Hoover's White House staff was, per contemporary custom, quite small. In fact, Hoover stocked the higher reaches of various executive departments with confidantes he called on regularly for advice. Hoover instead depended on Undersecretary of the Treasury Odgen Mills for economic advice. At the Treasury Department, Hoover retained Coolidge's appointee, Andrew Mellon, even though Mellon's economic views were much less progressive than those of the President. Brown proved valuable to Hoover as the President's chief connection to (and adviser about) the Republican Party. The standouts, like Secretary of State Henry Stimson, Secretary of the Interior Ray Wilbur, Secretary of the Navy Charles Adams, and Attorney General William Mitchell, more than compensated for lesser lights such as Secretary of War James Good, Secretary of Labor James Davis, Secretary of Commerce Robert Lamont, and Secretary of Agriculture Arthur Hyde. Hoover's cabinet choices were generally strong ones. Hoover reiterated his belief in the centrality of the individual in the American experience, the theme he had developed at some length in his 1922 book American Individualism.
Herbert Hoover took office in 1929 with a display of optimism and the promise of a "New Day." In his inaugural, he boasted that "in no nation are the fruits of accomplishment more secure" and claimed that "anyone not only can be rich, but ought to be rich." He warned his audience of the dangers of a large and activist federal government but also decried the self-serving greed of large corporations.
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