Herbert Hoover’s Annual Message to Congress (1931)

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If we lift our vision beyond these immediate emergencies we find fundamental national gains even amid depression.… For the first time in the history of our major economic depressions there has been a notable absence of public disorders and industrial conflict.… Business depressions have been recurrent in the life of our country and are but transitory. The nation has emerged from each of them with increased strength and virility because of the enlightenment they have brought, the readjustments and the larger understanding of the realities and obligations of life and work which come from them.…

The emergencies of unemployment have been met by action in many directions. The appropriations for the continued speeding up of the great Federal construction program have provided direct and indirect aid to unemployment upon a large scale.… Immigration has been curtailed by administrative action.… The expansion of Federal employment agencies under appropriations by the Congress...