Another letter to President Hoover.
[Also from Down and Out in the Great Depression: Letters from the Forgotten Man, edited by Robert S. McElvaine.]
Contractor and Builder Real Estate Insurance Mortgages
Annapolis, Maryland
10 September 1931
My dear Mr. Hoover,
It is my purpose to write you a short letter and to cheer you along with your trying undertakings. During the war I had a brief interview with you when I was fuel administrator at Annapolis, and although I well remember you, yet it may be that I am not even a memory to you. However, I was so favorably impressed that I worked for you when you were elected President, although I appear to have been born a democrat.
In these days of unrest and general dissatisfaction it is absolutely impossible for a man in your position to get a clear and impartial view of the general conditions of things in America today. But, of this fact I am very positive, that there is not five per cent of the poverty, distress, and general unemployment that many of your enemies would have us believe. It is true, that there is much unrest, but this unrest is largely caused,—by the excessive prosperity and general debauchery through which the country has traveled since the period of the war. The result being that in three cases out of four, the unemployed is looking for a very light job at a very heavy pay, and with the privilege of being provided with an automobile if he is required to walk more than four or five blocks a day.
National Relief Director, Walter S. Gifford, and his committee are entirely unnecessary at this time, as it has a tendancy to cause communities to neglect any temporary relief to any of their people, with the thought of passing the burden on to the National Committee. I am also of the opinion that the suggested five billion dollar loan, that the Hearst papers have been agitating, is an impractical, foolish and unnecessary burden and obligation that they would place upon the shoulders of future posterity to pay off.
One of these days, when I am in Washington, I shall hope to greet you in person for two or three minutes, and during the interval believe me to be one of your well wishers in this ocean of conflict.
Yours Sincerely,
WHH
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Sucks Like a Hoover
Kip transcribes a couple letters written to President Herbert Hoover (first one hereand a second, more ironic one here) that cannot help but evoke discomfort at the correlation between Hoover's time and ours. In a spirit of helpfulness, Kip inks...