Abstract
When the stock market crashed, Herbert Hoover had only been in office for 8 months. In 1929, the market stood at 485. By 1932, it was 85. Banks closed (10,000 of them between 1929 and 1934); drought conditions were reported in 300 counties in 30 states; 12 million people were unemployed by May 1932; and farmers lost their land to banks and/or tax collectors. In a single day in April 1932, one-fourth of the entire area of the state of Mississippi went under the hammer of auctioneers. Perhaps as many as a million men and boys left their homes, wandering the country looking for work. By January 1931, New York City operated 82 bread lines feeding 85,000 people a day. Farm income plummeted as corn prices fell to pre–Civil War levels. Many schools closed for lack of public funds.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Elliot Rosen, Hoover, Roosevelt, and the Brains Trust (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), p. 41.
Albert U. Romasco, “Herbert Hoover’s Policies for Dealing with the Great Depression: The End of the Old Order or the Beginning of the New?,” in Martin Fausold and George T. Mazuzan, eds., The Hoover Presidency: A Reappraisal (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1974), p. 74;
Carl Degler, “The Ordeal of Herbert Hoover,” Yale Review 32 (September 1963): 563.
Martin L. Fausold, The Presidency of Herbert Hoover (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1985), p. 25.
Joan Hoff Wilson, Herbert Hoover, Forgotten Progressive (Boston: Little, Brown, 1975).
William Appleman Williams, Contours of American History (Chicago: Quadrangle Paperbacks, 1961), p. 426.
Ellis W. Hawley, “Herbert Hoover and American Corporativism, 1929–1933,” in Martin L. Fausold and George T. Mazuzan, eds., The Hoover Presidency: A Reappraisal (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1974), p. 102.
Murray N. Rothbard, America’s Great Depression (Los Angeles: Nash Publishers, 1972).
William E. Leuchtenburg, Hebert Hoover (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2009), pp. 58–59.
Herbert Hoover, American Individualism (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1923), pp. 1–2, 6–7, 12.
Herbert Hoover, The New Day: Campaign Speeches of Herbert Hoover (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1938), p. 156.
Gerald D. Nash, United States Oil Policy 1890–1964 (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1968), p. 20.
Herbert Hoover, The State Papers and Other Public Writings of Herbert Hoover (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1934), 2:264, 250, 470.
Herbert Hoover, Addressees upon the American Road (New York: Scribner, 1938), p. 333.
James D. Barber, Presidential Character (New York: Pearson/Longman, 2009), p. 58.
Herbert Hoover, Ordeal of Woodrow Wilson (Washington, DC: Kessinger Press, 2010), p. 247.
John D. Hicks, Republican Ascendency 1921–1933 (New York: Harper and Row, 1960), p. x.
Copyright information
© 2013 Philip Abbott
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Abbott, P. (2013). Weathering the Storm: Herbert Hoover. In: Bad Presidents. The Evolving American Presidency Series. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137306593_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137306593_10
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-45513-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-30659-3
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political & Intern. Studies CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)