The Great Depression is the biggest economic crisis the World has ever seen. Many historical accounts often neglect the fact that the United States was not the only country in crisis during the Great Depression. Most of the World was affected by the great depression, which came about after the first World War. The Great depression was caused by a number of things,but the largest reason that it lasted so long was because of the president at the time. Herbert Hoover.
THE GREAT DEPRESSION 1929 was the start of the deepest and darkest time for the United States Stock Market and the people of the United States. The Market crash, the loss of American jobs and homes, lead to one of the hardest downfalls in American history. Along with billions of dollars lost due to bad stock trading, over extending on personal credit and the spending of money that had yet to be produced. The American people never stood a chance and in a matter of 10 days the lives of almost everyone changed. In 1928 Herbert Hoover was elected as president.
Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt handled the Great Depression vastly differently. Each president took a different approach at attacking the problem or perhaps some may say lack of attacking the problem. Herbert Hoover wanted to let the situation fix itself. He believed leaving it alone would solve the problem eventually and that it was the people’s job to fix the issues, not the federal government’s or his own. He began proposing projects and encouraging banks and the people of the United States.
Many blame Herbert Hoover for the Great Depression, but this is a false statement because he stepped into office at the worst time. He had to immediately formulate new policies that would help the US retreat from the Great Depression. He served one term from 1929 to 1933. One item that made him well known for his presidency were the camps that housed the unemployed and the poor, called Hoovervilles. These “shanty towns” were normally on the outskirts of major cities and towns, so the community was close enough to still walk into town.
The wealth during the 1920s left Americans unprepared for the economic depression they would face in the 1930s. The Great Depression occurred because of overproduction by farmers and factories, consumption of goods decreased, uneven distribution of wealth, and overexpansion of credit. Hoover was president when the depression first began, and he maintained the government’s laissez-faire attitude in the economy. However, after the election of FDR in 1932, his many alphabet soup programs in his first one hundred days in office addressed the nation’s need for change.
The Great depression was one of the biggest financial crises in the history of the united states. The Depression started while president hoover was still in office. He was widely blamed for not doing enough to combat the Great Depression. But that during that time and even before the Depression this was normal because the government usually didn’t get involved in the financial affairs of its people. Even during the panic of 1873 the government did nothing to help the people.
Hoover and the Great Depression When Herbert Hoover became president in 1929, he inherited a nation filled with hope and prosperity from the "Roaring Twenties." However, underlying issues such as wealth inequality, risky investments, and overproduction led to the stock market crash and the Great Depression. Hoover initially focused on voluntary solutions but faced criticism, leading to the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal programs in 1932. Hoover, a self-made engineer, valued efficiency and individualism, believing in limited government intervention. Despite his success in managing food relief during WWI, he struggled to emotionally connect with the suffering public during the Great Depression.
There were a lot of things that happened, but even with all this people never gave up on each other they helped each other. When push came to shove people helped each other. So many people can’t even work to make a living and put bread on the table. The Great Depression became worse because of greed from business owners and bad leadership and he thought that the economy would fix it self from President Hoover.
Roosevelt was the president after Hoover, he served from 1933 to 1945. He thought it was best to have the government take care of the people in this crisis with social programs. “ Instinctively we recognized a deeper need-the need to find through government the instrument of our united purpose.” Hoover's idea did not work he thought more people would try to help out however they did not.
According to “Two Presidents and the Depression” it states, “He asked neighbors to help one another and not rely on government aid.” Hoover's beliefs brought about social change because it lead people to maintain a positive outlook and an increase in the amount of confidence they had in the economy. With a gained amount of confidence, stock prices would rise, factories would open, and people would go back to work. The text states, “...when the Depression started, Hoover called business leaders to meet him in Washington. He then asked them to keep up production and not to lay off workers or cut wages.”
The Great Depression of the 1930s solidified in American conscience as a decisive crossroad event, where something completely different and new happened. During the decade, the United States experienced an unprecedented scale and longevity economic collapse, clearer in retrospect than at first during those years. By the mid-1930s, it had become increasingly apparent that neither unfettered capitalism nor Western ideas of governmentality were coping with the challenges thrown up by the collapse in industrial production, high unemployment, and the rapid erosion of the rule of law (Foner 824). Herbert Hoover, the US president at the time, had the deepest commitment to Western ideas of governmentality: minimal government interference in private
A system based upon-short term investments and faulty investment practices did not provide the support for the stock market to perform consistently on a long term basis. To make matters worse, a national federal banking system designed to regulate the monetary financial system, The Federal Reserve, stood largely idle through excessive lending and faulty credit and operated on a open market according to the Library of Economics and Liberty. The stock market started to take a turn for the worse when investors overseas could see the path the American economy was heading down and promptly decided to cash out their investments (digitalhistory.uh.edu). The value of stocks in the stock market continued to decline and banks, which had invested heavily
Herbert Hoover was elected before the start of the Great Depression. When the stock market crashed, he was forced to deal with a struggling economy. Many Americans blamed him for their hardships despite his successes. Hoover’s legacy remains tarnished by his failures and lack of support for the American people. Hoover responded to the Great Depression by wanting to keep the government hands off, this is known as a laissez faire.
Immediately after the inauguration of Franklin Roosevelt on March 4, 1933, Hoover retreated to his old home in Palo Alto, California. For many decades so on and so forth, much of the public - and most of all of the Democratic Party, took Hoover as the main fault for the Great Depression. Because of this, very little Republicans wanted him in politics anymore. Very wealthy and truly generous, Hoover did not need to work, but even fishing, the hobby that he loved so much, could only take away so many hours of his free time. When Hoover was riding in motorcades, he was often pelted with eggs or rotten fruits.
While the rest of the nation soared on a burgeoning bubble of prosperity in the 1920s, the plight of the farmers served as a harbinger of the economic peril which encapsulated the rest of the nation the following decade. Overproduction of crops following the mechanization of farming and the loss of world markets mirrored the misfortune of businesses, who likewise experienced superfluous supply and decreased demand from debt-laden Americans. Many deplored the Gini Index of .5 and blamed such income disparities between the wealthiest and poorest Americans for their predicament. Radical groups calling for generous Share the Wealth schemes, socialism, communism and anti-semitism resultantly gained significant momentum, and threatened to steal
