President Hoover Dbq

Herbert Hoover was elected president of the United States on November 19, 1928; unfortunately, less than eight months later, the stock market crashed. Hoover mistakenly considered this crash as only a passing point for America. But it was only three years later when economic slowdown and over speculation brought America into an upcoming Great Depression. This was a devastating blow for Hoover, his administration, and the American people. President Hoover attempted many ways to fix the economy. He founded new government agencies and encouraged cooperation between government and business to try to stabilize prices as well as attempt to balance the budget. These relief attempts might have shown positive outcome in the early years of the depression, but as the economy worsened, calls for more government involvement increased.

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s plan helped make the economy get stable through programs that he started, helping create more jobs for the unemployed. He passed bills that helped both the American people and its environment. For example, new roads and bridges were built. Another one of FDR’S efforts to get out of the depression was to enter WWII. Document 6 shows a cartoon of how much was produced for the war and shows Uncle Sam working, too. Overall, FDR’s decision to enter the war was the greatest impact on the Great Depression because they got out of it. Herbert Hoover was a terrible leader in many Americans’ views because they believed he did not do enough for the people and was more supportive toward big businesses. He gave money to the rich so that they would pass it down to the poor but instead the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. Another downfall of Hoover was Hoovervilles. These were a collection of poor people without homes. The name was given as a disgrace to Hoover. In result, FDR was a more favored president during the Great Depression than Hoover.

Because of the plague known as the Great Depression, Herbert Hoover is often seen as one of the worst presidents in American history. He enacted policies such as the Hawley-Smoot Tariff that flushed America deeper into the depression. Hoover didn't understand that to solve a crisis such as a depression, he needed to interact directly with the people by using programs such as social security and welfare. Instead, Hoover had the idea that if he were to let the depression run its course, it would eventually end. There are three things that can be used to define Hoover's presidency during the depression, his actions, his mentality toward fixing things, and the fact that he helped pave the way for the “New Deal”

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.

In the year of 1929 the stock market crashed and hurt many of the people in America as it continued through the rest of the 1930s and into the early 1940s. This left America in a whirlpool of poverty and despair. When the stock market crashed it led to The Great Depression. It led to being where one out of every four workers became unemployed no matter if they were skilled or not. People became homeless and were struggling to survive. They had to make new homes out of cardboard or whatever they could find, these were called “hoovervilles.” Most people didn’t have enough money to buy food to feed themselves or even their families. President Herbert Hoover did not seem to be going out of his way to help the country in any way. He was against most forms of government relief and he believed that the depression would come to an end on its own. Americans were very tired and frustrated with Hoover’s ways and so they elected a new president. They elected Franklin D. Roosevelt who

After the stock market crash, known as Black Tuesday, in 1929, people panicked. As too much money was withdrawn from banks and they closed, people lost all their money. America, which was just in the “Roaring Twenties”, fell into the Great Depression. Suddenly, people were laid off their jobs, couldn’t buy things they had once not thought twice about, and struggled to afford food for their families. People lost their homes, and teenagers lived on the streets. Farmers were in debt, losing their farms, and had to deal with the Dust Bowl. The president at the time, Herbert Hoover, decided that the country would pull out of the Depression on their own. Since the citizens of America didn’t like that, on Election Day of 1933, Hoover wasn’t re-elected.

This lack of complete dedication to private interest or public purpose is further displayed in Documents B and C where Hoover stresses the importance of the individual in ending the Depression while also assuring government support for job production if the situation required it. Hoover's speeches are remarkably similar to Roosevelt's speech in Document E. Here, even during the Depression, Roosevelt stressed the importance of balancing the budget unless unemployment required the government to spend money stimulating the economy. Instead of Hoover's desire to continue restricting government, Roosevelt wanted to balance the budget. The Depression created the need for government intervention and an unbalanced budget as shown in Document F. However, despite a few efforts by Hoover to create jobs, he still seemed much different than Roosevelt who insisted in 1936 that America must not go back to supporting Conservatives who protected private interest unjustly. (Document G)

Also Hoover would not, under any circumstances, allow America to be in debt. He thought that taping into the national debt would prolong the depression even make it worse since the government would have to pay interest on the loans. Hoover was a man set on his ways and helped very little with the Depression.

The starting of WWII gave people work. The U.S. needed warfare materials so the factories opened up and people were hired to work. Therefore helping us get out of the depression. Herbert Hoover was the 31st president who was trying to get the U.S. out of the depression. He believed that the government should not help the people but charities should. The problem with that was no one was donating to the charities because no one had anything to give or donate. Hoover used trickle down economics. Which meant he would help the businesses first and then it would eventually lead to the people, his idea was a long term plan and they needed a short term plan to help the people. Herbert Hoover believed helping the businesses would improve the economy. His plan did not

Shortly after the Great Depression began, society began to fail quickly. The stock market crashed, the unemployment rate skyrocketed, business’ and banks were closing and people were losing their homes they had worked so hard for. Although President Hoover was attempting to help society, he believed that instead of governmental interventions you should be self-reliant and would not fund welfare programs that may incentivize not working. Hoover’s “attempts” to aide the economy were not enough to turn it around, and people began to set their sights on Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the oncoming election. FDR made it his goal to ensure relief, recovery and reform were provided for the country to counteract the Great Depression and to make up for all of the years of negligence and non interference from the government, collectively called the “New Deal” 15 major laws were created in just the first 100 days he was in office, and his “New Deal” was coming into fruition and the governments role was now to step in and take care of it’s people, and to neglect them no longer.

The former presidents Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover had similar views on how the government should be, that differed from Franklin D. Roosevelt. How the presidents decided to manage the economy with their power, shows how they thought the government should be ran. President Coolidge and President Hoover had many ineffective ideas throughout their presidency, while President Roosevelt managed to change the economy. Calvin Coolidge was a republican president that believed that the government should stay away from controlling the people. He was known for not doing much to better our country; he thought it would happen naturally, so he didn’t feel the need to pressure the congress into passing legislation, and didn’t create any plans of action to benefit our country.

The country was going through an ongoing rough depression that the previous President Hoover left in the road for his processor, President Roosevelt. Although not only President Hoover decisions and approval of laws added to the great depression, but the

Hoover attempted many plans to end the Great Depression. Hoover rested on his belief of “volunteerism” which was a key concept of progressivism. Hoover believed private organized charities were sufficient to meet social welfare needs and was the “American Way”. Progressivism was when you displayed the wrong actions businesses were taking to the public in hopes that the public would make businesses reform their ways. This was a keen reason to why Hoover failed to solve the problems of the Great Depression. The first solution to the Great Depression attempted by Hoover came after the great crash. Hoover received a petition from the president of General Electric, Gerard Swoop, in 1929. It called for series of voluntary wage and price freezes of leading industries in the U.S. in exchange for freezing wages and prices. They asked in return for the government to cover the cost of welfare capitalism; which was an attempt to break the union, by providing benefits to make companies obsolete. They would pay workers 80% when laid off, but when the stock market crashed, they would only give them 20% salary. This was due partially to welfare capitalism. They

In the years when Hoover was president, he had done nothing in order to help society with the problems they are facing. When 1932 came, the people didn’t want Hoover to be president again. When FDR gave his reasons on what he would be doing to help the people in America, the people thought that he would make a change, so they elected him as president. The problem was that Hoover had done a bad job during his term and FDR now had to find ways in order to fix what Hoover had done. But it then got worse when the Great Depression hit and FDR now had to take more responsibility and take action. During FDR’s presidency, his responses by creating programs to make the economy stable from the Great Depression were effective, but also ineffective. The

Herbert Hoover was one of the greatest humanitarians of the 20th Century. Throughout WWI he was hailed as an uncommon man liked by many. Hoover became the Secretary of Commerce 1921-1928 and the 31st President of the US. However, he was hated for not having a big enough role in the Great Depression and he was blamed for the increasing the poverty of Americans even though the pieces had already been set. While Hoover did do some things wrong in his time he always had the right meaning and his good intentions weren’t understood. Hoover did the best he could and did more than any other president before him to end the Depression.