Herbert Hoover denies laissez-faire credentials

Those who contended that during the period of my administration our economic system was one of laissez faire have little knowledge of the extent of government regulation. The economic philosophy of laissez faire, or "dog eat dog," had died in the United States forty years before, when Congress passed the Interstate Commerce Commission and the Sherman Anti-Trust Acts.

~ Herbert Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: The Cabinet and the Presidency 1920-1933 (London: Hollis and Carter, 1952), p. 300