Economic depression cannot be cured by legislative action or executive pronouncement. Economic wounds must be healed by the action of the cells of the economic body - the producers and consumers themselves.

The remark encapsulates Hoover’s characteristic “voluntarist” view of political economy: downturns are not primarily problems to be solved by sweeping government decrees, but by the decentralized adjustments of millions of private actors. By likening the economy to a living organism, Hoover implies that top-down interventions are at best limited and at worst disruptive to the self-correcting processes of production, exchange, and consumption. The quote also signals skepticism toward dramatic legislative or executive “cures,” favoring confidence, cooperation, and gradual recovery driven by business and consumers. In the context of the Great Depression, this stance became controversial, as critics argued that the scale of collapse required more direct federal action.