2024 - M/J - 9489/13 | Q1

Source A

Dear Mr President,

You have told us to spend our money to end the Depression, but you did not tell us what to use for money. You tell us working men to build homes, in face of the fact that nearly every working man has had his home taken off him. Two men a day are taking their lives out of despair in this city of Detroit, and hundreds are starving to death. Yet one of America’s richest men made $259 million last year. You came to our city and stopped our soldier boys from getting their promised bonus. You are a millionaire with $12 million trying to stop some soldiers getting their bonus when they do not have $12 to their name.

From a letter to President Hoover from an unemployed toolmaker, September 1931.
A White House official marked it ‘No use answering’.

Source B

My reasons for demanding the impeachment of Mr Mellon, the Secretary to the Treasury, and his removal from office are simple. He is a ruthless and hard-hearted man. He has abused his great office of state. His motives for ensuring that more than $2 billion of taxes were refunded to banks and corporations were dishonest ones. He owned banks that collected those refunds. Such corruption must be eliminated. All are aware that it is his influence over the President that has led to the absence of any effective policies to ease the growing Depression. His ‘leave-it-alone’ views will not solve our problems. We are assured that his Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) will bring relief. It will not. It is designed by rich men like him to protect only the rich. We are told by Mr Hoover, in order to justify his own inaction, that this Depression will ‘cleanse’ our economy. It will not. It will starve us.

From a speech in the House of Representatives by a Democratic Congressman, January 1932.

Source C

Source D

Mr Mellon was not hard-hearted. He was generous and sympathetic with all suffering. His formula for responding to the crashing economy, ‘leave-it-alone’, arose not from indifference to suffering but from sympathy for it. He felt that there would be less suffering if his policies were pursued. I fully supported this view. Slumps have vital, ultimately beneficial, work to do. They must be left alone to do it. People will then work harder and live a more moral life. Prosperity has coddled and corrupted people; the slump will reform them. It will restore order, morality, and prosperity. I was more than content to keep him in office as Secretary to the Treasury in my administration as I considered him to be an honest and incorruptible public servant who put the interests of the country before his own. The RFC was an example of this. The attempted impeachment by the Democrats was unnecessary and spiteful. To avoid such controversy in a crisis, I rewarded his long public service by making him Ambassador to London.

From ‘The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover, the Great Depression’, published in 1954.