Why Is President Hoover Responsible For The Great Depression

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President Herbert Hoover is often blamed for the great depression for many reasons, he had ideas put into place that were meant to aid the problems in the economy but hurt it instead. Pro-labour policies made by President Hoover after the stock market crash of 1929 caused the majority of the nation's gross domestic product to decline over the next two years. This made what could have been a bad recession turn into the Great Depression. There were many reasons for the Great Depression, but the recession was worse than it would have been because of President Hoover. President Hoover worsened employment more than it would have been because he kept wages too high for firms to keep up, this made the total gross nation product decrease. Hoover's policy was an important event in causing the Great Depression. His policies on job-sharing and increasing wages were much of the reason for the decline. Hoover's attempts to fight the Depression were not powerful enough to defeat it. He believed too deeply in laissez-faire; where the economy fixes itself eventually. He seemingly did not try hard enough to mend it himself, because of this the economy suffered dramatically. The president was worried that the stock market collapse of 1929 would lead to recession and deflation, this would cause dramatic wage cuts and there was a probability of strikes if …show more content…

Many businesses acted accordingly to the presidents wishes, some even publicly broadcasted that they were complying with Hoover's ideas. The idea was supposed to soothe problems, but it did the opposite. After deflation set in, the value of wages increased. This led to workers getting raises during a time when firms were not able to afford the increases and productiveness was starting to decrease. This ended up increasing the price of labour and