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31st President · 1929–1933

Herbert Hoover

A celebrated engineer and humanitarian whose presidency was overwhelmed by the Great Depression.

Portrait of Herbert Hoover
Herbert Hoover, 1928Photo: Underwood & Underwood, Library of CongressPublic domainSource
Born
August 10, 1874West Branch, Iowa
Died
October 20, 1964
Home state
California
Vice president
Charles Curtis

Life & Offices

Orphaned by the age of nine and raised by Quaker relatives in Iowa and Oregon, Hoover graduated with Stanford University’s first class and made a fortune as a mining engineer and consultant around the world. During World War I he organized food relief for millions of people in German-occupied Belgium and northern France, then ran the U.S. Food Administration. As secretary of commerce under Harding and Coolidge he promoted industrial standardization and the regulation of aviation and radio, and he directed relief after the 1927 Mississippi flood.

Elected in a landslide in 1928, Hoover had been in office less than eight months when the stock market crashed in October 1929. He urged business leaders to maintain wages, expanded public works and asked Congress to create the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to lend to banks, railroads and other institutions — a more active federal response to a depression than any predecessor had attempted. But he resisted direct federal relief to individuals, and the economy kept contracting; by 1932 nearly a quarter of the workforce was unemployed.

Hoover signed the Smoot–Hawley Tariff in 1930 and a large tax increase in 1932. The Army’s forcible dispersal of the Bonus Army of World War I veterans in July 1932 further damaged his standing, and he lost to Franklin D. Roosevelt in a landslide. In a long post-presidency he led famine relief efforts after World War II and chaired two commissions on reorganizing the executive branch, for Presidents Truman and Eisenhower.

Offices before the presidency

  • U.S. Food Administrator (1917–1919)
  • Secretary of Commerce (1921–1928)

Era: V. Republicanism Between the World Wars

The Record

  • 1929

    Agricultural Marketing Act

    The act created the Federal Farm Board with a $500 million fund to support farm cooperatives and stabilize crop prices, an approach built on voluntary cooperation rather than direct subsidies.

    Historical Record

  • 1930

    Smoot–Hawley Tariff

    Hoover signed the tariff in June 1930 despite a public appeal by more than 1,000 economists urging a veto. Trading partners retaliated, and world trade contracted sharply in the years that followed.

    Historical Record

  • 1931

    Moratorium on war debts and reparations

    In June 1931 Hoover proposed a one-year moratorium on payments of war debts and reparations among governments to ease the European financial crisis.

    Historical Record

  • 1932

    Reconstruction Finance Corporation

    Established in January 1932, the RFC lent to banks, railroads and insurance companies and later to states for relief. It became a central agency of the New Deal under Franklin Roosevelt.

    Historical Record

  • 1932

    Norris–La Guardia Act

    Hoover signed the act limiting federal courts’ power to issue injunctions against strikes and making “yellow-dog” contracts, which barred workers from joining unions, unenforceable in federal courts.

    Historical Record

  • 1932

    Revenue Act of 1932

    Seeking to balance the budget, Hoover signed one of the largest peacetime tax increases in American history, raising the top income-tax rate from 25 to 63 percent.

    Historical Record

  • 1932

    Emergency Relief and Construction Act

    The act authorized the RFC to lend money to states for relief of the unemployed and to finance self-liquidating public works — the first significant federal aid for unemployment relief.

    Historical Record

  • 1932

    The Bonus Army

    After the Senate rejected early payment of a bonus promised to World War I veterans, Hoover ordered the Army to clear marchers from federal property in Washington. General Douglas MacArthur, by many accounts exceeding his orders, drove the veterans from their main camp at Anacostia Flats with troops, tanks and tear gas.

    Historical Record

Criticism & Debate

Opposing View / Debate

Did Hoover do too little — or too much — to fight the Depression?

Hoover’s response to the Depression has been judged harshly from both the left and the right.

The New Deal critique

Franklin Roosevelt and generations of historians portrayed Hoover as bound by voluntarism and balanced budgets, unwilling to provide direct federal relief to the unemployed while the crisis deepened.

Revisionists

Other historians emphasize that Hoover was far more interventionist than any earlier president — the RFC, public works and farm programs anticipated parts of the New Deal — and that his efforts were overwhelmed by a worldwide banking collapse.

Free-market critics

Economists and historians in the free-market tradition argue that Hoover intervened too much: pressing employers to hold wages up, raising tariffs through Smoot–Hawley and sharply increasing taxes in 1932 deepened the downturn.

Sources

  1. Herbert Hoover: Domestic Affairs · Miller Center, University of Virginia

Documents

Sources

  1. Herbert Hoover · Miller Center, University of Virginia
  2. Herbert Hoover · White House Historical Association
  3. Herbert Hoover: Presidential Documents · The American Presidency Project, UC Santa Barbara
  4. Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum · National Archives
  5. Herbert Hoover National Historic Site · National Park Service