Herbert Hoover

Our understanding is that the revolt has quite collapsed in Vera Cruz.

There are some 820,000 people on the Federal payroll.

The purpose and scope of the Law Enforcement Commission, as stated in my inaugural address, is to critically consider the entire Federal machinery of justice, the redistribution of its functions, the simplification of its procedure, the…

The whole constitutes one problem of better and more effective organization and enforcement.

It is traditional for the principal directing heads of the Government whose appointments are at the pleasure of the President, both at home and in foreign service, to tender their resignations with the advent of a new President.

The expansion of credit facilities by the Federal Reserve System and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation has been of incalculable value.

The measures and policies which have procured this turn toward recovery should be continued until the depression is passed, and then the emergency agencies should be promptly liquidated.

The unprecedented emergency measures enacted and policies adopted undoubtedly saved the country from economic disaster.

The provisions made for loans from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, to States that have exhausted their own resources, guarantee that there should be no hunger or suffering from cold in the country.

In the provision against distress during this winter, the great private agencies of the country have been mobilized again; the generosity of our people has again come into evidence to a degree in which all America may take great pride.

In the face of widespread hardship our people have demonstrated daily a magnificent sense of humanity, of individual and community responsibility for the welfare of the less fortunate.

While we have recently engaged in the aggressive contest of a national election, its very tranquillity and the acceptance of its results furnish abundant proof of the strength of our institutions.

Ours must be a country of such stability and security as can not fail to carry forward and enlarge among all the people that abundant life of material and spiritual opportunity which it has represented among all nations since its beginning.

With that spirit, I have faith that out of it will come a sounder life, a truer standard of values, a greater recognition of the results of honest effort, and a healthier atmosphere in which to rear our children.

It is a distressful time for many of our people, but they have shown qualities as high in fortitude, courage, and resourcefulness as ever in our history.

The mobility of our institutions, the richness of our resources, and the abilities of our people enable us to meet them unafraid.

It has carried us in a century and a half to leadership of the economic world.

Rather it is the outgrowth of the experience of America, and expresses the faith and spirit of our people.

Of this, however, we are sure: Our system, based upon the ideals of individual initiative and of equality of opportunity, is not an artificial thing.

It is the duty of the National Government to insist that both the local governments and the individual shall assume and bear these responsibilities as a fundamental of preserving the very basis of our freedom.

If the individual surrenders his own initiative and responsibilities, he is surrendering his own freedom and his own liberty.

Again, just as the largest measure of responsibility in the government of the Nation rests upon local self-government, so does the largest measure of social responsibility in our country rest upon the individual.

The Federal Government must not encroach upon nor permit local communities to abandon that precious possession of local initiative and responsibility.

In reaching solutions we must not jeopardize those principles which we have found to be the basis of the growth of the Nation.

The moral results are of the utmost importance.