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Herbert Hoover’s Presidency
"We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land. The poorhouse is vanishing from among us."
Election of 1928
• The Republican bosses did not want Hoover to be the candidate
• The public did – “Hoo but Hoover”• Democratic candidate – Al Smith of New
York, four time governor of New York– a Roman Catholic– A “wet”– Nickname : the Happy Warrior– No high school or college
Election of 1928
• Radio plays a big part in the election. Smith’s thick New York accent played against him
• Anti-Catholicism played a role in his defeat. “A vote for Smith is a vote for the Pope.”
• Hoover didn’t like that and tried to get people to stop using religion
Election of 1928
• Hoover wins in a landslide.• Former solid Democratic states such
as Texas, Tennessee, N. Carolina, and Virginia voted for Hoover
• Smith even lost New York• Hoover won because of the economy
and the good times.
Electoral Votes
Herbert Hoover
• An orphan and worked his way through Stanford University
• Became a successful mining engineer and businessman (a self-made millionaire)
• Had never run for public office but was a well known humanitarian
• Strong believer in laissez-faire• Strong belief in self help
Hoover’s First Moves
• Passed the Agricultural Marketing Act- a revolving fund of ½ a billion dollars loan money to agricultural cooperatives that bought, sold or stored surpluses
• Hawley-Smoot Tariff – designed to protect farmers, but lobbyist changed it to be the highest protective tariff in peacetime history. Foreign nations viewed this a economic war.
• It will plunge the U.S. and foreign nations deeper into the Depression
Reasons People Invested in Stocks
1. Rising stock dividends. 2. Increase in personal savings. 3. Relatively easy money policy.
4. Companies invested their over-production profits in new production.
5. Lack of stock market regulation.
6. Psychology of consumption.
The Great Crash
• The U.S. economy looked unstoppable when Hoover took office in March, 1929
• People speculation on stocks was near a bursting point.
• Enormous wealth was actually paper wealth• Triggered by the Brits who raised interest rates in
order to lure investors back to their shores• Buying enormous amounts of goods on credit
Why?
• Federal Reserve, the nation's central bank, played a critical, if inadvertent, role in weakening the economy.
• In an effort to curb stock market speculation, the Federal Reserve slowed the growth of the money supply
• Then allowed the money supply to fall dramatically after the stock market crash, producing a "liquidity crisis."
Why?
• Consumers found themselves unable to repay loans, while businesses did not have the capital to finance business operations.
• Instead of actively stimulating the economy by cutting interest rates and expanding the money supply--the way monetary authorities fight recessions today--the Federal Reserve allowed the country's money supply to decline by 27 percent between 1929 and 1933.
Black Tuesday
• October 29, 1929• 16,410,030 shares
sold in a save my a… move by people.
• In less than two months, stockholders lost $40 billion dollars or more than the cost of WWI to the Americans
The Great Depression
• By 1930 four million Americans were unemployed, in two years this would triple.
• Signs of the time - “ We’re firing, not hiring”
“Mellon pulled the whistleHoover rang the bell
Wall Street gave the signalAnd the Country went to hell”
The Great Depression
• Over 5,000 banks collapsed in three years
• Savings were gone• Farms and homes foreclosed• Psychological damage on Fathers
who couldn’t provide for their families
• A decade long decline in the birthrate
Social Problems
• Unemployment and poverty
• Breakdown of families
• Soaring high school dropout rates (2 to 4 million)
• Homelessness
• Organized protests
Hoover’s Reaction
• “I do not believe that the power and the duty of the General Government ought to be extended to the relief of
individual suffering… The lesson should be constantly enforced that
though the people support the Government the Government should
not support the people.”
The People’s Reaction
• Going to Soup Kitchens for a meal• Ragged individualist sleeping under
“Hoover Blankets”• Fighting over the contents of a
garbage can• Living in shanty towns called
Hoovervilles• A farming peonage system starting
among Blacks and Whites
African Americans
• Langston Hughes wrote, “ The depression brought everybody down a peg or two. And Negroes had but a few pegs to fall.”
• Increased lynching in the South• “It’s bad enough being black, why be
a red?”
Hoover Battles Back• Got Congress to delegate immense funds for
public works such as the Hoover Dam• The Reconstruction Finance Corporation headed
by Houstonian Jesse Jones– Pump priming loans given to major corporations– The government eventually makes money when
these loans were repaid– Had trouble first with a Republican Congress
that believed in rugged individualism, then the Democrats who swept into office in 1930 mid-term elections
The Bonus Army
• Many veterans of WWI were hard hit by the depression
• Former soldiers turned to the government for help as the government had turned to them in 1917
• Congress had passed a bonus for the soldiers that would be payable in 1945
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZHEkU__Ijw
The Bonus Army
• In 1932, the veterans organized into the BEF and marched 20,000 strong on Washington
• Set up a large Hooverville on vacant lots. • The large numbers were to threaten
Congress into paying the bonus early• Congress narrowly voted the bill down• Hoover convinced 6,000 to go home if he
paid the fare.
The Bonus Army
• Following riots that killed two, Hoover ordered the Army to evacuate the crowd.
• Hoover claimed that they were “Reds” and riff-raff
• Gen. Douglas MacArthur carried out the eviction with bayonet and tear gas and torched the shanties. A few former soldiers were injured and an infant died of tear gas poisoning
Hoover
• “Hoover happened to be in a bad spot. The Depression had come on and there he was. If Jesus Christ had been there , he’d had the same problem. It’s to bad for poor old Herbie that he happened to be there. This was a world wide depression. It wasn’t his fault. In 1932 …. A monkey could have been elected against him, no question asked.”
Marvin Devries
The Dust Bowl
• On the Great Plains, the top soil literally blew away, piling up in ditches like "snow drifts in winter."
• The Dust Bowl produced unparalleled human tragedy, but it had not occurred by accident.
• The Plains had always been a harsh, arid inhospitable environment.
• Nevertheless, a covering of tough grass-roots, called sod, permitted the land to retain moisture and support vegetation.
• During the 1890s, however, overgrazing by cattle severely damaged the sod.
The Dust Bowl
• During World War I, demand for wheat and the use of gasoline-powered tractors allowed farmers to plow large sections of the prairie for the first time.
• The fragile skin protecting the prairie was destroyed.
• When drought struck, beginning in 1930, and temperatures soared (to 108 degrees in Kansas for weeks on end) the wind began to blow the soil away.
• One Kansas county, which produced 3.4 million bushels of wheat in 1931, harvested just 89,000 bushels in 1933.
The Dust Bowl
• Tenant farmers found themselves evicted from their land.
• By 1939, a million Dust Bowl refugees and other tenant farmers left the Plains to work as itinerant produce pickers in California.
• As a result, whole counties were depopulated. In one part of Colorado, 2,811 homes were abandoned, while an additional 1,522 people simply disappeared.
"We're the first nation in the history of the world to go to the poorhouse in an
automobile."
