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herbert hoover and his role in the great depression Essay

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Herbert Hoover and His Role in The Great Depression


With the continually worsening conditions, and the stock market crash on Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929, the United States was thrown into the biggest economical disaster of our history. Everyone, excluding the rich upper class, became poor and most unemployed. The majority of the American populace found themselves living in ‘shantytowns’ or ‘Hoovervilles’ as they later became to be known, which consisted of many cramped shacks constructed from whatever was available. This meant old burnt-out cars, cardboard boxes, random pieces of lumber, and anything else that people could find. Times truly were tough. It was a daily …show more content…

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.

As previously mentioned, the Boulder Dam was one of the most famous, and certainly most expensive (with the whole project costing about $385 million) public works program. To provide jobs and much needed money to unemployed Americans, the Bureau of Reclamation, under President Hoover, authorized the Boulder Canyon Project on the Colorado River in 1928. The entire project included a hydroelectric power plant and a reservoir to control floods of the Colorado River and supply power to the Pacific Southwest. The dam reservoir is Lake Mead, which can store approximately 28 million acre-feet of water, making it one of the world’s largest artificially created bodies of water. Besides providing many jobs, the project responsible for the officially named Hoover Dam (as of 1947), added about 3 million acres of national parks and monuments and expanded

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