In contrast to Hoover, Treasury Secretary Mellon refused even to make a show of joining the cheerleading. His view was that speculators who had lost money “deserved it” and should pay for their reckless behavior; the U.S. economy was fundamentally sound and would rebound of its own accord. In the meantime, he argued that the best policy was to “liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate. . . . It will purge the rottenness out of the system . . . . People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up
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