Comparison Of Hoover And Roosevelt's Collapse Economy

Ariana Jones

Ms. Galvin

AP US History DBQ Essay

16 March 2015

Presiding over a nation during times of economic downfall was a job few were willing to do or even knew how to do. There were two attempts to deal with a collapsed economy as seen during both Herbert C. Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidencies. Hoover, a mild conservative, favored minimal government involvement, governing by the belief that people should “pick themselves up by their bootstraps” in tough times. Deviating from Hoover’s conservative approach was FDR, a very liberal politician, who unquestionably believed in the creation of government programs during times of need, which would provide money, housing, food, and jobs to hundreds of thousands of people.

On the subject

Hoover believed firmly in the concept of voluntarism, the principle that individuals, communities, local and state governments, and other organizations and groups could both reduce and relieve hardships by working together cohesively. The idea of voluntarism closely followed a conservative approach in that it promoted and designated responsibility in individuals rather than in the government. Hoover defended opting out of direct federal spending to relieve economic hardships due to his belief, that it would destroy voluntarism (doc B, C). He instead offered the people the expansion and greater availability of loans for public works, agriculture, and personal needs. A coinciding belief Hoover held was in the Trickle Down philosophy, in which the government would pump money into the economy

Roosevelt, who created ample government programs to aid both the economy and the people. FDR immediately began his prospective presidential career by differentiating himself from previous president Herbert Hoover, through his identification of Hoover’s errors and his provision of solutions to those errors. An example of this was seen in one of FDR’s candidacy speeches (doc E) where he argued Hoover made too many unnecessary departments, that had too much money tied up in them, additionally arguing that Hoover’s tax increases were unsuccessful in lowering the federal government’s deficits. The solutions to these mistakes were posed in the New Deal, a series of programs designed to provide relief, recovery, and reform. Relief programs provided immediate help to the economy and prevented further collapse, recovery programs were supposed to reinvent the economy, and reform programs were put in place with the purpose lessening the impact of future depression on the economy as well as individuals. The most stark difference between Hoover’s mild conservative approach and FDR’s truly liberal approach, was the urgency in the present that FDR felt. Hoover held widespread criticism of his lack of federal spending for the present moment, which his accusers claimed allowed people to go hungry, which is why FDR created programs like the Federal Emergency Relief Act (FERA). The FERA provided cash