The potters herald. [volume] (East Liverpool, Ohio) 1899-1982, 1944-08-24

If Mr. Thomas r. Dewey wants the
people who are about to vote to get Il
clear understanding of the issues,
based on fact information, then he is
picking the wrong way when he says
that the Roosevelt depression" lasted
for years under Roosevelt and that
during that time there never were less
than 100000 unemployed.
A presidential candidate, making a
supreme effort to get elected, may be
expected to trif1e somewhat with facts,
but at least he ought to pick those
whose origin is more obscure than was
the origin of the depression which Mr..
Dewey has misplaced by some two or
three years.
This Dewey super-dOoper is just too
big one to allow to pass unheeded. 1t
is not that partisanship demands
clearing of the record; it is history
that demands it.
Is there any American of voting age
who does not know that the depression
landed upon us in 1929, that it hit the
al-time low in 1882?
Back of that crashing depression
were the SNUG policies of the Harding
Coolidge-Hoover era.
When President Roosevelt took office
it was on the heels of Hoover order
to clear out from Washington's own
deplOrable ''Hooverville" derelict
mass of veterans who had come there
to camp and hope for better days.
In many parts of the country there
were pitiful groups of shackS, thrown
up from the wreckage of packing cases
and tin cans, known under the generic
name of "Hoovervilles."
On his Inauguration day Franklin
Roosevelt lashed out with words that
flew over the land to these hopeless
ones, calling them back to selfrespect,
to hope, to belief once more in the
land for which so many Of them had
fought in World War L.
1t is not that Roosevelt did all of
the right things. But he did things and
some of them helped. He had inherited
a depression and he fought it. Let Mr..
Dewey please get straight about that.
There will be a lot of lies told during
this campaign. TO date Mr.. Dewey,
with this depression statement, holds
the record for size.
Mr.. Dewey might remember that
back, i'm the midst of what he has
called the Roosevelt depression, Mr..
Roosevelt was putting men at work at
tasks that Mr.. Dewey's friends then
laughed at as useless work. But he
was trying to decrease the effects of
the inherited depression.
And decrease those effects he did,
though even those who could afford to
laugh at "raking leaves" had field
day in the process.
PWA saved a lot of men, it saved
their self-respect The CCC camps
saved lot of Youngsters
And where Mr.. Hoover had estab-
lished RFC largely for business, Mr.
Roosevelt established HOLC to save
the homes of the little people who had
been brought to the brink of ruin in
the depression that came to us under
Hoover, Mr. Dewey, and NOT under
Roosevelt
One need be neither crusading
proletarian supporter of Roosevelt, nor
IA million dollar supporter of Mr..
Dewey to twinge bit at such a dis
tortion of vital history as we have had
from Mr.. Dewey. His labor advisory
committee should tell him better-and
tell him quickly.
Date back to the closing of the
banks, which revealed what SO many
of those great institutions had done to
help bring on the depression. That was
about the first telling shot at the
causes of the depression, though those
causes were worldwide and not all Mr..
HcOver's fault, nor the fault of the
dull Coolidge whose economy or words
must have been, at least in good part,
due to an economy of imagination and
capacity which was inherent and not
cultivated.
But the dates are carved in the cold
pages of history and i'm the painful
facts of life. Keep them straight.
The candidate who spills too many
words for later eating often winds up
with a meal of verbiage which causes
mental indigestion totally uniting him
for any public service-and the voters,
seeing this do not call him forth to
further betray his intellectual lacllings.
They are often compassionate that
way.CMW.