Warm-up: Do you think it is the President’s responsibility to help when the nation is faced with a crisis like the Great Depression? Why or why not?

Hoover’s Response

Hoover & the Depression Throughout the 1920s, people were confident that business would bring continued prosperity. After crash, insisted key to recovery was confidence; the nation’s business is “on a sound and prosperous basis”; insisted things would improve soon... “a chicken in every pot” Had government spend more on new public buildings, roads, parks, & dams Got business leaders to promise to maintain wages; did for a short time but had to start dropping wages Got Congress to pass Hawley-Smoot Tariff backfired when European nations raised their tariffs slowing down international trade

Hoover & the Depression Claimed state & local government responsible to provide relief; localism Hoover believed in laissez-faire and small government involvement in people’s lives (Republican platform) Set up Reconstruction Finance Corporation gave government credit to industries, railroads and insurance companies, etc. Believed that prosperity at the top would help the economy as a whole---"trickle-down theory"

*******Business******** Trickle-down Theory *******Business******** $ $ $ $ $ $ Production Jobs $$$$ $$$$ $$$$ $$$$ $$$$ $$$$ $$$$ $$$$ $$$$ $$$$$ $$$ $$$$$$$

Bonus Army WWI veterans promised a pension for fighting in war but would not receive it until 1945; $1,000 bonus 20,000 jobless veterans and their families, "bonus army," marched on Washington DC & camped until they receive the bonus Most went home but a few thousand stayed and Hoover called out the Army, under General Douglas MacArthur, who used force to drive marchers out of Washington