Herbert Hoover to Benjamin Strong Jr.

Title

Herbert Hoover to Benjamin Strong Jr.

Creator

Hoover, Herbert, 1874-1964

Identifier

WWP18786

Date

1921 August 3

Description

Herbert Hoover writes Benjamin Strong Jr. regarding relief efforts in eastern Europe.

Source

Benjamin Strong Jr. Papers, New York Federal Reserve Bank

Subject

Hoover, Herbert, 1874-1964--Correspondence

Language

English

Text

COPY.
Dear Mr. Strong,
I am glad to have occasion to refer to our discussions upon the commercial problems arising from the after-war situation in the new and enlarged nations of Eastern Europe between the Baltic and the Mediterranean.
The economic rehabilitation of these 100,000,000 people is vital to our commerce, not only directly with them but also with the other states whose prosperity so much depends upon them. In the last analysis the rebuilding of economic life among these people is of daily importance to every worker of farmer in our country and the whole world.
In the two years since the armistice while the production of food and the situation in many industries has improved, yet it is apparently impossible for them to accomplish certain fundamental steps unaided. Not only have their fiscal and currency situations become steadily worse but their continued political fears serve to maintain a host of economic barriers which defeat the flow of goods and services between them that are so vital to their recovery.
We must remember that these states represent a readjustment of old political boundaries with scores of years of injustice and wrong in the background. The conflict of political objective between them and between the great powers seems to render beneficient political action of little hope. I believe that if most men of economic and commercial thought are agreed that if these states are to recover it must be by forces entirely divorced from political origin or action, that is through the healing power of assistance of private finance and commerce.
Therefore it is the hope of the President and my colleagues in this administration that you can pursue the conversations which have been suggested, that is, to determine whether the great public banks in the interested countries as well as the United States could not formulate a plan for financial co-operation with these states of purely private character that would embrace essentially:

a. Rehabilitation of currencies,
b. Provision for initial raw material,
c. Conditional to the above such proper o-operation of each of the Eastern European governments in the inauguration and maintenance of such economic policies as would give promishe of economic stability.

I fear that unless some such helpful action of this kind can be taken by private institutions of great responsibility to the public, recovery of foreign commerce may be prolonged over many years and I know of no more beneficient service that can be performed by private business.A plan of this kind must fail if, as has been proposed, it be confined to only one of these states because none of them are economically independent of its neighbours but it would succeed if established in three or four of them. Such a plan should be welcomed by each of them and its consummation through the processes of business and economic life would avoid infinite pitfalls of international political action.

Yours faithfully,
H. Hoover

Original Format

Letter

To

Strong, Benjamin, 1872-1928

Files

http://resources.presidentwilson.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/D08363.pdf

Tags

Citation

Hoover, Herbert, 1874-1964, “Herbert Hoover to Benjamin Strong Jr.,” 1921 August 3, WWP18786, Benjamin Strong Jr. Papers, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum, Staunton, Virginia.