Advocacy chain letter.  "Hoover's Mistakes"  Anti-Roosevelt.  US, 1940.

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                        THIS  IS  A  CHAIN  LETTER  -  DO  NOT  BREAK  THE  CHAIN

                                              HOOVER'S MISTAKES


                    You probably have never seen a copy of the Wallace Miner,
weekly newspaper of Wallace, Idaho.  We hadn't until a good friend
brought it to our attention, and We discovered a gem of an editorial
about the Hoovers.  Here it is.

      "An inspired piece from one of the New Deal propagandists says
that 'Hoover Was A Complete Failure'.  So he was.  He failed to draw
out his salary of $75,000.00 a year while he was President, turning
it all back into the Treasury.  He failed to have his sons organize
insurance firms to write insurance on government enterprises.  He
built a Rapidan resort for fishing and recreation at his own expense
and gave it to the Government.  None of his sons went racing through
the divorce courts to the disillusionment of the public.  He never
bundled up a lot of government documents to sell as a book to the
faithful at a huge profit to himself and he never sold himself into
political slavery to a labor organization for a $500,000.00 campaign
fund.  He gathered a marvelous collection of war stuff and built a
museum for it, but failed to ask Congress to pay the bill - he paid
it himself.

     He did not preach and promote class hatred and he did not try
to pact the Supreme Court.  He did not plow up every third row of
cotton and he did not promise the American People one thing while
at the very same moment doing everything to accomplish the directly
opposite result.

     He did not ask Congress to assess the taxpayers a billion
dollars every time some one shot off a firecracker in Europe and he
did not go on fishing trips on government warships, accompanied by
a fleet of destroyers.  Neither did he kill off all the farmer's
little pigs or encourage the importation of Argentine beef.  In fact
there were a lot of foolish things that Hoover didn't do that some
other people have done.   There are a lot of constructive things he
could have done if he had not had the opposition of a Democratic
Congress, but anyway, he did not leave the American People
$45,000,000,000 in debt.

     Mrs. Hoover never made speeches or raced hither and yon on
unimportant matters.  She never wrote silly drivel on her everyday
life and sold it to the newspapers, and she never sold soap over the
radio.  Her only public appearance was as an honorary member of the
Girl Scouts of America.   She never invited Communist youth to the
White House as her guests.  The Hoover family seems to have made a
failure of about everything that goes nowadays."

          This is a chain Bulletin which is sent you to have copies
and sent on to one or more voter friends with the request that
they in turn copy it and send it to one or more voter friends.

                                         Do not break the chain.  Act at once.

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Bluish typing font - mimeograph? On a 10 3/4 by 8 inch sheet of unlined paper. Keystrokes preserved. No date, but the piece is reprinted in various newspaper, e.g. the Sarasota Herald Tribune, Oct. 8, 1940. It was used in the 1940 presidential campaign. Purchased on eBay. Entered by DWV, 2-4-2013.

ae1940-10-08_HooversMistakes

The Paper Chain Letter Archive      Chain Letter Evolution

Addendum, 7/23/2020
A search on Newspapers.com for "a firecracker in Europe" reveals that this chain letter was published in at least100 daily newspapers in the summer and fall of 1940. This includes The Los Angeles Times (7/28/1940) and the Miami Herald (10/,27,1940). There was also presumably extensive circulation as a mimeographed item passed hand to hand or in the mail. Now consider what this "firecracker" was about.

Nazi Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. By June 25, 1940 Germany had completed its conquest of France. The Battle of Britain began on July 10, 1940. You would think that this ferocious start of World War II would earn a more realistic description than "someone shot off a firecracker in Europe."  And consider that many Newspapers apparently agreed with the anonymous author of "Hoover's Mistakes" that Roosevelt seeking a billion dollars to deal with this firecracker was a foolish waste of money, worthy of ridicule, this after after Hitler had posed before the Eiffel Tower and begun the bombing of England. It seems that isolationism, and perhaps even fascist sympathies, were more prevalent in pre-war America than most history books suggest.    DWV