[Released July 10, 1930. Dated June 28, 1930]
My dear Dr. Patterson:
I thank you most cordially for the volumes of facsimiles of early American books which you have so kindly sent me by Mrs. Meloney's hand. They are intensely interesting memorials of the beginnings of the cultural life of America. They carry one back to those beginnings with a sense of reality and personal contact as no mere reproduction could possibly do. Anyone who is conscious of the great tree of knowledge and of literary achievements that have sprung from these precious beginnings cannot fail to be thrilled as he ponders their priceless value to our Nation.
I congratulate you warmly upon the idea of this series and upon the beauty of the books themselves. You are giving to thousands of us who cannot own or perhaps even see the originals an opportunity to share in the finest pleasures of the human mind and spirit. I indeed value the copies you have sent me, and the more that you have inscribed them personally.
Yours faithfully,
HERBERT HOOVER
[Professor Frank Allen Patterson, President, Facsimile Text Society, Columbia University, New York City]
Note: The Facsimile Text Society was an organization of American and European scholars intent upon reproducing by photography a number of rare volumes held in private libraries. Frank A. Patterson, founder of the society, was a professor of English at Columbia University. Among the books sent to the President were "Poems on Several Occasions by a Gentleman of Virginia" (1736) and "A Discourse of Trade From England Unto the East Indies" (1621) by Thomas Mun.
Mrs. Marie M. Meloney was editor of the Sunday Magazine of the New York Herald Tribune.
Herbert Hoover, Message of Appreciation to the Facsimile Text Society. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/211012