Transcript Hoover, FDR, and The Great Depression Hoover’s Personal Life      Herbert Hoover was born in West Branch, Iowa in 1874. He was a member of the.

Hoover, FDR, and
The Great
Depression
Hoover’s Personal Life
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Herbert Hoover was born in West
Branch, Iowa in 1874.
He was a member of the inaugural
class at Stanford University where
he studied geology.
Hoover’s wife, the former Lou
Henry, was athletic and brilliant.
She was the first woman to
graduate from Stanford and met
Herbert in the geology lab.
Lou Hoover spoke five languages,
assisted her husband in his geology
and engineering work, often
translating his articles and books.
She was a world traveler and often
assisted her husband in the cultural
necessities for international
business.
Hoovers’ Mining Career
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Herbert made a specialty of
turning around struggling
operations with organization and
technology
His wife helped translate his work
and bridge the cultural gaps in
foreign nations. Their work made
them wealthy.
They were forced to flee China
for a time during the Boxer
Rebellion, an insurrection aimed
at purging the nation of western
influence.
While in London, at the outbreak
of the First World War, the
Hoovers organized an
impromptu organization to
evacuate expatriated and
vacationing Americans from
Europe.
Belgium
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During WWI, Germany invaded
Belgium on the way France.
Britain and France placed a blockade
on the Central Powers which kept
them from importing food.
Germany no longer had enough food
for its own population, let alone
occupied countries such as Belgium.
Hoover, living in London, organized
his entire mining firm as a relief
operation for Belgium.
Hoover negotiated with the Allied
nations to allow the relief ships
through the blockade and negotiated
with the Germans to not attack the
ships with submarines.
“Hooverizing”
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Woodrow Wilson placed Hoover in
charge of agricultural production
for the American war effort.
Hoover was immediately
successful.
In addition to rationalizing the
American production system,
Hoover convinced Americans that
it was patriotic to go without in
war time.
Cutting back became known as
“Hooverizing,” rationing was one
way that World War I affected
people on the home front.
Seeking to manage domestic
consumption in order to feed the
U.S. Army and to assist Allied
armies and civilians., the U.S. Food
Administration declared “Food
Will Win the War.”
“They will be fed!”
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Following the war, Hoover turned
the United States Food
Administration into a relief
organization for the devastated
populations, including the defeated
Central Powers, in Europe.
American aid fed two million
people per day in Poland alone.
When a critic accused Hoover of
helping the Bolsheviks by
providing food aid to the Soviet
Union, Hoover responded in the
following speech, “Twenty million
people are starving. Whatever their
politics, they will be fed.”
Secretary of Commerce
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With Hoover was invited to serve in
the cabinet as Secretary of
Commerce of Republican President
Warren G. Harding.
While many members of the
Harding cabinet were implicated in
controversies and scandals, Hoover
remained unscathed and, thus,
retained his post under Calvin
Coolidge.
By the 1920’s the American
economy was transformed, industry
and commerce, rather than
agriculture, now provided the
backbone of the American economy.
As Commerce Secretary, Hoover
was in the middle of the economic
transformation, leading to the
impression, that Herbert Hoover
was everywhere.
Al Smith runs for President
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Democratic nominee Al Smith
was the first non-Protestant to
be nominated for President by
a major political party.
Many Americans were highly
suspicious of Catholics in high
office, primarily because of
their fealty to the Pope.
The nomination of Smith
also represented a shift of
control in the Democratic
Party away from rural,
Protestant, agrarians, such as
William Jennings Bryan, to
urban interests.
Hoover Becomes President
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Hoover, who was freed to run for the presidency when Calvin
Coolidge declined to seek reelection, easily dispatched with
Smith, who even failed to carry his home state of New York.
The nation was at peace, was prosperous, and Herbert Hoover
had an impeccable resume. Few Americans had much cause to
seek change.
Hoover and the Great Depression
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On October 29, 1929, the Stock Market crashed,
bringing the post-war decade of unrivaled prosperity,
largely fed by the emergence of the consumer economy,
to an abrupt end.
While the causes of the Depression were primarily
rooted in the structure of the American economy,
Hoover, following conservative economic thinking,
believed that economic matters were best left to the
markets to sort out and, as a result, favored a minimal
governmental response, largely centered on “trickle
down theory,” to the growing crisis.
Dissatisfaction with Hoover’s
Response
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In 1932, Edward Angly published a
small book called "Oh Yeah?"
skewering the Hoover
administration for overly optimistic
view of the economy.
Herbert Hoover was a great a great
product of and great believer in
rugged individualism.
To Hoover, charity was a matter for
local governments and churches.
Many Americans resented what
they saw as an insufficient
governmental response to the
economic crisis, and, as president,
Hoover bore the brunt of their
animosity.
“Hooverizing,” a term embraced by
Americans during the war to mean
economizing, came to be a bitter
synonym for poverty.
The Bonus March
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In June 1932, a group of 15-20,000
impoverished First World War veterans
marched on Washington to demand the
immediate payment of an enlistment
bonus not due to them until 1945.
On June 15, the House approved a bill
that would grant the veterans early
payment but, under a threatened veto by
Hoover, the bill failed in the Senate.
On 28 July 1932, Army Chief of Staff
Douglas McArthur ordered Major
George S. Patton to remove the
protestors from the Mall.
Patton quickly drove the protestors from
Washington. McArthur then ordered
Patton to pursue the marchers into
Virginia and destroy their encampment.
In the resulting conflict, scores were
injured and one child was killed.
Roosevelt Becomes President
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Hoover’s often tepid response to
the Great Depression likely cost
him any chance of reelection in
1932.
As it was, Franklin Delano
Roosevelt, the charismatic and
confident former Governor of
New York, appeared to be far more
energetic and capable than Hoover.
Roosevelt’s First Inaugural Address
was hailed as a landmark in
American oration.
Roosevelt quickly set upon a course
of active engagement with the
Depression that changed
American’s relationship with
government.
Multimedia Citations
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Slide 7: Joan Hoff Wilson, "Herbert Hoover: Forgotten Progressive." Waveland Press,
1975.
Slide 8: http://discovery.coe.uh.edu/history/hisd/alance/Al_Smith_1928.jpg
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