National Affairs: Hoover’s Brief

It was as a great economic expert that Herbert Clark Hoover sought and won the presidency in 1928. New York, economic capital of the U. S., was notoriously cold to his candidacy. Nevertheless over its own favorite son he managed to carry the State without which only one President (Woodrow Wilson in 1916) has succeeded in reaching the White House in the last half century. Without New York’s future support President Hoover would find renomination and re-election exceedingly difficult.

Representing President Hoover at New York State’s Republican convention at Albany last week was not Ohio’s little red-faced professor-politician, Chairman Simeon Davison Fess of Republican National Committee, who had keynoted for the Administration at party assemblies in Ohio and Massachusetts. Instead. Mr. Hoover’s No. I Cabinet man, Secretary of State Henry Lewis Stimson, citizen of New York, was on hand. Statesman Stimson had served President Hoover like a good lawyer at the London Naval Conference. In much the same legalistic way at Albany he defended and expounded the record of his chief in a keynote address which seemed to set up definitively the national framework for this year’s Republican campaign, to foreshadow the basis for Herbert Hoover’s bid for renomination and re-election two years hence.

Mr. Stimson’s speech dwelt, of course. primarily upon economics.* His first concern was to relieve President Hoover of the political responsibility for the business depression. Persuasively by rhetorical questions and answers he argued that the slump was worldwide, that its causes antedated the Hoover Administration, that the U. S. was suffering less than other countries. He insisted the Democrats would have lost their heads in such a crisis, that conditions would have been much worse. He lavished praise upon President Hoover for the “prompt and effective” steps he took last November to minimize the effects of the stockmarket crash by holding a series of White House conferences on public works, wages, employment (TIME, Nov. 25, et seq.). Declared Statesman Stimson: “As a result of this the ship of business was held steady. . . . That was intelligent, carefully planned leadership. … It prevented the immediate panic which threatened, . . .”

Secretary Stimson declared President Hoover had made 35 campaign pledges, had fulfilled 34 of them.†He cited major accomplishments: i) The Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act; 2) Federal Farm Board; 3) a I% income tax reduction (for 1929 only) ; 4) increased public construction; 5) increased merchant marine; 6) cruiser limitation under the London Naval Treaty; 7) improved Latin-American relations.

Carefully avoided in the Stimson speech was Prohibition, prime question before the Albany convention. No credit was claimed even for the President’s appointment of the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement. When the keynoting Secretary mentioned the fine work of Dwight Whitney Morrow as Ambassador to Mexico, the delegates applauded long and loud. Mr. Morrow is a thoroughgoing Republican Wet and the New Yorkers were about to demand repeal of the 18th Amendment. Likewise Statesman Stimson had very little to say about government economy, because Federal expenditures have increased to offset unemployment. The World Court was disposed of in 15 words. Democratic critics, of course, could pick holes in the Stimson speech. They could mock the claim that the President exhibited leadership in the tariff fight, that the new law “redeemed” the party’s pledge, that the flexible provision was an economic wonderworker. The President’s achievement of world-wide good-will toward the U. S. was also debatable. Even Republicans thought Mr. Stimson painted too dark a picture of President Coolidge’s management of foreign affairs to make out a case for improvements under President Hoover.

The grave dignity of Statesman Stimson, after he concluded his speech, was upset by a clownish fellow in the hall who played silly flourishes on a piccolo.

On the last day of the convention the delegates nominated for Governor Charles Henry Tuttle, U. S. District Attorney in Manhattan.

*The last sensational campaign speech in New York by a Secretary of State occurred in 1906 when Elihu Root, speaking for President Roosevelt, charged that the agitation for Cuban independence in the newspapers of William Randolph Hearst, that year’s Democratic gubernatorial nominee, had been largely responsible for President McKinley’s assassination.

†The unfulfilled pledge: legislation to protect Negroes against lynching.