Speech No. 2

As his own best campaigner President Hoover last week marched into doubtful Ohio, gave his Democratic critics a strong tongue-lashing at Cleveland, marched back to Washington all within 27 hours. His first speech fortnight ago at Des Moines had been temperately warm in its condemnation of his opponents and their political tactics. Speech No. 2 by Lake Erie's shore boiled and bubbled with hot personal indignation. President Hoover believes that Governor Roosevelt & henchmen are trying to steal the presidency from him with lies about his past and misrepresentations about his present. Radio listeners who heard only the Hoover voice imagined him flushed and fighting mad. The President's-audience within the hall saw a pale, distraught man, deeply aroused by political forces beyond his control. His scalding words, his tense tones were what many a Republican had wanted to see him use three months instead of three weeks before election.

Late Lights. White House lights burned far into the night before the departure as French Strother. literary secretary, and Walter Ewing Hope. Manhattan lawyer,onetime (1929-31) Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, helped President Hoover put finishing touches on his Cleveland address. Next day at 7 a. m. the President was breakfasting aboard his Baltimore & Ohio special as it slid out of the Washington yards. At Martinsburg, W. Va. began a series of rear platform appearances that were to continue throughout the 13-hour journey. At Cumberland, Md. where are tariff-protected celanese mills. President Hoover reminded a station crowd that the first measure from the First Congress signed by President Washington was a protective tariff. Dusk had fallen when the train reached Akron where a short tariff-&-rubber speech was made.

From Cleveland's Union Terminal President & party were whisked directly to the Public Auditorium where Calvin Coolidge, amid colored lights and "Onward, Christian Soldiers," was nominated in 1924. Assembled on the floor, in the basement, annex and siderooms were some 30,000 persons. The President was quickly introduced by David Sinton Ingalls, his young onetime Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Aeronautics, now Ohio's Republican gubernatorial nominee.

World & Worst. Except for the intensity of his feeling there was little politically new in the President's Cleveland address. His refrain about the Depression: "Let no man say it could not have been worse." The President fought back the Democratic charge that the U. S. and its stock speculations were responsible for the 1929 crash, stuck doggedly to his claim that worldwide forces were to blame. He insisted Governor Roosevelt* had wilfully ignored such factors as ''the greatest war in history . . . the killing or incapacitating of 40,000,000 of the best youth of the earth . . . the harsh treaties which ended the War . . . the carving of twelve new nations from three old empires . . . the increase of standing armies from two to five million men . . . revolution in China . . . agitations in India . . . Russia's dumping . . . gigantic overproduction of rubber in the Indies, of sugar in Cuba, of coffee in Brazil, of cocoa in Ecuador, of copper in the Congo, of lead in Burma, of zinc in Australia, of oil in the U. S. . . . new wheatlands in the Argentine, new cotton lands in Egypt . . . revolutions in Spain, Portugal, Brazil, the Argentine, Peru, Ecuador, Siam . . . repudiation of debts.. . . Declared President Hoover: "The United States did not bring this calamity on the world. . . . any party which exhibits such a lack of understanding should not be trusted with the fate of 25,000,000 American families. "

Promises v. Policies. With what he called a "collection of dull facts," Campaigner Hoover sought to prove that Governor Roosevelt's castigations of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff were based on ignorance, misconceptions or deliberate misrepresentations. He ridiculed his opponent's suggestion of a "nest egg" for public works. "It will doubtless surprise him to learn that the eggs have not only been laid but have hatched." At length he recited his relief measures which, he said,"speak louder than any promises" Hoover boasts:

"There should be no fear at any deserving American fireside that starvation or cold will creep within their doors this winter. . . ./- The general health of the people is at a higher level today than ever before. . . . There have been less strikes than even in normal times. . . . I finally secured the passage of the [Home Loan Bank] bill. ... I have practically prohibited all immigration. . . . We have fought a great battle to maintain the stability of the American dollar. . . . Credit is being expanded and normal jobs are coming back. . . . September alone shows an increase of 3 6/10% in employment. . . . Let no man say that things could not have been worse. Things could have been so much worse that today would look like prosperity in retrospect."

Lies!" The high point of the President's feeling was reached when he exhibited a copy of the Democratic National Committee's handbook for campaign speakers and declared:

"I find here a paragraph referring to my 'dark labor record.' I'm glad it's neither pink nor red. But they say: 'First and indelibly his early record is clouded by his former partnerships which contracted cheap Chinese coolie labor in South African mines.' . . . It implies that I engaged in the slavery of human beings.

''This calumny has been disproved and denounced time and again. . . . At the time Chinese labor was imported into South Africa I publicly protested. . . . I happen to have in the files at Washington from the man who first penned these lies a statement under oath humbly and abjectly withdrawing them. . . . Such contemptible statements in a political campaign would be ignored were it not that they were issued by the authority of the Democratic National Committee and it is proposed that a political party be placed in power over 120,000,000 people on the basis of votes secured in this manner."

The Auditorium audience whooped and roared its approval of the sharpest, most spirited thing President Hoover had yet said in his campaign.

*The name Roosevelt was never mentioned.

/-The "deserving"; was a new qualification. Last winter, again last September, he said"No one will starve" but some did.

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