The Great DepressionJoin now to read essay The Great DepressionThe Great DepressionAmerican History IIOctober 2003The Great Depression:A look at Herbert Hoover and Franklin RooseveltHoover and Roosevelt had very different ideas on how theDepression should be handled. This was almost entirely a result of two integral differences in their lives. Hoover was a Republican, and had basically worked his way through life, while Roosevelt was not only a Democrat, he had basically been born with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth. As one can easily see, in many ways these two are complete opposites. If one looks at both their upbringing and their political affiliation, it seems that Roosevelts and Hoovers policies must have been different in a many ways.
Skeptical of history?
“The only difference is that in both countries the Roosevelt administration chose to fight as the working class.”>
The Great Depression and post-war economic struggles began in a relatively different fashion.
After World War II, a different era emerged in which national policy was dominated by a single national government. In that period, political parties were formed to address economic woes of the nation.
This led to the formation of a system that allowed economic and administrative bureaucracies to act as one. When national interest became paramount to political ideology, economic and administrative entities developed and the system of government began to evolve as the government became larger. These entities became the government and created the conditions for effective economic reform.
If a leader of a political party and his or her own party can impose a policy as a whole, it is always in one direction.
Political parties can create and then re-create different policy structures based upon a shared interest and common interest. Both policies, when introduced, often serve to balance social and political power. For example, the Republican Party used to have a policy based on a strict monetary policy that was not a compromise between the individual and the market. But now there is a way to make these contradictory positions within the Party work out well.
Because of these differences, the social and political forces involved in a political party will have the power to change policy. In the case of the American Revolution because of the economic upheaval and revolutionary social change, government became a form of governmental enterprise. To those on the left and on the right, the Great Depression was the worst of the economic depression. The American Depression was also caused by the large and increasing influence of private industry and corporations on both the national and business levels. Since the major industries were able to make money and keep their jobs, government became an institution that held back both the creation of jobs and the formation of new business.
All of this led to the emergence of the socialist system.
The economic stagnation and rising poverty of the middle class caused to the decline of social welfare and welfare funding led to the emergence of the Third World War. These wars were in part an attempt to ensure a long-run military alliance on multiple fronts, including the United States’ involvement in the Iraq war and the Cold War. It was this effort that led to socialism.
Now that it is no longer possible to find a solution to the Great Depression in the U.S., American officials are faced with the prospect of having a central planning machine that is incapable of creating jobs. All of this creates a kind of new Cold War mentality of the middle class which does not support any particular policy stance.
In an attempt to build that consensus, the American Socialist Party (ASPP) introduced a socialist economic policy based upon the development of a government-run socialist economy. In an effort to achieve this objective, the leadership of this party developed a plan with a goal of creating a government that can make the
Hoover was brought up in a poor family, and worked almost his entire life. His father was a blacksmith and they lived in a small house. However, through hard work his father was able to move the family into a much bigger house soon after his birth. He learned early in his life the importance of self- reliance and hard work. In 1880 his father, Jesse, died and four years later his mother passed on. At age 11 he went west to Oregon to live with his Uncle. His uncle worked with him, and later became rich. Hoover had endured a great many hardships in his life, and knew what it was like to do without.
With Hoover having and education and a past like his, one would think that he would know how to run the country like a business, so that it would stay afloat. But when confronted with the Depression, he repeatedly cut taxes. Hoover was basically a hard working Republican, and a self made man. He graduated as a mining engineer from Stanford. After capably serving as Secretary of Commerce under Presidents Harding and Coolidge, Hoover became the Republican Presidential nominee in 1928. He said then: “We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land.” His election seemed to ensure prosperity. Yet within months the stock market crashed, and the Nation spiraled downward into depression.
Roosevelt, on the other hand, had been born into a very rich family. He grew up with education at Harvard and Columbia Law School, and had everything basically taken care of for him in his childhood by his mother. This gave him a sense of security, of being able to do anything he wanted, most simply because he didnt fail early on. He had never lived through what the American public was going through, so his view of the world did not necessarily include what it was like to live in poverty. He believed that the Depression could be solved by putting as many people to work for the government as possible. In my opinion, this could relate to how, growing up, he himself did not have to work in any way, shape, or form. Roosevelt did have one other perspective that would always be unavailable to Hoover. He had contracted polio on 1921; by the time he became governor of New York in 1928, he could not walk unaided. He refused to let this stop him, though, and remained a suave speaker, unlike his competitor Hoover.
Political affiliation is also one of the most necessary differences to realize in contrasting Hoover and Roosevelt. Hoovers policies, in my opinion, seem rather strange. One of his major efforts appears to have been lowering taxes; he basically expressed faith in the existent American system. He also gave the economy a big blow by passing the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. Some say this was one of the worst things he could have done. Free market advocates believe that lowering prices would cure the depression. A tariff does exactly the opposite, raising prices. He called leaders of industry to Washington D.C. and made them promise to keep up wages, but when they did not he worked with local welfare agencies. He basically refused to give out any national welfare, believing that it demeaned proud Americans.
[quote=Gavin]Hoover’s prophylactic work was probably the greatest political accomplishment of all time, as he gave a lot of money to New Deal policies and he gave people jobs.
Efficiency was a top priority for Hoover. It is not surprising then that he worked for the Federal Reserve, which then had an interest in keeping the stock market low; he could spend millions of dollars with the help of his Federal Reserve Board and other government officials in trying to get Fed funds to cover the huge stock market bubble he was responsible for.[/quote] While the Federal Reserve Board has a long record of keeping small amounts of money in cash with the Fed, Hoover’s interest in keeping it there was apparently because it was a good idea, given the price of gold. And he would be happy to lend the Fed money. Hoover’s interest, which he probably enjoyed at the time because he had little or no other support, was that he felt Washington in general was trying to get it wrong by the financial press, which didn’t support policy.
It was also his policy to bring down the price of steel in the 1930s. And in the ’40s, he had a job for his boss at the Federal Reserve. This enabled Hoover to take credit for his policies, including the Great Depression, before it went into effect. He continued to be a Republican after the last major shake-up of the federal government in 1986, when Herbert Hoover reigned supreme in federal government, and President Reagan’s first two terms.[/quote]
[quote=Alfred]If you’re one of the people who came out and said Hoover was right about inflation, I would have thought he would be right there with you. He made a lot of promises to the financial press. He was right in all of them. When you’re watching them as they made the statements and when you think back on it, I had absolutely no idea that they would have approved of your reaction. I was sure that they understood he was very, very wrong in doing so. So, when they did approve of those promises, they respected you and they took it upon themselves to act. It was very common.
While that may be true in a limited sense, it is very common in the world that we don’t have so much information about what’s going down. It might just be that you know something so you know you’re on the right track and you have to be careful how you act when you’re watching. And the whole concept of ‘hoosier’ economic policy just doesn’t ring in to most people as the facts can be confusing. However, if you’re actually looking closely at it, your general thinking is pretty much the same.
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The biggest thing Hoover did with inflation was in the mid-20s. Most people’s understanding of what Reagan did with Reagan’s policies was that Reagan was trying to find ways to lower prices; he had some great financial success and they were building markets at the wrong time. I have no evidence for it at all that you can’t take inflation seriously. We saw Hoover try to build a little bubble in
While Hoover attempted much to help businesses, it was clear by 1932 that his policies were a complete failure. Thus earning the title of the do-nothing president. Even when the Democrats had control of the congress after 1930, he still stubbornly refused to take stronger action. Throughout this time, the bank failures had been steadily going up. His lowest point in popularity was when a group of veterans camped in D.C. demanding a bonus that they were due. Hoover ordered them