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public-works expenditures. They should accumulate a reserve ofnecessary public-works plans to be put into execution when businessactivity shows signs of tapering off. However, it was not contemplatedthat the governments should go into debt for thesepurposes but should carry them out in accordance with the principlesof traditional sound finance. This theory amounted merelyto a plan to carry on public building and spending operations inperiods of diminished private business activity rather than in timeof prosperity.When the depression appeared in 1929, therefore, Mr. Hoover,on December 4, 1929, sent a message to Congress proposing additionalappropriations for public works. He asked an increase of$500,000,000 for public buildings, $75,000,000 for public roads,$150,000,000 for rivers and harbors, and $60,000,000 to dam theColorado River. 4 He believed this could be done within the budget.Actually the Hoover administration provided $256,000,000 in 1929and $569,970,000 in 1930 for agriculture, public works, and farmloans while at the same time reducing the public debt by $746,-ooo,ooo. 5 The central theme of these proposals was to use publicspending merely as a stabilizer. There was a pretty general agreementwith the theory. But as the depression advanced there wasa persisting failure of tax funds so that by 1931 there was a deficitof $901,959,000 which increased the next year to nearly three billiondollars. 6 A part of this deficit resulted from the public-works expendituresbut most of it was caused by a failure of tax revenues.Hoover, of course, never planned an unbalanced budget. However,so imbedded in the public consciousness was the aversion to nationalpublic debt that the Democrats in 1932 roundly denounced theHoover administration for its extravagances and its failure to balancethe budget. The platform of June 1932 contained the followingas its very first plank:We advocate:1. An immediate and drastic reduction of governmental expenditures byabolishing useless commissions and offices, consolidating departments and'The Hoover Administration, by Myers and Newton, Chas. Scribner, New York, 1936.*lbid. Also Statistical Abstract of the U.S., 1941, p. 230.'Statistical Abstract of the U.S., 1941, p. 176.174