Rhetoric as Currency: Hoover, Roosevelt, and the Great Depression

239 Pages·2001·1.11 MB·English

by  Davis W. Houck

Rhetoric as Currency
Number Four:
Presidential Rhetoric Series
Martin J. Medhurst, General Editor
In association with
The Center for Presidential Studies
George Bush School of Government
and Public Service

Davis W. Houck
Rhetoric
as Currency
Hoover, Roosevelt,
and the
Great Depression
Texas A&M University Press
College Station
Copyright © 2001 by Davis W. Houck
Manufactured in the United States of America
All rights reserved
first edition
Davis Houck, “Reading the Body in the Text: FDR’s 1932
Speech to the Democratic National Convention,” The Southern
Communication Journal 63 (1997), 20–36. Reprinted with the
permission of the Southern States Communication Association.
“Rhetoric as Currency: Herbert Hoover and the 1929 Stock
Market Crash,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 3, no. 2 (2000).
Reprinted with the permission of
Michigan State University Press.
Lyrics from “Blood Brothers” by Bruce Springsteen,
copyright 1995 by Bruce Springsteen (ASCAP),
reprinted with permission.
Lyrics from “Reason to Believe” by Bruce Springsteen,
copyright 1982 by Bruce Springsteen (ASCAP),
reprinted with permission.
The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements
of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials,
Z39.48-1984.
Binding materials have been chosen for durability.
(cid:1)(cid:2)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in Publication Data
Houck, Davis W.
Rhetoric as currency: Hoover, Roosevelt, and the
Great Depression/Davis W. Houck.—1st ed.
p. cm.—(Presidential rhetoric series ; no. 4)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-58544-109-0
1. Communication in politics—United States.
2. United States—Economic conditions—1918–1945.
3. United States—Economic policy.
4. Depressions—1929—United States.
I. Title. II. Series.
JA85.2.U6 H68 2001
330.973(cid:1)0916—dc21
To Roy Engle:
“We played king of the mountain out on the end
The world came chargin’ up the hill, and we were
women and men . . .
But the stars are burnin’ bright like some mystery
uncovered
I’ll keep movin’ through the dark with you in my
heart
My blood brother.”
—Bruce Springsteen, “Blood Brothers”

Contents
Preface ix
One: Introduction 1
Two: “Talk is Cheap”
Herbert Hoover Responds to the Great Depression 17
Three: Recontextualizing the Depression
War, Christianity, Confidence, and Silence 54
Four: “A Satisfactory Embodiment”
FDR’s “Run” for the Nomination 94
Five: Making House Calls
Health, Sickness, and the “Body” Economic 139
Six: Rhetoric, Silence, and the “Scene” of War
The Interregnum and the First 100 Days 168
Seven: Serendip 195
Bibliography 205
Index 221

Preface
The beginnings of this book date well before my formative years in graduate
school, back to those heady days now known as “The Reagan Revolution.”
Contrary to what my professor of microeconomics was teaching, I discov-
ered that the “economy” wasn’t a carefully delineated and circumscribed se-
ries of assumptions. Nor was it a mathematically precise and elegantly
drawn diagram on a blackboard. Rather, it was a story. It was a drama with
heroes and villains. And it was moved by how we were moved.
This book represents another part of that story, told from the vantage
points principally of Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt. It was in-
tended originally to be a study of the Roosevelt administration’s famous first
100 days. I wanted to see firsthand just how the heroic FDR saved capitalism
in three short months. Even a lousy storyteller couldn’t mess this one
up. And then along came Herbert Hoover, the grim-faced villain of
countless renderings of America’s Great Depression. In what was supposed
to be merely “background” reading, it became clear that Roosevelt’s story
couldn’t be told without Hoover. Or, perhaps the better word is “shouldn’t.”
To make sense of those first 100 days, Hoover must be in the foreground,
seated next to FDR just like that infamous Inauguration Day ride of
March4, 1933. Popular memory has inscribed FDR’s inaugural aphorism—
“the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”—into the lexicon of the Amer-
ican story. It was sentiment lifted right out of the Hoover years.
Hoover and Roosevelt both understood that the Great Depression was
“Great” largely because of a collective state of mind. The “story” had lost its
way, and thus had millions of Americans. Legislatively sponsored macro-
economic policy was only a partial solution to a much more profound prob-
lem. That was the problem of belief. It was also a macroeconomic problem.
And because it was a question of collective belief it was also a rhetorical
problem. This is a book about those rhetorical problems and their attempted
rhetorical solutions.
I suppose that it’s appropriate in a book ostensibly about money to
note some of the debts that I’ve incurred in writing this book—and to repay
them, at least textually. Dick Gregg advised the dissertation, where this book
initially got its legs. The highest praise that I can give him is that he
enabled me to write the dissertation that I wanted to write—warts and
all. Marty Medhurst helped me to excise many of those warts; more im-
portantly, his constant encouragement and enthusiasm for the project