Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World Highlight

Pop Hanshue told the legislators exactly how Western became so successful. Why had the company been confident it was going to get the mail contract? He testified that the company’s friends Robinson (“the banks”) and Chandler (“the newspapers”) had friends in the Hoover administration.19 He laid it out plainly, in a way that has convinced many historians that the whole mess was a corrupt blunder corrected by Roosevelt. But Hoover never hid his intentions. That was the way it was supposed to work. The government facilitated leading men, who in turn facilitated the government’s facilitation.