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.