Address to the Gridiron Club.

Members and guests of the Gridiron Club:

I know that I have your full authority to express the gratitude of every guest to the Gridiron Club for its hospitality and its always unique entertainment-an occasion without counterpart in the world. These occasions are a contribution to public life. They illuminate dark places with satire and dismal places with wit. Their streams of humor refresh the political soul and their streams of ridicule quench the fires of ambition. I would not say that the Gridiron Club is the gyroscope of the ship of state; nor that it pours oil upon troubled waters; but it does serve to keep humility in the crew.

I rise with this humility in the knowledge that the accumulated and highly distilled wisdom of the Gridiron Club has already indelibly written conclusions in your minds upon all public questions and public men. Much could be said in refutation by some of the folks who have been referred to, but they will all take solace in the knowledge that the magic spell of wit and the illusions of hyperbole will fade before the responsibilities of your daily chore. But it is good to live a few hours in the land of illusions whether they be illusions of fairies, illusions of wit, or illusions of wisdom, and we are all grateful to the club for such an occasion.

The Gridiron Club has a reputation deservedly of being original. Yet sometimes it repeats. It became quite exercised at a dinner earlier in my administration over the appointment of committees and commissions to investigate facts as a useful preliminary to the determination of policies in the Government. Two of your skits tonight reveal that the club is still concerned.

I have noted from time to time that some of our opponents in Congress also show concern to the extent of heavy combatant oratorical anxiety at this sort of action. Although I lay no claim to authorship of the idea of securing facts before action, it is comforting to observe that this terrible and destructive practice has infected the Congress. The national legislative body has created no less than 13 commissions during its last session. Furthermore, there is even greater encouragement in the fact that the recent Progressive Conference ¹ adopted this pernicious practice and as the ultimate and only conclusion of its deliberations appointed four commissions, all of their own faith, and thereby assuring to a nicety the recommendations they will present during the autumn for the edification of the next Congress, and to make news for the members of the Gridiron Club.

1 The Progressive Conference convened at the Carleton Hotel on March 11 and 12, 1931, with the purpose of offering solutions to social and economic problems of the moment. The President referred to committees formed during the conference to investigate problems concerning agriculture, public utilities, unemployment and industrial stabilization, and tariff changes.

It is faintly possible that this new crop of commissions in and out of Congress may be intended to have political purpose in the next election. Indeed, this is the period of comparative calm when old campaign issues are trustfully taken out of the political stable, rubbed down, reshod, and given a trial heat; or new campaign issues are being earnestly sought for in every nook and corner.

I am reminded of a great and burning issue by the pleasure of listening to the song of "The Bells of Saint Mary's" this evening. That issue is the abuses which have arisen in the land from bells. Indeed it is the only issue which I can learn of that hasn't some exponent. It arises from a malevolent force in the land which invades liberty, stimulates grief, terror, and hate; it is more all-embracing, ever-present, nationwide and more terrible than the power trust. That issue is the abuses which have arisen in the land from bells. It is true that bells were one time devoted to poetic and religious purposes, but people no longer listen with delight to the call of the church bell to Sunday worship. No one longer writes poems upon bells. The sweet sound of the old-fashioned cowbell has been undermined by the barbed wire fence. And this change in the purpose of bells is a serious matter. They have degenerated into an instrument of terror and an attack upon freedom.

There is an untouched issue in this perversion of bells. However inconsequential this issue may appear at first blush, with deeper thought I believe it will appeal to you as an issue worthy of great effort. The whole bell evil has been increasing over a great number of years. The telephone company alone prides itself on having installed over 10 million bells since the Great War. There is no noise in the world so fills one's heart with alarm and foreboding as the telephone bell. This is especially true of officeholders, for good tidings always arrive by mail. But even the press suffers. For its imperious commands you must get out of bed at night. It endangers public health and it engenders agnosticism. It interrupts free speech. Moreover, our manufacturers have installed mass production in those bells attached to clocks for the evil purpose of an early morning alarm. To interrupt a man's sleep and jerk him from the realm of real bliss into the cold realities of another day is a greater invasion of human liberty than any yet wrought by the 18th amendment. Wherever one turns there are new and clamorous bells. In the middle of your meals you are summoned to the front door by their strident clang. They even interfere with free burglary. Bells have been attached lately to the "stop" and "go" signs, compelling us to adjust our pleasure rambles amongst historic scenes to the offensive command of rings on every street corner and crossroad. They have been extended to induce the terror in fire engines and ambulances. There are probably 30 million more strident bells clamoring in the Nation than before the war.

I commend the cure of this abuse to the Gridiron Club. ]t is an issue of more human importance than a vast number of the reforms now agitating Washington. It offers to your body an opportunity to convert your purely critical party into one of constructive action. It offers opportunity for a courageous stand upon States rights, States responsibilities, unemployment, public health, and the trusts.

No meeting of this club could assemble at this period without some reference to the hard times which surround us. From these references tonight you have witnessed both the joys, if there are any, and sorrows of business depression. It is a subject of necessity uppermost in the minds of all, not only in the daily manifestations of hardship but in its portent for the future. Although these strains in our economic structure exhibit its weaknesses, they invigorate and stimulate new thought for correction of the faults in the system. They also give birth to panaceas and fantasies which bring us sleepless anxieties.

Business depressions are not new to the United States or the world, but I am in hopes that the history of this particular depression will be written, at least so far as the United States is concerned, in different terms from that of its predecessors. It is possible, indeed, that this chapter of history, instead of being written wholly in terms of darkness and despair, may yet be recorded as the turning point in great social and economic progress.

This depression has now, in the view of our leading economists, proceeded to as great a depth in its fundamental forces of diminished production and distribution as any in a century, in fact, has its only parallels in the world depression which followed about a decade after the Napoleonic Wars and that which followed 10 years after the Civil War. And like those depressions it has its roots in the destruction of war and the dislocation of social and political institutions which flow from them down to today.

I have recently read accounts by a careful historian of the depression of 1873. Three major characteristics stand out in that period--the general bankruptcy, the widespread social disorder, and the actual physical suffering of the people. Strikes, lockouts, and riots dominated the times; police forces were increased, the militia called out, and Federal troops mobilized. These were but surface indications of the violence and hatred which the period developed. That depression was accompanied by monetary panics, bank failures, receiverships for nearly half the railway systems, and unparalleled foreclosures on homes and farms. It was estimated at the time that half the industrial population was without income. Actual starvation occurred in practically every city.

In contrast, we can say with satisfaction of this period of nearly 20 months of continuous economic degeneration that we have had fewer strikes and lockouts than in normal times; that we have had no mob violence worth noting to trouble the police or the militia; we have not summoned a single Federal soldier to arms. The first duty of the Government-that is, to secure social tranquillity and to maintain confidence in our institutions--has been performed. That has been accomplished by the good will and cooperation in the community and not by either force or legislation.

At the approach of the present depression I and my colleagues realized that while no action of the Government could stem the gigantic forces which had accumulated to dominate production and distribution of commodities in our country, more especially as the larger portion of the forces swept upon us from abroad, yet it was our duty to constantly encourage the organization of the community to mitigate the destruction of the storm with the utmost minimum of legislative action. The unparalleled growth of cooperative sense in the American people over the last half century has proved its strength. This mobilized voluntary action has preserved the social system free from hate and ill will, and has held the economic machinery in such order that it can quickly resume upon amelioration of these destructive forces. With only local and unnecessary exceptions there has been no starvation.

I can give you an encouraging thought on the depression, although I make no prophecies. It is either a coincidence or a profound action of economic forces that while every major depression has started at a different period of the year, yet our statisticians inform me that every major recovery has begun in the summer. It may possibly be due to the assurance of the crops at that item. Of the crops we have today great encouragement.

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. This is a period when the ideals and hopes which have made America the envy of the world are being tested. So far our people have responded with courage and steadfastness. If we can maintain this courage and resolution we shall have written this new chapter in national life in terms to which our whole idealism has aspired. May God grant to us the spirit and strength to carry through to the end.