October 29, 1929, the New York Stock Exchange crashed.
Panic ensued as Wall Street sold 16,410,030 shares in a single day.
Billions of dollars were lost and America plunged into the Great Depression.
In a drive to aid private relief agencies, October 18, 1931, President Hoover said:
"Time and again the American people have demonstrated
a spiritual quality of generosity...
This is the occasion when we must arouse that idealism, that spirit, from which there can be no failure in this
primary obligation of every man to his neighbor..."
Hoover continued:
"Our country and the world are today involved in more than a financial crisis...
This
great complex, which we call American life, is builded and can alone
survive upon the translation into individual action of
that fundamental philosophy announced by the Savior nineteen centuries ago...
Our national suffering today is from failure to observe these primary yet inexorable laws of human relationship...
Modern society cannot survive with the defense of Cain, 'Am I my brother's keeper?'"
Herbert Hoover told the National Drive Committee for Voluntary Relief Agencies, September 15, 1932:
"Our tasks are definite...that we maintain the
spiritual impulses in our people for generous giving...in the spirit
that each is his brother's keeper...
Many a family today is carrying a neighbor family over the trough of this depression
not alone with material aid but with that
encouragement which maintains courage and faith."
President Herbert Hoover stated at the Gridiron Club, April 27, 1931:
"If we shall be called upon to endure more...we must gird ourselves for even greater effort...
May God grant to us the spirit and strength to carry through to the end."
Herbert Hoover stated at Valley Forge, May 30, 1931:
"If those few thousand men endured that long winter of privation...held their countrymen to the faith, and
by that holding held fast the freedom of America, what right have we to be of little faith?"
President Franklin D. Roosevelt stated in his First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933:
"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself...We face our common difficulties.
They concern, thank God, only material things...
Where there is no vision the people perish (Pr. 29:18)...
We face arduous days that lie before us...
with...old and precious moral values...
In this dedication of a nation
we humbly ask the blessing of God. May He protect each and every one of us!"
In his Christmas Message, December 24, 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt stated:
"Of the teachings of Him whose birth we celebrate...the words
'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself' have taken on a meaning...
May the practice of that high ideal grow in us all...For now and for always '
God Bless Us Every One.'"
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