The Outlook February 22, 1928 Number 8 VER'S political azy in the public a generation has g candidate for whose partisan was generally of the Secreinistrator has Lepublican offiember of my '. But where riff, on State Muscle Shoals nigration and tions and the rs clearly, I - was unde1st in his lot Republicans. › his mind le political has been Ws on eco published wer many ent themecifically. e Secre gin with the matigration, Pneraliw how hether, lower s Mr. any пра sion In aid Vor Herbert Hoover A Political Portrait By SILAS BENT dic basis. And as to the farmer, there is only approval of the co-operative movement, with a recommendation that it be extended and intensified. It is known that Mr. Hoover favored the President's veto of the McNary-Haugen Bill, but he has not said so publicly. He is in the dilemma common to Republican politicians, of favoring a subsidy to manufacturers through the tariff, but no subsidy to the farmer. Generally, it is supposed that Mr. Hoover is a bureaucratic believer in centralized government. This is in error. Governor Ritchie, of Maryland, is not more forthright in decrying centralization and paternalism. Let me quote some passages: "Our Government was devised to sustain a dual purpose: to protect our people among nations by a great National power, and to preserve individual freedom and local responsibility by local self-government under guaranties from the Federal authority. Through the character of our Government as a confederation of sovereign States, each with major power and responsibility for the welfare of its own citizens, there was established a decentralization of authority which guarantees not alone the maintenance of liberty from the freezing of central bureaucracy and stimulates maintenance of local responsibility, but our system of decentralization has within it the unique mobility to adapt its institutions to meet new conditions, and thus preserve a vigorous and progressive National life. By our system there were established forty-eight experimental laboratories for development in government." "Throughout the world in general perhaps the most vital of all issues is the danger of destruction to representative government through the overloading of government and the centralization of government." Alexander Hamilton would turn over in his grave were he to hear a Republican Cabinet officer ignoring in this fashion the doctrine of "implied powers." Mr. Hoover talks like a good Jeffersonian. And in this he is not alone in his party. Senator William E. Borah is a strong State rights man, and President Coolidge has followed suit on occasion. But Governor Ritchie, of Maryland, applies the principle to the prohibition question and the enforcement of the Eighteenth Amendment by the Federal power, through the machinery of the Volstead Act. Where does Mr. Hoover stand on that? Mr. Hoover has taken no stand on that in his speeches. His approval of prohibition is economic. He attributes this country's recovery from the shock of the World War in part to abstinence from alcoholic liquors. Into the question of Federal regulation of personal habits and moral standards he has not entered. His pronouncements have been made in two public speeches and a newspaper interview, from which I will set down passages: "It [the improved standard of living] is due to the increased skill, the advancement in science, to temperance, to the improvement of processes, more labor-saving devices-but most of all it is due to the tremendous strides made in industrial administration and commercial organization in the elimination of waste in effort and materials." "The application of the many discoveries in the physical sciences, the increase in efficiency both in workers and executives, the elimination of industrial waste, and the advent of prohibition Modern American painting may be divided into two branches: the older, the expression of a Western and Anglo-Gallic culture; the newer, springing from a distinctly Oriental background, makes a more sensuous appeal. Of this second style, the work of Maurice Volume 148 The Outlook February 22, 1928 Number 8 ERBERT HOOVER'S political H mind. Not in a generation has here been an outstanding candidate for he Presidency about whose partisan ommitments so little was generally nown. The brilliance of the Secreary's record as an administrator has immed his record as a Republican offial. "I am a partisan member of my arty," he once declared. But where pes he stand on the tariff, on State ghts, on farm relief, on Muscle Shoals ad Boulder Dam, on immigration and bor, on the League of Nations and the World Court? What the public remembers clearly, I lieve, is that Mr. Hoover was undeded in 1920 whether to cast in his lot ith the Democrats or the Republicans. nce then he has made up his mind etty fully, and he has made political eeches; but less attention has been id to them than to his views on ecomic problems. From his published terances it is possible to answer many the questions which present themIves, and to answer some specifically. NY political portrait of the Secretary of Commerce must begin with statement of his regularity in the matts of a protective tariff, immigration, id the farmer. But these are generalitions. I find nothing to show how gh a tariff wall he favors, or whether, he were President, he would shelve riff Commission findings for lower ties on sugar and linseed oil, as Mr. olidge has done. Nor is there anyng to show whether he would sympaze with the movement for a revision wnward of the general schedules. In uding to immigration, he has not said ether he favors restriction on a Nor Herbert Hoover A Political Portrait By SILAS BENT dic basis. And as to the farmer, there is only approval of the co-operative movement, with a recommendation that it be extended and intensified. It is known that Mr. Hoover favored the President's veto of the McNary-Haugen Bill, but he has not said so publicly. He is in the dilemma common to Republican politicians, of favoring a subsidy to manufacturers through the tariff, but no subsidy to the farmer. Generally, it is supposed that Mr. Hoover is a bureaucratic believer in centralized government. This is in error. Governor Ritchie, of Maryland, is not more forthright in decrying centralization and paternalism. Let me quote some passages: "Our Government was devised to sustain a dual purpose: to protect our people among nations by a great National power, and to preserve individual freedom and local responsibility by local self-government under guaranties from the Federal authority. Through the character of our Government as a confederation of sovereign States, each with major power and responsibility for the welfare of its own citizens, there was established a decentralization of authority which guarantees not alone the maintenance of liberty from the freezing of central bureaucracy and stimulates maintenance of local responsibility, but our system of decentralization has within it the unique mobility to adapt its institutions to meet new conditions, and thus preserve a vigorous and progressive National life. By our system there were established forty-eight experimental laboratories for development in government." "Throughout the world in general perhaps the most vital of all issues is the danger of destruction to representative government through the overloading of government and the centralization of government." Alexander Hamilton would turn over in his grave were he to hear a Republican Cabinet officer ignoring in this fashion the doctrine of "implied powers." Mr. Hoover talks like a good Jeffersonian. And in this he is not alone in his party. Senator William E. Borah is a strong State rights man, and President Coolidge has followed suit on occasion. But Governor Ritchie, of Maryland, applies the principle to the prohibition question and the enforcement of the Eighteenth Amendment by the Federal power, through the machinery of the Volstead Act. Where does Mr. Hoover stand on that? Mr. Hoover has taken no stand on that in his speeches. His approval of prohibition is economic. He attributes this country's recovery from the shock of the World War in part to abstinence from alcoholic liquors. Into the question of Federal regulation of personal habits and moral standards he has not entered. His pronouncements have been made in two public speeches and a newspaper interview, from which I will set down passages: "It [the improved standard of living] is due to the increased skill, the advancement in science, to temperance, to the improvement of processes, more labor-saving devices-but most of all it is due to the tremendous strides made in industrial administration and commercial organization in the elimination of waste in effort and materials." "The application of the many discoveries in the physical sciences, the increase in efficiency both in workers and executives, the elimination of industrial waste, and the advent of prohibition have raised our standards of living and material comfort to a height unparalleled in our history, and therefore in the history of the world." "There can be no doubt of the economic benefits of prohibition. Viewing the temperance question only from this angle, prohibition has proved its case. I think increased temperance over the land is responsible for a good share of the enormously increased efficiency in production, which statistics gathered by the Department of Commerce show to have followed passage of the dry laws." In that interview Mr. Hoover declined to say whether he thought prohibition had justified itself as a moral agency. Proof of this, he said, was difficult to find, one way or the other, in the strictly practical field. Senator Borah has been threatening to bring him more fully into the open on the prohibition question by addressing direct inquiries to him; and he may do so before this article appears in print. IN oppose Government operation of power plants at Boulder Dam and Muscle Shoals. On the latter development the Government has spent $125,000,000, and the dams already built are capable of producing about 100,000 primary horse-power, with a seasonal production of a million horse-power. The dispute about the development of this country's hydroelectric resources is one of the bitterest before the present Congress. A "power lobby" is maintained at Washington at a cost, it is asserted, of $25,000 a month, and the issue is certain to echo through the coming campaign, whether or not Mr. Hoover is one of the standard-bearers. In this case the question of Governmental operation assumes a special form, since a natural monopoly is involved, and it is the monopoly of a public resource. It is probable that Mr. Hoover will be asked to clarify his position with reference to it. The Scripps-Howard papers, which have taken much interest in the projects, and which have come out in support of the Secretary, may want to know. They are already in a somewhat delicate position, as Mr. Hoover is dry and they are outspoken advocates of modification of the Volstead Act; and they are likely to wish to seem as little inconsistent as possible with former pronouncements during the campaign. N regard to the relation of the Government to business, Mr. Hoover has expressed his attitude clearly by congratulating the Republican Party on having "restored the Government to its position as an umpire and not a player in the economic game." There are "faint odors of Socialism" in the country, as manifested in the groups which would have the operation of public utili-IN regard to labor and wages, Mr. ties undertaken by the Federal Administration or the individual States; in the fall of 1926 the Secretary, answering such groups, illustrated the evils of Governmental management. "There is no better example," he said, "of the incompetence of Government to conduct business than the recent history of our railways. Our railways in the year before being freed from Government operation employed 1,990,000 men and were not able to meet the demand for transportation. The producer and the consumer both paid out hundreds of millions in losses because of this strangulation in transportation. Five years later we find our railways under private enterprises were employing 1,746,000 men, or 250,000 fewer; they transported fourteen per cent more goods; the rates were reduced; the earnings have been increased; they met every demand of service: the wages of their employees had a higher purchasing power. That is a sufficient sermon on Government operation." In the light of this paragraph, it seems safe to assume that Mr. Hoover would Hoover's attitude may be classed as enlightened. One of his statements, comparing wage advances for various years with commodity prices, provoked criticism because the price level cited was of average wholesale goods, whereas the laborer does not buy at wholesale. But the Secretary's attitude is fairly illustrated, I think, in the following passage: "Nor have these advances in the condition of American labor been accomplished by the grinding of men between the millstones of industry. The hours of labor have sensibly decreased, the amount of leisure has increased. A Republican President and his Cabinet finally cured that great sore of the labor world-the twelve-hour day and the eighty-four-hour week. It has now been abolished from all American industry. And this was accomplished, not by legislation, not by strikes, but by co-operation between the Government and industries themselves. . . . The wage-earner of America today has much to lose by a change in National policies." And in another place, speaking of "the American woman in the kitchen "The most precious economic thing her life is an honest-to-God job for h man." The mystical faith attributed Mr. Coolidge in the spiritual by-pro ucts of prosperity apparently is shar to some extent by his Cabinet office "Intellectual, moral, and spiritual pro ucts," Mr. Hoover has said, "are not t products of poverty. Upon the stru ture of material progress as a base are erecting a structure of idealism th would be impossible without the ma rial foundation. . . . In America toda the poorhouse . . . has become nearly extinct as the slave-block." RAISING the two-party political s PRAY tem, Mr. Hoover has more th once noted the ill effect of a Congr arrayed against the Chief Executi "We have in the past," he once served, "given too little thought to vital part which the organization of litical parties and their single respon bility plays in the whole machinery democracy. . . . If you will examine breakdown of one democracy after other in Europe, . . . you will find th it is the repeated failure of their peo to place political responsibility and thority in one single party at a ti and to continue its policies, which broken down their democracies. . . Congress in control of one party and Executive in control of another pa in our Government means complete gation of our own theory of gove ment." This line of reasoning is suffici justification of Mr. Hoover's letter, 1918, urging that a Democratic C gress be returned. With a Democrat the White House, his theory of der cratic processes demanded that Mr. W son be supported on the Hill. There no need to palliate the letter on ground that it looked solely to success prosecution of the war. It looked a the fixing of party responsibility. In the field of foreign relations. Hoover's stand is fairly definite. H commonly thought to be more "inter tionally minded" than most of the ot men in American public life. He spoken with strong disapprobation of lending of money abroad "for unprod tive purposes," which was construed meaning for the maintenance of arm forces; and he has disapproved quite strongly of alien combinations to rest the supply or regulate the price of materials needed by American produc His attitude toward co-operation w |