what was the role of president hoover in the great depression?

Answer 1

I'm not too surprised to see the "common wisdom" repeated here. But in fact, the popular views about Hoover's approach to the Depression and attempts to suggest that he believed in government IN-action ("laissez-faire") while Roosevelt brought in many government programs is seriously flawed.

On the contrary, Hoover "established several new agencies and also funded public works projects in the hope of stimulating the economy and getting the nation back to work."
http://www.trumanlibrary.org/hoover/hooverbio.htm

And that's just a start!

In fact, Hoover argued AGAINST the government's taking the sort of laissez faire approach (letting the business cycle 'work itself out') that had worked in 1920-21, and boasted about this in his 1932 bid for re-election.

Murray Rothbard in "America's Great Depression" argues:

"Hoover's role as founder of a revolutionary program of government planning to combat depression has been unjustly neglected by historians. Franklin D. Roosevelt, in large part, merely elaborated the policies laid down by his predecessor. To scoff at Hoover's tragic failure to cure the depression as a typical example of laissez-faire is drastically to misread the historical record. The Hoover rout must be set down as a failure of government planning and not of the free market."

Some have called these forgotten precedents to Roosevelt's own policies, the "Hoover New Deal" --for it was marked by
"extensive governmental economic planning and intervention-including bolstering of wage rates and prices, expansion of credit, propping up of weak firms, and increased government spending (e.g., subsidies to unemployment and public works)"
http://www.mises.org/rothbard/agd/chapter7.asp

Other 'activist' policies that only made matters worse, were the introduction of many trade restrictions, including tariffs, quotas, foreign trade controls -- including the misguided "Smoot-Hawley Act". The idea of this was to protect American industries from foreign competition (not at all a laissez-faire notion!) Instead it drove American prices up, killed free trade and contributed (along with other nations' taking similar steps) to a GLOBAL depression.

RAISING taxes (doubling the income tax in 1932!) was another interventionist attempt that failed miserably.
http://www.sennholz.com/inflordefl.html

(Sennholz goes on to show how Roosevelt followed in Hoover's footsteps. I do not agree with his overall analysis, but his summary of Hoover & Roosevelt is pretty good.)

Note that several of the FIRST steps taken by the famous "Hundred Days Congress" at the beginning of FDR's first term enacted proposals that HOOVER had tried, unsuccessfully, to push through Congress.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal#The_First_Hundred_Days

Another overview of how the policies of BOTH Hoover and Roosevelt deepened and prolonged the depression (which did NOT end until the U.S. entered WW II !) concludes with this summary --

"The genesis of the Great Depression lay in the inflationary monetary policies of the U.S. government in the 1920s. It was prolonged and exacerbated by a litany of political missteps: trade-crushing tariffs, incentive-sapping taxes, mind-numbing controls on production and competition, senseless destruction of crops and cattle, and coercive labor laws, to recount just a few. It was not the free market that produced twelve years of agony; rather, it was political bungling on a scale as grand as there ever was."
-Lawrence W. Reed "Great Myths of the Great Depression", The Freeman, August 1998 -- Vol. 48, No. 8
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a392e3c4f5fe9.htm

(Read the responses after the article for some different views on how the Depression BEGAN, though all agree on how government policies made it much worse and longer than it would have been.)

More criticism of view that FDR 'saved us' with explanation of how Hoover & his Congress were "HYPER-active"
http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2006/12/president_frank.html

including:
President Hoover and Congress also worked out the basic forms of the later 'New Deal' public works programs (although on a smaller scale), and in this they were supported by most of the economists of their time (the "what is seen and what is unseen", showing that every government project must be paid for at the expense of more productive non-government activity, as Bastiat was considered out of date, although he had not actually been effectively refuted). However, most economists of the time did not support the massive increase in import taxes that went into effect in 1931 - President Hoover himself had doubts about this move of Congress but he still signed the bill.

All in all the government price and wage rigging efforts (voluntary' agreements with various concerns), tax and spend policy (and the trade 'war' of beggar-my-neighbour tariffs) managed to turn a credit-money bust into the Great Depression.

Answer 2

His presidency was plagued by three major problems.
1. The depression started for the farmers in the mid '20s. Bad conservation practices caused great dust bowls. The U.S. was still an agrarian economy with 80% of the people on the farms and agriculture was a disaster. Farm prices were low and yet food was scarce. This trickled throughout the whole economy. Europe was having the same problems so exports were down also.
2. Hoover believed strongly in balanced budgets. This is normally good economics but exactly the wrong approach to a distressed economy. The banking system instead of helping was dragging things down.
3. Hoover was a strong pacifist. A little government spending on defense would have created needed jobs, industrial sector stimulus, added exports, and helpful R&D. Instead, we were left unprepared for WW II.

Answer 3

He wasn't very effective, Roosevelt, after him, was much better, with the Alphabet agencies such as the EBA
(Emergency Banking Act) and TVA (Tenessee Valley Act).
There were shanty towns in America called Hoover, because he didn't help. He employed a 'laissez-faire' attitude, ie, let it be. He believed it was un-American to help Americans with hand outs and benefits.
The Wall Street Crash was mostly caused by over production of products (the market eventually became saturated though products were still made, the Model T Ford was the first car which used a conveyer belt and this started other producers using them). Also, the dust bowl facing farmers, with the top soil problems etc... these caused the Wall Street Crash, Hoover didn't cause it, he just exasperated it by not helping.

Answer 4

He thought the economy would recover on his own so he did nothing. Newspapers were called "Hoover Blankets". That should tell you how well it worked. He wasn't necesarily a bad president, just not right for that time.

Answer 5

Yes, he did nothing. Surprising for a man who did so much humanitarian work throughout his career.

And empty pockets turned inside out were called 'Hoover flags'.

Answer 6

he gave( through congress) big business money in hopes that would trickle down and hire people..........it didn't work ! that's why FDR beat him so badly in the next election. only the government had the money to start the economy moving again.

Answer 7

He invented the vacuum cleaner, cleaning up the mess in America!