Mining Engineers

"No country can squander itself to prosperity on the ruin of its taxpayers."

"As a nation we must prevent hunger and cold to those of our people who are in honest difficulties."

"The basis of successful relief in national distress is to mobilize and organize the infinite number of agencies of self help in the community. That has been the American way."

"I am willing to pledge myself that if the time should ever come that the voluntary agencies of the country together with the local and state governments are unable to find resources with which to prevent hunger and suffering … I will ask the aid of every resource of the Federal Government.... I have the faith in the American people that such a day will not come."

"Our tasks are definite. The first to see that no man, woman, or child shall go hungry or unsheltered through the approaching winter. The second is to see that our great benevolent agencies for character building, for hospitalization, for care of children and all their vast number of agencies of voluntary solicitude for the less fortunate are maintained in full strength. The third is to maintain the bedrock principle of our liberties by the full mobilization of individual and local resources and responsibilities. The fourth is that we may maintain the spiritual impulses in our people for generous giving and generous service—in the spirit that each is his brother’s keeper."

"Reports to the Surgeon General... represent the final word upon the efficient and devoted sense of responsibility of our people in this obligation to our fellow citizens. Overwhelmingly they confirm the fact that the general mortality rate, infant mortality rate, epidemics, the disease rate—are less than in normal times. There is but one explanation. That is, that through an aroused sense of public responsibility, those in destitution and their children are receiving actually more adequate care than even in normal times."

"[Engineering] is a great profession. There is the fascination of watching a figment of the imagination emerge through the aid of science to a plan on paper. Then it moves to realization in stone or metal or energy. Then it brings jobs and homes to men. Then it elevates the standards of living and adds to the comforts of life. That is the engineer’s high privilege. The great liability of the engineer compared to men of other professions is that his works are out in the open where all can see them. His acts, step by step, are in hard substance. He cannot bury his mistakes in the grave like the doctors. He cannot argue them into thin air or blame the judge like the lawyers. He cannot, like the architects, cover his failures with trees and vines. He cannot, like the politicians, screen his shortcomings by blaming his opponents and hope that the people will forget. The engineer simply cannot deny that he did it. If his works do not work, he is damned. That is the phantasmagoria that haunts his nights and dogs his days. He comes from the job at the end of the day resolved to calculate it again. He wakes in the night in a cold sweat and puts something on paper that looks silly in the morning. All day he shivers at the thought of the bugs which will inevitably appear to jolt its smooth consummation. On the other hand, unlike the doctor his is not a life among the weak. Unlike the soldier, destruction is not his purpose. Unlike the lawyer, quarrels are not his daily bread. To the engineer falls the job of clothing the bare bones of science with life, comfort, and hope. No doubt as years go by people forget which engineer did it, even if they ever knew. Or some politician puts his name on it. Or they credit it to some promoter who used other people’s money with which to finance it. But the engineer himself looks back at the unending stream of goodness which flows from his successes with satisfactions that few professions may know. And the verdict of his fellow professionals is all the accolades he wants."

"In the large sense the primary cause of the Great Depression was the war of 1914-1918. Without the war there would have been no depression of such dimensions. There might have been a normal cyclical recession; but, with the usual timing, even that readjustment probably would not have taken place at that particular period, nor would it have been a "Great Depression.""

"Every collectivist revolution rides in on a Trojan horse of 'emergency'. It was the tactic of Lenin, Hitler, and Mussolini. In the collectivist sweep over a dozen minor countries of Europe, it was the cry of men striving to get on horseback. And 'emergency' became the justification of the subsequent steps. This technique of creating emergency is the greatest achievement that demagoguery attains... The invasion of New Deal Collectivism was introduced by this same Trojan horse."

"The recognition of Russia on November 16, 1933, started forces which were to have considerable influence in the attempt to collectivize the United States."

"Economic depression can not be cured by legislative action or executive pronouncement."

"I would emphasize again that social and economic solutions, as such, will not avail to satisfy the aspirations of the people unless they conform with the traditions of our race, deeply grooved in their sentiments through a century and a half of struggle for ideals of life that are rooted in religion and fed from purely spiritual springs."

"I am firmly opposed to the government entering into any business the major purpose of which is competition with our citizens... for the Federal Government deliberately to go out to build up and expand... a power and manufacturing business is to break down the initiative and enterprise of the American people; it is the destruction of equality of opportunity amongst our people, it is the negation of the ideals upon which our civilization has been based."

"In no nation are the institutions of progress more advanced. In no nation are the fruits of accomplishment more secure. In no nation is the government more worthy of respect. No country is more loved by its people. I have an abiding faith in their capacity, integrity and high purpose. I have no fears for the future of our country. It is bright with hope."

"In the larger view the major forces of the depression now lie outside of the United States, and our recuperation has been retarded by the unwarranted degree of fear and apprehension created by these outside forces."

"In its broad aspects, the proper feeding of children revolves around a public recognition of the interdependence of the human animal upon his cattle. The white race cannot survive without dairy products."

"When we are sick, we want an uncommon doctor; when we have a construction job to do, we want an uncommon engineer, and when we are at war, we want an uncommon general. It is only when we get into politics that we are satisfied with the common man."

"The day the stock market crashed (October 8, 1929) will forever be etched on the Etch a Sketch of American consciousness as "the day the stock market crashed," or sometimes "Black Tuesday." For on that fateful day, the nation's seemingly prosperous economy was revealed to be merely a paper tiger with feet of clay living in a straw house of cards that had cried "wolf" once too often. Although this would not become clear for some time. Oh, there had been warning signs. Just a few weeks before Black Tuesday, there had been Mauve Wednesday, which was followed, only two days later, by Dark Navy Blue with Thin Diagonal Yellow Stripes Friday. But most Americans paid little heed to these events, choosing instead to believe the comforting words of President Herbert Hoover Dam, who, in a reassuring nationwide broadcast, said, "Everybody STAY CALM, because there is NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT! Do you HEAR ME?? NOTHING!! HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA [click].""

"Nor are liberal ideals alone sufficient: Ours is a practical people, to whom ideals furnish the theory of political action, upon which they want not only firm assurance, but also effective practice. They want programmes, but they want action to flow from them. They want constructive common sense. They want the development of the common will, not the views of a single individual. They are beginning to realize that words without action are the assassins of idealism. On the other side, they are equally disgusted with seeking for power by destructive criticism, demagoguery, specious promises and sham."

"He is certainly a wonder, and I wish we could make him President of the United States. There couldn't be a better one."

"That man has offered me unsolicited advice for six years, all of it bad!"

"Hoover was hardworking, incorruptible, self-assured and self-reliant. But he was also aloof, shy, wary of crowds, awkward at superficial social relations, and extremely sensitive to criticism. "It was," biographer David Burner has written, "perhaps the private man's shrinkage from rough political contact, the predilection for working by himself, and the habit of perceiving problems as requiring rational, impersonal solutions that made Hoover uncomfortable with the rude, demanding Congress as well as with the press." Hoover was often curt with subordinates. A model of efficiency himself, he expected the same of others. Characteristically, he concentrated on detail rather than on the broader significance of a problem. He was a dull speaker, rarely lifting his eyes from the prepared text."

"Contemporaries struggled to explain what had gone wrong with capitalism. The American President, Herbert Hoover, was no uncritical believer in laissez-faire economics. During the 1920s, he had expressed his support for export promotion, collective bargaining, agricultural cooperatives and business 'conferences' as ways of tackling economic problems. In Hoover's eyes, however, there were limits to what government could do. The Depression was a 'worldwide' phenomenon due to 'overproduction of . . . raw materials' and 'overspeculation'; the ensuing 'retribution' was similar in its character to what had happened in 1920 and 1921. The country's 'fundamental assets', he argued, were 'unimpaired'. All that was needed was for the Federal Reserve to continue to supply 'ample . . . credit at low rates of interest', while maintaining the dollar's price in terms of gold; for the government to expand public works, though without unbalancing the budget; and for the necessary 'savings in production costs' to be shared between 'labor, capital and the consumer'. Hoover also backed an increase in the numerous tariffs that had long protected American producers of food, textiles and other basic products from foreign competition. Unfortunately, none of this sufficed to counter the plunge in economic confidence. On the contrary, the policy made matters worse. By refusing to relax monetary policy, the Federal Reserve failed disastrously to avert waves of bank closures in 1930 and 1931, actually raising its discount rate in October 1931; the attempt to run a balanced budget meanwhile prevented any kind of counter-cyclical fiscal stimulus; and the protectionist Smoot-Hawley trade bill enacted in June 1930, though it did not radically increase tariff rates, nevertheless dealt a blow to financial confidence. The German economy had to swallow an equally lethal policy brew of interest rate hikes, tax increases, spending cuts and protection."

"[Hoover was the greatest engineer in the world since] he had drained, ditched, and damned the United States in three years."

"During the 1930s, President Herbert Hoover enacted a massive deportation raid on people of Mexican descent, in which up to 1.8 million Latinos-nearly 60 percent of whom were U.S. citizens-were forcibly removed to Mexico. (President Eisenhower would reprise this racist campaign in 1954, when more than 1 million more Latino people were violently rounded up and deported.) As all this state-sponsored chaos played out, the AFL-CIO finally began to warm up to the idea of organizing Latino workers again."

"The spectacle of the United States Army routing unarmed citizens with tanks and firebrands outraged many Americans. The Bonus Army episode came to symbolize Hoover's supposed insensitivity to the plight of the unemployed. In fact the worst violence, resulting in two deaths, had come at the hands of the district police, not the federal troops, and the blame for the torching of Anacostia Flats was MacArthur's, not Hoover's. But Hoover chose to ignore MacArthur's insubordination and assumed full responsibility for the army's actions."

"To White House visitors, the President by this time seemed prematurely aged. He kept up a punishing regimen of rising at six and working without interruption until nearly midnight. His clothes were disheveled, his hair rumpled, eyes bloodshot, complexion ashen. He grew increasingly testy and brittle. "How I wish I could cheer up the poor old President," wrote the venerable Stimson, Hoover's senior by seven years. Never temperamentally suited to the pelting and abuse of the political arena, a man naturally diffident and inordinately self-protective, Hoover was painfully bruised by blows from both the left and the right. As early as 1919 he had conceded that "I do not... have the mental attitude or the politician's manner... and above all I am too sensitive for political mud." By the fall of 1932 he had lost all stomach for political campaigning. He took to the hustings only in October and seemed to campaign more for vindication in the historical record than for affection in the hearts of voters. Just four years earlier he had won one of the most lopsided victories in the history of presidential elections. Now he took an even worse drubbing than he had given Al Smith. On November 8, 1932, Hoover won just six states. The Great Engineer, so recently the most revered American, was the most loathed and scorned figure in the country. All eyes now looked to his successor, Franklin D. Roosevelt."

"Hoover brought a corporate executive's sensibility to the White House. Roosevelt brought a politician's. Hoover as president frequently dazzled visitors with his detailed knowledge and expert understanding of American business. "His was a mathematical brain," sad his admiring secretary, Theodore Joslin. "Let banking officials, for instance, come into his office and he would rattle off the number of banks in the country, list their liabilities and assets, describe the trend of fiscal affairs, and go into the liquidity, or lack of it, of individual institutions, all from memory." Roosevelt, in contrast, impressed his visitors by asking them to draw a line across a map of the United States. He would then name, in order, every county through which the line passed, adding anecdotes about each localities political peculiarities."

"This election was lost four and five and six years ago not this year. They dident start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the dryest little spot. But he dident know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue."

"Hoover's application of "volunteerism" to manage natural resources... proved no more successful than his application of "volunteerism" to stem the downward spiral of the Great Depression and rejuvenate the economy. The complexity and urgency of the nation's economic problems were too great for a solution based on voluntary cooperation."

"And yet, as the weeks dragged into months and the economy continued to founder, it soon became clear that some economic "medicine" even more potent than THE HAWLEY-SMOOT TARIFF would be needed to get the nation "back on its feet." This paved the way for the historic election of 1932. The Republicans, showing the kind of sensitivity they are famous for, renominated President Hoover Dam, who pledged that, if reelected, he would flee to the Bahamas. The Democrats countered by nominated President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, or, as he was affectionately known, "J.F.K."- who ran under the slogan "Let's Elect Another President Named Roosevelt and Confuse the Hell out of Future Generations of Students." The voters responded overwhelmingly, and Roosevelt was elected in a mammoth landslide t hat unfortunately left him confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life."

"I see no reason why such a body should have any power that leads to supergovernment, or that in any way minimizes the very essential principle of nationalism upon which our patriotism and progress is founded."

"You convey too great a compliment when you say that I have earned the right to the presidential nomination. No man can establish such an obligation upon any part of the American people. My country owes me no debt. It gave me, as it gives every boy and girl, a chance. It gave me schooling, independence of action, opportunity for service and honor. In no other land could a boy from a country village, without inheritance or influential friends, look forward with unbounded hope. My whole life has taught me what America means. I am indebted to my country beyond any human power to repay."

"I have... instituted systematic, voluntary measures of cooperation with the business institutions and with State and municipal authorities to make certain that fundamental businesses of the country shall continue as usual, that wages and therefore consuming power shall not be reduced, and that a special effort shall be made to expand construction work in order to assist in equalizing other deficits in employment... I am convinced that through these measures we have reestablished confidence. Wages should remain stable. A very large degree of industrial unemployment and suffering which would otherwise have occurred has been prevented. Agricultural prices have reflected the returning confidence. The measures taken must be vigorously pursued until normal conditions are restored."

"While the crash only took place six months ago, I am convinced we have now passed the worst and with continued unity of effort we shall rapidly recover. There is one certainty of the future of a people of the resources, intelligence and character of the people of the United States—that is, prosperity."

"The American people are doing their job today. They should be given a chance to show whether they wish to preserve the principles of individual and local responsibility and mutual self-help before they embark on what I believe to be a disastrous system. I feel sure they will succeed if given the opportunity."

"What the country needs is a good big laugh. ... If someone could get off a good joke every ten days, I think our troubles would be over."

"If, by the grace of God, we have passed the worst of this storm, the future months will be easy. If we shall be called upon to endure more of this period, we must gird ourselves for even greater effort, for today we are writing the introduction to the future history of civilization in America. The question is whether that history shall be written in terms of individual responsibility, and the capacity of the Nation for voluntary cooperative action, or whether it shall be written in terms of futile attempt to cure poverty by the enactment of law, instead of the maintained and protected initiative of our people."

"American life is builded, and can alone survive, upon . . . [the] fundamental philosophy announced by the Savior nineteen centuries ago."

"Let me remind you that credit is the lifeblood of business, the lifeblood of prices and jobs."

"You cannot extend the mastery of government over the daily life of a people without somewhere making it master of people's souls and thoughts. Expansion of government in business means that the government, in order to protect itself from the political consequences of its errors, is driven irresistibly without peace to greater and greater control of the Nation's press and platform. Free speech does not live many hours after free industry and free commerce die. It is a false liberalism that interprets itself into Government operation of business. Every step in that direction poisons the very roots of liberalism. It poisons political equality, free speech, free press, and equality of opportunity. It is the road not to more liberty but to less liberty."

"A good many things go around in the dark besides Santa Claus."

"You may want to do a little autograph trading and I understand it takes five Hoovers to get one Babe Ruth."

"Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt."

"We chatter to-day of reactionaries, conservatives, liberals, and radicals. It is true that mental attitudes can be classified on this gamut, but in their application as political labels in the United States they have been wholly distorted. For instance, the term ‘liberal’ flows from the word ‘liberty’; it does not come from the word ‘coercion.’ Yet the New Deal has camouflaged itself with this honored term. Of course the dictionary also gives a definition of ‘liberal’ which connotes giving generously and spending freely. This attracts many people, but the dictionary means liberality with one’s own money. A ‘reactionary’ in ordinary times is a gentleman who wants to reëstablish the status quo ante. The New Deal wants to do precisely that—as a matter of fact it is status quo George III or Diocletian. This process has now attained the label of ‘liberal.’"

"We must fight again for a government founded on individual liberty and opportunity that was the American vision. If we lose we will continue down this New Deal road to some sort of personal government based upon collectivist theories. Under these ideas ours can become some sort of Fascist government."

"In every single case before the rise of totalitarian governments there had been a period dominated by economic planners. Each of these nations had an era under starry-eyed men who believed that they could plan and force the economic life of the people. They believed that was the way to correct abuse or to meet emergencies in systems of free enterprise. They exalted the State as the solvent of all economic problems. These men thought they were liberals. But they also thought they could have economic dictatorship by bureaucracy and at the same time preserve free speech, orderly justice and free government. They might be called the totalitarian liberals. They were the spiritual fathers of the New Deal. These men are not Communists or Fascists. But they mixed these ideas into free systems."

"It is true that Communists and Fascists were round about. They formed popular fronts and gave the applause. These men shifted the relation of government to free enterprise from that of umpire to controller. Directly or indirectly they politically controlled credit, prices, production of industry, farmer and laborer. They devalued, pump-primed and deflated. They controlled private business by government competition, by regulation and by taxes. They met every failure with demands for more and more power and control . . . When it was too late they discovered that every time they stretched the arm of government into private enterprise, except to correct abuse, then somehow, somewhere, men's minds became confused. At once men became fearful and hesitant. Initiative slackened, industry slowed down production. Then came chronic unemployment and frantic government spending in an effort to support the unemployed. Government debts mounted and finally government credit was undermined. Out of the miseries of their people there grew pressure groups—business, labor, farmers demanding relief or special privilege. Class hate poisoned cooperation."

"Older men declare war. But it is youth that must fight and die. And it is youth who must inherit the tribulation, the sorrow and the triumphs that are the aftermath of war."

"What this country needs is a great poem. John Brown’s Body was a step in the right direction. I’ve read it once, and I’m reading it again. But it’s too long to do what I mean. You can’t thrill people in 300 pages... The limit is about 300 words. Kipling’s “Recessional” really did something to England when it was published. It helped them through a bad time. Let me know if you find any great poems lying around."