Hoover Says Next Year Things Will Be Better

THE JOHN O'HARA SOCIETY

On November 7, 1931, publication of "Let Us Hang On To It." The New Yorker. Delphian.

The Orange County Afternoon Delphian Society bought a travelling soup kitchen to serve those who were hungry as a result of the Great Depression, which was in its second year. The suggestion is that the members keep it.

". . . . what I dreaded most of all, more than any other single factor, was the reflection on our community, that we should have anybody so - so, ah, sort of, ah, not impecunious exactly, but so un-self-supporting that they would have to depend on the community for their sustenance. . . . we have never had what some communities have: out-and-out public charges. And that worried me, disheartened me, to think that even in the time of a depression such a thing might come to pass. . . . You never know what is just around the corner, of course."

I believe it was Hoover who said at the beginning of the downturn that prosperity was "just around the corner," and that Hoover said next year things will be better was a thought on Irma Fliegler's mind as she lay awake Christmas morning 1930 (Appointment in Samarra).