Will Rogers Talks Trickle UP Economics in 1932

[demwing]

Rogers discusses his thoughts about Roosevelt's defeat of Hoover. Lengthy, but well worth the read, if only to see the way that the language has changed in the last 85 years, but the Republicans are peddling the same exact brand of bullshit!

Nationally syndicated Column: #518, Page: #183, as published in the Tulsa Daily World, 5 December 1932
http://www.willrogers.com/papers/weekly/WA-Vol-5.pdf (search for Page 183)

AND HERE’S HOW IT ALL HAPPENED

Well all I know is just what I read in the papers or what I see as I prowl hither and thither. With the election over everybody seems to have settled down to steady argument. The old “Hide Bound” Republicans still think the world is just on the verge of coming to an end, and you can kinder see their angle at that for they have been running things for all these years.I got a letter the other day from a very very prominent business man in Los Angeles, Mr. Frank Garbutt, the man that has made running of clubs a science, and not just a business.1 He owns every club from the great Los Angeles Athletic Club to Beach Clubs, to Golf Clubs, to Polo Clubs.

Now Frank is the longestheaded man you ever saw. Yet he said there wouldnt be a bank open in five months after Roosevelt took office. I don’t know what these fellows figure the Democrats are going to do with the Country. You would think a lot of folks would have their passage booked to some foreign land till the next election when they could get these Democrats back among the unemployed. Why they was in for eight years here not so long ago, from 1912 to 20. Course I was just a boy and can’t remember back that far but I have heard my dear old Dad say there was some mighty good times including a war thrown in for good measure.

Personally I never could see much difference in the two “gangs.” They used to be divided by the tarriff. The tarriff was originally supposed to aid the man that manufactured things. Well, the Democrats of those days dident
manufacture anything but arguments, so they was against the tarriff, but the South woke up one day and saw some spinning looms advertised in a Montgomery-Ward menu card, so they sent and got some and started spinning
their own cotton. Well they had cheap water power, cheap coal, cheap labor, and the Yankees started moving their shops down from the North. Well the Democrats woke up on another morning with a tarriff problem on their hands. The South had gone industrial in a big way. Well they started talking about a tarriff in bigger words than the North, so now that the South has got ’em some smoke stacks where they used to have some mule sheds, why they are just tarriffing themselves to death. So, that left the principal dividing line between the two parties shot to pieces. You can’t tell one from the other now.

Course the last few years under Mr. Coolidge and Mr. Hoover there had grown the old original idea of the Republican Party that was the party of the rich. And I think that was the biggest contributing part in their defeat.
I think the general run of folks had kinder got wise to that. In the old days they could get away with it, but of late years the rich had diminished till their voting power wasent enough to keep a minority vote going. Thiis last election was a revulsion of feeling that went back a long way ahea of the hard times. Mr. Hoover reaped the benefits of the arrogance of the party when it was going strong. Why after that twenty-eight election there was no holding ’em. They really did think they had “hard times” cornered once and for all. Merger on top of merger. Get two nonpaying things merged and then issue more stock to the public. Consolidations and “Holding Companies.”

Those are the “Inventions” that every voter that had bought during the “Cockoo” days were gunning for at this last election. Saying that all the big vote was just against hard times is not all so. They was voting against not being advised that all these foreign loans was not too solid. They was voting because they had never been told or warned
to the contrary that every big consolidation might not be just the best investment.

You know the people kinder look on our Government to tell ’em and kinder advise ’em. And many an old bird got sore at Coolidge, but could only take it out on Hoover. Big business sure got big, but it got big by selling its stocks and not by selling its products. No scheme was halted by the Government as long as somebody would buy the stock. It could have been a plan to deepen the Atlantic ocean and it would have had the indorsement of the proper department in Washington, and the stocks would have gone on the market.

This election was lost four and five and six years ago not this year. They didn't 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.

No Sir, the little fellow felt that he never had a chance, and he dident till November the eighth, and did he grab it? The whole idea of Government relief for the last few years has been to loan somebody more money, so they could go further in debt. It ain’t much relief to just transfer your debts from one party to another adding a little more in the bargain. No, I believe the “Boys” from all they had and hadent done had this coming to ’em.

[marym625]

1. K&R!

Thanks for this excellent history lesson!

[Paka]

2. Talk about confussed...

my grandfather hated democrats, hated FDR, but LOVED Will Rogers. He never saw the conflict.