Herbert Hoover- Rugged Individualism Rugged

Herbert Hoover- Rugged Individualism

Rugged Individualism," Herbert Hoover, October 22, 1928

There is an intended audience evident in Hoover's speech "Rugged Individualism." Hoover gave the speech on October 22, 1928, just before the 1928 presidential election, and the speech was a campaign speech. Therefore, his audience was composed of potential voters. While the date and the fact of the upcoming election help support the idea that the audience was composed of potential voters, those are not the only facts suggesting that the speech was a campaign speech. In fact, the contents of the speech, even read without the temporal context, demonstrate that Hoover was trying to demonstrate that the Republican platform was the appropriate choice in an upcoming election.

This document is very important, because it helps highlight a difference between modern political beliefs and older political beliefs. To modern Americans, the Republican Party is identified as the conservative party. In addition to being politically conservative, Republicans have gained a reputation as social conservatives. This was not the case of the Republican Party during its earlier years, a fact that is well-demonstrated by Hoover's speech. He talks about the progressive nature of the Republican Party and the changes that had been made during the previous 7 1/2 years of a Republican-run government.

One of the most significant changes discussed by Hoover is the fact that the post World-War I period really helped usher in the existence of the American middle class. For modern Americans, the existence of an American middle class is something to be taken for granted. After all, the vast majority of modern Americans are members of the middle class, and pundits warning that the middle class is in danger of disappearing seem like alarmists, because it seems as if the idea of a middle class is synonymous with America. However, Hoover's speech, which revealed the financial transformation that occurred in America after World War I, helped demonstrate how the proper economic conditions were necessary to help create a middle class. From a historical point-of-view, this idea is significant, because modern Americans know that the relatively affluent post World War I era was followed by the Great Depression, the most significant economic event in all of American history. During that time, the American middle class was threatened, and the reality is that many Americans lost their status as middle class during the economic crises. People literally died of starvation, and the economic markets that had helped create the middle class, once destabilized, helped usher in a greater divide between rich and poor, since only those with the most assets were able to weather the Depression with economic wherewithal. However, context remains important, because the fact is that America did recover from the Depression, and the living standards of the middle class continued to rise after its recovery, and have consistently done so, notwithstanding less substantial economic recessions. As a result, America has become a country associated with vast wealth, not because of the tremendous wealth held by the top 1% of its inhabitants, but because of the incredible wealth held by all but its poorest inhabitants, which dwarves the assets held by most non-upper class persons in the world.