As I continue shepherding the transition of my website into one which is entirely focused on passages from biographies of Lyndon Johnson, I thought I would take a quick detour to share a passage about Herbert Hoover (which I found in Path to Power). Hoover doesn’t want to do anything about the Depression. Like, when he gets asked about hunger, he says “Nobody is actually starving. The hoboes, for example, are better fed than they have ever been. One hobo in New York got ten meals in one day.”
Then, in 1932, he starts campaigning for another term, traveling across the country by train.
As the President’s train was pulling into Detroit, the men on it heard a hoarse, rhythmic chant rising from thousands of throats; for a moment they had hopes of an enthusiastic reception—and then they made out the words of the chant: “Hang Hoover! Hang Hoover! Hang Hoover!”
And as the Presidential caravan sped past, those inside his limousine saw, through its thick windows, that the route was lined, block after block, with tens of thousands of men and women who were, in Gene Smith’s words, “utterly silent and grim save for those who could be glimpsed shaking their fists and shouting unheard words and phrases.”
When, in St. Paul, the President defended his treatment of the Bonus Marchers [out of work veterans Hoover had driven from DC] , saying, “Thank God we still have a government in Washington that still knows how to deal with a mob,” the crowd responded with one vast snarl, a snarl so vicious that the Secret Service chief suddenly found himself covered with sweat.