President Hoover Acts 
25 
flicts. It attempted to assure producers of a con- 
tinuance of purchasing power for their goods, and 
consumers continued maintenance of their standard 
of living. Finally, it took a step in the direction of 
“planned and managed prosperity,” indicated as 
proper in the temporary speeding up of forward 
construction and expansion programs and stimula- 
tion of foreign trade. 
Whether this supplied the necessary driving power 
to overcome the momentum of forces that were 
already turning the volume of production and trade 
downward with a decline in the general level of 
prices, remains to be seen. Its underlying theory, 
that continuity of the productive and distributive 
process, and hence of the purchasing power of the 
masses of consumers was of prime importance to 
reassure business and maintain the continuous flow 
of production and trade is altogether sound. It was 
calculated to mend as speedily as possible the dis- 
location occasioned by the transfer of the mass of 
traded stock issues to alien and more concentrated 
ownership at a loss to their former holders. It was 
a proper emergency measure to take in preventing 
the worst effects on business from the crash in the 
stock exchanges. 
Henry Ford was substantially right, therefore, in 
a supplemental statement issued by him after the 
first of the President’s conferences, when he sug- 
gested the need, in order to check such effect in its 
beginnings and as a measure of reassurance, of “in- 
creasing the purchasing power of our principal cus- 
tomers—the American people.” Mr. Ford added: