William Dudley (pictured above) made an idiotic and possibly telling statement. But it was also a statement that recalled an earlier one. Another William, William Jardine (pictured below), was once Secretary of the Agriculture under President Calvin Coolidge.
Jardine was also the US Ambassador to Egypt under Herbert Hoover, but we're focused on his Secretary of Agriculture period, when the US economy was slumping and headed into the Great Depression. From Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, page 375:
Few political figures spoke out for the poor of the twenties. One was Fiorello La Guardia, a Congressman from a district of poor immigrants in East Harlm (who ran, oddly, on both Socialist and Republican tickets). In the mid-twenties he was made aware by people in his district of the high price of meat. When La Guadia asked Secretary of Agriculture William Jardine to investigate the high price of meat, the Secretary sent him a pmphlet on how to use meat economically. La Gaurdia wrote back:
"I asked for help and you send me a bulletin. The people of New York City cannot feed their children on Department bulletins. . . . Your bulletins . . . are of no use to the tenement dwellers of this great city. The housewives of New York have been trained by hard experiences on the economical use of meat. What we want is the help of your department on the meat profiteers who are keeping the hard-working people of this city from obtaining proper nourishment."
Both Williams proved their own ignorance and provided nothing for the citizens of the country. And so history again repeats.
