Examples Of President Hoover's Response To The Great Depression

Hoover also supported the Smoot-Hawley Tariff which was designed to place a tariff or tax on farm imports to the US. The idea was to protect US farmers from cheaper foreign farm goods. But the idea backfired as other countries raised tariffs and just caused the Great Depression to deepen.

The year was 1929. America goes through the biggest national crisis since the American Civil War. They called it the Great Depression. The Stock Market was going down, unemployment was going up, and money was becoming scarce. The United States had to look up to the one person who could lead the country out of this national catastrophe, The President. At this time the man who had that title was none other than Herbert Hoover. Hoover, A republican, hoped that this was all a nightmare, he hoped that the Depression was a small fluke that would fix itself after a short period of time. After seeing that the Depression was getting worse had to

Hoover was elected in 1928 and one year later the country was plunged into a great depression. Wanting to fix this great depression, Franklin Roosevelt purposed his New Deal. But this New deal had its flaws as well as being unconstitutional. But FDR did do good things as well. Some of these things were taking America off the gold standard.

From May 1929 to May 1933 Herbert Hoover served one term as the 31st president of the United States. Hoover was a member of the Republican political party. In his election, he won against Al Smith with 444 of the electoral college votes. A few months into his presidency, the Stock Market Crash occurred. Naturally, the United States as a whole started to look to the president and the government agencies for direction. There were many ideas that Hoover had that didn’t provide relief to the civilians during the Great Depression, they actually worsened the crisis. At some points, he rejected bills that would remedy some of the country 's problems, because he believed that the government should not play a huge part in the bettering of the country. This belief was called laissez- faire. (Herbert Hoover)

People had no care for saving or cautious behavior with money. But when the stock market crashed consumers and businesses had little trust. Although the stock market crash has not been directly connected with the start of the Great Depression it did scare so many people that they ran to banks to withdraw what money they had left only to have banks soon fail. Banks had a major crisis at hand because they money they loaned out went into buying stocks. This crash had caused the banks to fail when people couldn’t keep up with their payments. Hoover had tried to help cushion the blow. He had tried to get business leaders to hold wages at a certain prices. He had also got the Federal Reserve involved by making open market purchases. He even tried to help those who were unemployed by stimulating construction work. This was the best he could do with the help he had. But obviously business leaders were more concerned with profit than wages because they were quick to cut wages down. Unemployment were reaching levels that were hard to match with work that the president was creating out of

When The Great Depression happened it left America in a major economic crisis. Herbert Hoover was the face of the Great Depression and “was considered the man who caused and did so little to stop the Great Depression” (LP169). Many nicknames and slang terms were made mocking the president’s efforts, such as Hoovervilles and Hoover flags. Herbert Hoover tried to reverse the Great Depression, but it was not until Roosevelt introduced the New Deal that America regained hope.

Hoover’s ideals in “efficiency, enterprise… individualism… [and] material welfare” were shared by most Americans until the crash led them to see Hoover as a cold, “symbol of disaster” (Hofstadter, 371). Hoover searched for causes of the depression in all places but the American economic system, which he deemed had “no major flaw” (Hofstadter, 395). By the end of 1931, however, Hoover realized that he needed to make major changes to amend the crisis and offers to Congress a set of proposals commonly referred to as “The Hoover New Deal” (Horwitz, 7). These proposals mainly gave more government support to federal banks and public works projects to help get the United States back on its feet (Horwitz, 7). Hoover was determined to “use the full resources of government, all the modern tools of the new economics, to push the economy out of the Depression”

The Great Depression had battered the nation and the economic situation was desperate. During Herbert Hoover’s presidency, more than half of all Americans were living below the poverty line. Herbert Hoover was an idealist that believed Americans could reach their potential and so he felt that intervention by the federal government would repress the American potential. Roosevelt understood the suffering of his countrymen and introduced economic reforms to alleviate the effects of the depression.

Moreover, as a supporter of capitalism, he strongly opposed several direct interventions of the government in the affair of the struggling banks and individuals by letting the stock market crash and officially entered the depression. In the effort to fund loans to farmers and recreate a stable cooperation, Hoover extended the Federal Farm Board with the confidence that it could retrieve the farm price and diminish the surpluses. Unexpectedly, the subvention were misused by motivated farmers to grow more excess to the production, thus the price went lower than before. In addition, the international markets were also closed their doors on us by raising high tariffs in response to Hoover’s Smoot-Hawley policy which was initially introduced to aid domestic farmers by lessen the imports with the highest tariff rates in U.S

President Hoover even said that it was not really the federal government’s job to solve the problems. As a results of president Hoover not caring but the lives that the great depression was affecting. He simply “asked” the state governments to undertake public-works projects, he also asked big companies to keep workers pay steady and asked labor unions to stop demanding rises. His actions did not really do anything to help the suffering American of the 1930’s. Meanwhile, the unemployed workers of the 1930’s did whatever they could to survive by standing in breadlines and selling what they own or find to support their families.

Herbert Hoover, a former engineer, and millionaire who became the 31st U.S. President, had attempted to pass multiple laws to aid the country’s financial situation. Although his predecessors’ policies undoubtedly contributed to the crisis, which lasted over a decade, Hoover bore much of the blame in the minds of the American people. As the depression deepened, Hoover failed to recognize the severity of the situation. He undertook various measures designed to stimulate the economy, and a few of the programs he introduced became key components of later relief efforts.

When Herbert Hoover was campaigning for president, he promised “a chicken for every pot and car in every garage.”(History Hub) This is considered the biggest severed promise in political history. After Hoover was elected and after the Stock Market Crash, Hoover noticed the difference between growth as well as speculations. For one thing he begged substantial bankers to restrain the frenzy to buy stocks. In fact, Hoover warned that the stocks were getting out of hand, he tried to get journalists to write about the dangers. However, Hoover’s Secretary of the Treasury was against him in his views on the Stock Market. Although Hoover knew what was going to happen with the stocks moreover wanted America to know the disadvantages of the stocks, but no one would allow his points to be addressed. In addition he had laws passed to raise tariffs so Americans would buy American, this law did not even pass justly. Not to mention this hurt more than it helped the economy. For this reason an abundance of people believes that this caused the depression. In fact, Hoover was known as a “laissez-faire Republican”, because he did not do much to help stop the depression(History Hub). Notably he told companies to keep wages at the same prices, he caused an abundance of bankruptcy as well as terminated a mass of businesses. After this, the RFC(Reconstruction Finance Corporation) was founded, this helped support local and state businesses. Explicitly Hoover was considered to be “losing” at the end of his term. After Roosevelt was elected, he closed the banks for three days, so that they could get their policies together. This allowed them to reopen with stricter policies on what the public could withdraw at that time. The Depression caused plenty of organizations to be established, such as the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation), which ensures money back even if the bank

With the public work programs, Hoover provided unemployed Americans with many different jobs in order to create some sort of income. The most famous of these programs was the Boulder Dam, which will be talked about later. Throughout the entire depression, Hoover stood on his belief of a hands-off government until late in his presidency. Under pressure from Americans and his fellow politicians, President Hoover eventually gave in and signed an act granting money and/or food to areas in dire need. That was the extent of his direct relief.

The presidency of Herbert Hoover was ended in 1933 and was succeeded by President Franklin D. Roosevelt who was much more active and radical. President Roosevelt was the governor of New York before he was elected as a president where he introduced some radical programs to relieve New York citizens from the Great Depression. During his presidency, he enlarges his radical scheme in the whole nation and stabilizes the economy of the nation. He calls his radical scheme the “New Deal” through which he addresses the three weak economic waves; agriculture, banking, and unemployment.

Herbert Hoover, the president in office when the Great Depression hit the country, did very little to ameliorate the devastating situation. Hoover underestimated the seriousness of the crisis, misdiagnosed the causes of the problems, and clung to his beliefs in individual achievement and self-help. His corrective measures, aimed at inflation and the federal budget, were thus damaging themselves. Furthermore, he hesitated to mobilize government resources to aid Americans and instead appealed to private groups to lend a hand (Encarta). Thus Hoover’s administration did little to mitigate the impact of the Depression.