American-Made: The Enduring Legacy of the WPA : When FDR Put the Nation to Work by Nick Taylor
Authors: Nick Taylor
Tags: United States, General, History, 20th Century, Political Science, Business & Economics, Politics, Careers, Job Hunting, Economic Policy, Public Policy, Job creation, Job creation - United States - History - 20th century
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picketers were released.
Throughout the Midwest, county sheriffs, judges, lawyers, and farm foreclosure auctioneers were facing the fury of the farmers. A lawyer who had foreclosed on a farm in Kansas was found murdered. As they did at foreclosure auctions, farmers massed in courtrooms to intimidate judges and lawyers. One hung a hangman’s noose from his barn in case prospective buyers missed the point. Campaigning for the governorship of North Dakota, William “Wild Bill” Langer suggested farmers treat the banker “like a chicken thief” and shoot him if he set foot on their farms.
As Hoover’s train steamed through the fall landscape, making the stops in small towns that were a campaign tradition, the president could see just how far his political capital had ebbed. Whistle stops usually meant cheers and applause from the audiences who gathered around the rear platform of the last car to greet campaigning politicians, but cold stares and silence were what faced Hoover when he emerged with his wife to stand behind the Pennsylvania Railroad logo. Aides noticed that the men in the Secret Service detail guarding him were growing increasingly nervous with each stop. When he finally reached Des Moines, the militant farmers of Milo Reno’s Farmers’ Holiday Association were waiting there by the thousands, brandishing signs that read, “In Hoover we trusted; now we are busted.” Republican officials turned out 100,000 spectators for the presidential parade, but the Iowa National Guard, warned to expect trouble, stationed troops along the four-mile route.
Hoover’s speech that night was yet another recitation of the steps he had taken to battle the depression, without which “things would be infinitely worse.” He defended balancing the budget, ensuring the sound credit of the government, continuing protective tariffs, and maintaining the gold standard that tied the money in circulation to the nation’s gold reserves. For the Republicans these were absolutes, as fundamental as the Constitution. He attacked the Democrats for advocating federal spending to create jobs and relieve want when these were not the government’s responsibility, and charged that the source of the depression lay outside the United States, in the worldwide economic turmoil. It was a speech heavy with detail presented without flair. For a man who was fundamentally shy and introverted, who preferred the meetings and conferences of governance to the tumult and spontaneity of campaigning, it was a brave performance. But the gloom surrounding him only one month before the election was inadvertently captured in a Des Moines Register headline the next day. It referred to an unusual occurrence at a send-off party just before the Hoovers left Des Moines: “Hoover Smiles at Reception.”
In that final month, the president threw himself fully into the campaign, traveling to the Midwest, Maryland, and West Virginia. He seemed desperate to explain himself, to convince the country that his position was the right one. There could be no departure from tradition, no change in thinking. What the government had always done, it would keep doing. What it had never done (beyond measures he had already tried, such as the RFC), it should not attempt. The Democrats meant revolution, the end of the American way of life. But the people had lost patience. A crowd waiting at the station booed him in Detroit, and on the route to the auditorium where he was to speak people brandished signs that read “Down with Hoover.” In St. Paul, he called the Democrats “the party of the mob.” When he went on to say, “Thank God we still have a government in Washington that knows how to deal with a mob,” apparently a reference to the eviction of the Bonus Army, his audience stirred with disapproval.
Meanwhile, Roosevelt moved forward, progress that was based less on what he said than on how he said it. His proposals were still vague, but in contrast to Hoover’s grim
Throughout the Midwest, county sheriffs, judges, lawyers, and farm foreclosure auctioneers were facing the fury of the farmers. A lawyer who had foreclosed on a farm in Kansas was found murdered. As they did at foreclosure auctions, farmers massed in courtrooms to intimidate judges and lawyers. One hung a hangman’s noose from his barn in case prospective buyers missed the point. Campaigning for the governorship of North Dakota, William “Wild Bill” Langer suggested farmers treat the banker “like a chicken thief” and shoot him if he set foot on their farms.
As Hoover’s train steamed through the fall landscape, making the stops in small towns that were a campaign tradition, the president could see just how far his political capital had ebbed. Whistle stops usually meant cheers and applause from the audiences who gathered around the rear platform of the last car to greet campaigning politicians, but cold stares and silence were what faced Hoover when he emerged with his wife to stand behind the Pennsylvania Railroad logo. Aides noticed that the men in the Secret Service detail guarding him were growing increasingly nervous with each stop. When he finally reached Des Moines, the militant farmers of Milo Reno’s Farmers’ Holiday Association were waiting there by the thousands, brandishing signs that read, “In Hoover we trusted; now we are busted.” Republican officials turned out 100,000 spectators for the presidential parade, but the Iowa National Guard, warned to expect trouble, stationed troops along the four-mile route.
Hoover’s speech that night was yet another recitation of the steps he had taken to battle the depression, without which “things would be infinitely worse.” He defended balancing the budget, ensuring the sound credit of the government, continuing protective tariffs, and maintaining the gold standard that tied the money in circulation to the nation’s gold reserves. For the Republicans these were absolutes, as fundamental as the Constitution. He attacked the Democrats for advocating federal spending to create jobs and relieve want when these were not the government’s responsibility, and charged that the source of the depression lay outside the United States, in the worldwide economic turmoil. It was a speech heavy with detail presented without flair. For a man who was fundamentally shy and introverted, who preferred the meetings and conferences of governance to the tumult and spontaneity of campaigning, it was a brave performance. But the gloom surrounding him only one month before the election was inadvertently captured in a Des Moines Register headline the next day. It referred to an unusual occurrence at a send-off party just before the Hoovers left Des Moines: “Hoover Smiles at Reception.”
In that final month, the president threw himself fully into the campaign, traveling to the Midwest, Maryland, and West Virginia. He seemed desperate to explain himself, to convince the country that his position was the right one. There could be no departure from tradition, no change in thinking. What the government had always done, it would keep doing. What it had never done (beyond measures he had already tried, such as the RFC), it should not attempt. The Democrats meant revolution, the end of the American way of life. But the people had lost patience. A crowd waiting at the station booed him in Detroit, and on the route to the auditorium where he was to speak people brandished signs that read “Down with Hoover.” In St. Paul, he called the Democrats “the party of the mob.” When he went on to say, “Thank God we still have a government in Washington that knows how to deal with a mob,” apparently a reference to the eviction of the Bonus Army, his audience stirred with disapproval.
Meanwhile, Roosevelt moved forward, progress that was based less on what he said than on how he said it. His proposals were still vague, but in contrast to Hoover’s grim
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