in the crisis with the
semblance of a sound or workable solution.
1--WE agree with Mr. Roosevelt that the postdepression era
of hysteria. initiation and speculation was unfortunate but that
the policies of the Republican administration were responsible
for that era on one hand, or could have been shaped to forestal
it on the other, is something that will require infinitely more
proof than Governor Roosevelt laid before his audience at Column
bus. We agree with him, too, that Mr.. Hoover was guilty o. an
imprudent and unjustifed optimism in the early months of the
depression. but that the President deliberately fasified the facts
at hand, or that he deliberately set out to cover up a situation
that no living man began to understand in all its implications,
is an unsubstantiated charge that does not do great credit to
+o b;ob1v +outad Roosevelt sense of iustice and fair play. We
agree with MI. Roosevelt that the depression was, in some meas
urable degree, of the nations own making, but we take issue
with him, and violently, when he attempts to brush aside, as OF
virtually no Importance whatsoever, the effects on this country
of an economic paralysis which held two hemispheres within
its clutch"