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. 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.
