Hoover Fought to Aid Farmers, Borah Recalls

Christian Science Monitor

Citation Information:

“Hoover Fought to Aid Farmers, Borah Recalls” The Christian Science Monitor, v. 20 n. 290, November 3, 1928.

Senator Vigorously Assails Smith’s Tammany Connections

“I make this challenge—Governor Smith has never seen a cablegram from Mr. Hoover to the effect that he kept the prices down so far as the farmer is concerned.”

With this declaration, William E. Borah, Senator from Idaho, maintained before a Boston audience of more than 10,000 persons who listened to him from 10:30 o’clock until after midnight that Herbert Hoover strove earnestly to have the Government keep faith with the farmer instead of hastening the after-war deflation in food prices.

Not against the farmer but against the food speculator was Mr. Hoover then working to control food prices, Mr. Borah said, and asserted that the complete message to which Governor Smith alluded in his speech at Newark, N.J., would prove this.

Aroused by hecklers who interrupted him with occasional cries of “What about oil?” Senator Borah made a reply which brought the audience to its feet with prolonged cheering. He first repudiated in strongest terms the men responsible for the oil scandals, and called attention to their banishment from public life, and then demanded by what right a candidate who has lived with Tammany Hall all of his political life and never denounced any of its corruptions might criticize Mr. Hoover for not having spoken against a man over whom he had no authority.

Assails Grafters in Oil

“No man more than myself despises the miserable, cowardly betrayal of the men who despoiled their Government of its rich possessions and betrayed their party and their country,” the senator said. “These men are gone or going. They were individuals and they have been driven into seclusion, some of them into jail, and all of them ought to be there.”

“But in 1924,” after the Teapot Dome disclosures, he pointed out, “there were 15,760,000 people who voted for the clean ticket headed by Calvin Coolidge.” Those people, “clean and patriotic men and women,” constitute “The Republican Party for which I speak, ” he continued.

“If Governor Smith insists in speaking of oil and criticizing Mr. Hoover because he did not denounce his associates, I want to ask you who has been the associate of Governor Smith in Tammany Hall for the last 40 years? Yes, for 40 years, and during the time of his partnership, Tammany Hall has robbed New York City of hundreds of millions of dollars.

“I don’t ask you to judge Governor Smith by his associates. That would be too severe. But I don’t hesitate to say that to remove Tammany Hall from Fourteenth Street in New York to Washington would be nothing less than a national disgrace, and furthermore, the American people are not going to do it.”