{"id":10463,"date":"2016-10-10T00:04:25","date_gmt":"2016-10-10T04:04:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phillyhistory.wpengine.com\/?p=10463"},"modified":"2016-10-10T00:04:25","modified_gmt":"2016-10-10T04:04:25","slug":"philadelphia-politics-and-the-presidential-campaign-of-1932","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/2016\/10\/philadelphia-politics-and-the-presidential-campaign-of-1932\/","title":{"rendered":"Philadelphia Politics and the Presidential Campaign of 1932"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Reception<\/a>
Reception for President Herbert Hoover at Reyburn Plaza, October 31, 1932 (PhillyHistory,org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Herbert Hoover wasn’t in Philadelphia long during his campaign swing for re-election in October 1932, and he didn’t have much to say. In fact, Hoover’s entire visit lasted only 30 minutes. Still, Philadelphians turned out in a major way for the Republican incumbent\u2014an estimated 30,000\u2014\u201cthe biggest assemblage massed in the central city district in years\u201d reported The New York Times.<\/em><\/p>\n

Proof positive that \u201cWilliam S. Vare, the\u2026still powerful leader of the Philadelphia Republican organization, really had determined\u2026to send his machine all the way down for the President.\u201d<\/p>\n

“It was Mr. Vare\u2019s show,” wrote The Times.<\/em> “His political henchmen were there in person and had enough support to throng Reyburn and City Hall Plazas<\/a> and nearby streets.\u201d The crowd cheered Vare when he rose to introduce the President. Then \u201cboos\u201d echoed across the plazas as Hoover rose to speak and continued throughout his very brief remarks. (Hoover “took no notice” of the “boos” and the next morning they were explained away as the handiwork of Communists.)<\/p>\n

He looked over the crowd<\/a>, paused, and then took a few moments to praise William Penn, the Liberty Bell, and \u201cthe greatness of this city and of this Commonwealth\u201d\u2014anything to avoid acknowledging the fact that the Great Depression had left at least one in four Philadelphians unemployed. Anything to keep from reminding the crowd that only two months earlier, police attacked 1,500 jobless \u201chunger marchers\u201d in an incident come to be known as the \u201cBattle of Reyburn Plaza.\u201d<\/p>\n

The President turned away from the podium and with his entourage walked back to Broad Street Station to take a train to New York City were a crowd at Madison Square Garden\u2014only 21,000 this time\u2014heard Hoover\u2019s major\u00a0speech. This was no ordinary presidential campaign, he said. Americans were in the midst of \u201ca contest between two philosophies of Government.\u201d Hoover’s opponent, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was \u201cappealing to the people in their fear and their distress…proposing changes and so-called new deals which would destroy the very foundations of the American system of life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are told that we must have a change, that we must have a new deal.\u201d But this, Hoover declared, would \u201calter the whole foundations of our national life;\u201d it would undo \u201cgenerations of testing and struggle.\u201d This new deal, he stressed, would rock \u201cthe principles upon which we have made this Nation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roosevelt would be risky. “Be safe with Hoover,” implored the campaign slogan.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Roosevelt\u2019s “brain trust” crafted a campaign strategy<\/a> around not committing “any gaffes that might take the public’s attention away from Hoover’s inadequacies and the nation’s troubles.\u201d<\/p>\n

Three years into the Great Depression, Hoover was deeply<\/em> unpopular, even in Philadelphia, with 553,435 voters registered Republicans and 85,236 Democrats. By summer, Roosevelt had developed a strong lead in the polls. But by late October, that lead had shrunk and Hoover had a narrow chance of winning Pennsylvania, If only<\/em> he could dominate in its most populous city.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s where Vare came in.\u00a0Come election day, only 39% of the nation\u2019s voters got behind Hoover; Roosevelt won by a landslide with 57%. His command of electoral votes was even more stunning: 472 to 59. Roosevelt carried 42 states, earning 206 more than the 266 electoral votes needed to win.\u00a0But he didn’t carry the Keystone State.\u00a0<\/em>Of Hoover\u2019s 59 electoral votes, 36 were from Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n

Thanks to the Vare machine.<\/p>\n

By the time of Roosevelt\u2019s inauguration day in early March 1933, more than 9,000 American banks had failed, industrial production had been cut in half and at something like 13 million wage earners were without jobs \u2013more than 280,000 in Philadelphia.<\/p>\n

What could the freshly minted president possibly<\/em> say?<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now that<\/em>\u00a0would be a speech worth getting out for.<\/p>\n

[Sources:\u00a0Lawrence Davies, \u201cVare Gears Machine To Win Philadelphia,<\/a>\u201d The New York Times<\/em>, November 6, 1932; \u00a0\u201cReds Blamed for Boos At Philadelphia,\u201d Associated Press,\u00a0<\/em>Philadelphia October 31, 1932; \u00a0\u201cGreat Depression,<\/a>\u201d The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia<\/em>;\u00a0United States Presidential Election of 1932<\/a>, The Editors of Encyclop\u00e6dia Britannica<\/em>; The American Presidency Project, Papers of Herbert Hoover;<\/a>\u00a0Franklin Delano Roosevelt\u2019s First Inaugural Address<\/a>, March 3, 1933.]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Herbert Hoover wasn’t in Philadelphia long during his campaign swing for re-election in October 1932, and he didn’t have much to say. In fact, Hoover’s entire visit lasted only 30 minutes. Still, Philadelphians turned out in a major way for the Republican incumbent\u2014an estimated 30,000\u2014\u201cthe biggest assemblage massed in the central city district in years\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10463\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}