Herbert Hoover: Success or Failure?
Herbert Hoover, the 31st President of the United States, succeeded at almost everything he did. Yet he is best remembered for one failure: the Great Depression. Is that legacy justified? Historian Kenneth Whyte examines the evidence.
#president #history #prageru
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Script:
Herbert Hoover, the 31st President of the United States, succeeded at almost everything he did.
And not just succeeded. He succeeded in spectacular fashion — as a mining executive in Australia and China, as a humanitarian in Europe, and as a politician in the United States.
But he is best known to history for his role in one failure — the Great Depression, a decade-long economic collapse that impoverished millions in America and across the world.
He didn’t cause it. And he made superhuman efforts to reverse it. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t stop it.
If a single individual could have, it might have been this remarkable man.
Born in Iowa in 1874, he was orphaned at the age of nine. His father, a blacksmith, died when Hoover was just six; his mother a Quaker preacher, three years later. Unhappy, sullen, and painfully shy as a teenager, he came into his own at Stanford University, then tuition-free. Hoover was in the university’s very first graduating class, his field of study being geology.
On graduation, he talked himself into a job with a prominent English mining company. They sent him to the Australian outback. Conditions were so harsh, and disease so rampant, it was almost a suicide mission. But young Hoover was not deterred. He reorganized the company’s mines, made them much more profitable, and scouted for new ones. A gold mine he acquired, largely on his own initiative, turned out to be one of the richest in the world.
He was on track to become fabulously wealthy when World War I broke out and he abruptly abandoned his business career.
In a matter of months, he transformed himself into an internationally recognized humanitarian. Almost single-handedly, he arranged to feed eight-million Belgians threatened with starvation when the war cut off their food supplies.
In 1919, with the guns finally silenced, Hoover was charged by President Woodrow Wilson to lead the rebuild of Europe’s devastated economy. He tackled the job with usual ferocious energy and saved tens of millions more from starvation. The New York Times described him as “the nearest approach to a dictator Europe has had since Napoleon.” They meant it as a compliment.
In 1921 the newly elected Republican President, Warren Harding, tapped Hoover to be Secretary of Commerce. He stayed on when Calvin Coolidge took over following Harding’s sudden death in 1923. During his tenure, Hoover laid the groundwork for America’s commercial aviation industry. He also organized the building of the Colorado River dam that now bears his name and made possible the rapid economic development of the American southwest. And when disastrous flooding struck the Mississippi River Valley in 1927, it was Hoover who managed the massive and successful relief effort.
By the time he won the Republican presidential nomination in 1928, he was hailed as a man “whose wisdom encompassed all branches, whose judgment was never at fault, who knew the answers to all questions, and who could see in the dark.” His election was never in doubt. He won easily.
Yet just six months after Hoover’s inauguration, in the autumn of 1929, the stock market crashed. Slowly and inexorably, the United States followed the rest of the world into the Great Depression. However qualified he was for the presidency, Hoover was no match for the worst economic collapse in modern history, an international phenomenon rooted in the still-unresolved upheavals of the First World War, and far beyond the capacities of any one leader to solve.
His political opponents would later claim that he sat on his hands through his four years in office. Hoover, in fact, fought the Depression with vigor and imagination. He expanded the federal government’s toolkit for managing the economy and made far more progress in limiting the Depression’s damage than is generally recognized.
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Correct me if I'm wrong, didn't he blame Mexican Americans for the Great Depression? And have them deported as a result? Even though, some if not most of them, were American citizens
So Hoover had the best Pre Presidency and Carter the best Post Presidency?
Hoover broke a recovering economy with all his "trying to reverse it." He was a progressive who believed in the power of the government to engineer solutions to problems at a society wide level, just a lighter one than FDR, and that cost our nation and the world dearly. The reason he was so loved by the media is because he followed the progressive ideology… until it became politically convenient for them to vilify him as an avatar of the free market, even though he was nothing of the sort. Coolidge was about the closest to that we had, and he didn't tinker with the economy. It's not about Republicans vs. Democrats. It's about central planning vs. freedom.
how republican is this channnel…
Considering how his presidency and the two presidency’s before him lead to the Great Depression and Hoover refused to do anything to prevent it.
He was a terrible president, but I can see why you love him, because according to you all republicans are infallible
Hoover pioneered gun control too
George Bush is to Iraq as Hoover is to the Great Depression.
George Bush is to Africa as Hoover is to Belgium.
Sounds like the biggest mistake he made was expanding the government's rrach over the economy. It's not our government's job to handle such things, especially since everything the government touches is tainted or made worse for wear. Other than that mishap he was an outstanding human being.
No mention of the Bonus Army. 🤔
Did not know these facts about Hoover , thanks.
Calvin Coolidge on Herbert Hoover: "That man has offered me unsolicited advice every day for six years, all of it bad."
I appreciate going over some of the details with Herbert Hoover to try and highlight more of the good, but at the same time we need to understand that Hoover was an impulsive meddler and fixer who advocated for government intervention in most everything. I'm not saying he didn't have good intentions, but the reason he failed at the Great Depression wasn't really because it was beyond the power of one man or linked to the fallout of world war I, though both statements are true in the abstract. He failed because, to put it bluntly, he tried to meddle in the economy to engineer his way out of the depression and laid the foundations for FDR's new deal. His and Roosevelt's actions made the depression worse and turned it into a ten year long economic crisis that was only resolved due to foreign countries buying more American goods for world war II.
I would say George Herbert Walker Bush was a modern version of Herbert Hoover (on a smaller scale). Bush Sr. was unfairly blamed for the recession of ‘91.
Everyone who would said this in 1930s you would been laughed at and beaten up
The problem with PragerU is that they try to celebrate both Coolidge and Hoover. Pick one. They had opposite ideas of how to solve depressions.
FDR campaigned against Hoover being an irresponsible big spender. He was simply not honest because he took Hoover's programs and put them on steroids. But the idea that Hoover did too little is dead wrong.
Lol, leave it to the New York Times to call that a compliment.
Like Jimmy Carter after him, Herbert Hoover is a good example of how good people don't always make good leaders.
My grandmother used to say not since Herbert Hoover has there been an honest and good president
https://youtu.be/_7VUqJF3Vi4
If he had been a Democrat, he would be remembered as a god king today.
Thank you Kenneth, I look forward to speaking with you hopefully soon! Your book is one of my favorites about the Hoovers. The Hoovers were incredible Philanthropists and Humanitarians, and your book tells this story well.
Don't defend Hoover just because he has an "R" next to his name. His policies as Secretary of Commerce majorly contributed to the market crash of '29. His presidential policies, based in Wilsonian and Keynsian ideas, turned what would have been a mild recession into the Great Depression. He treated veterans with disgrace. His predecessor warned against him, and he, a progressive, pretended to be a Conservative, which resulted in Conservativism getting dragged through the mud and blamed for the failures of Progressivism. It would take half a century for Conservatism to re-emerge onto the mainstream political discourse. Hoover is easily one of the worst Presidents we've ever had.
Based on the thumbnail I still have to say that Hoover was a failure. Historians agree that Hoover didn't do enough action to prevent the great depression. I'm majoring in history with my senior paper discussing this very topic which isn't finished yet so bear with me when I use some material I collected and worked on. I blame not just Hoover, but both the weak banking system, the federal reverse for not doing enough, a slight and only slight blame on private companies/businesses, and congress from a societal viewpoint.
The vast majority of America's banks were small, individual institutions that had to rely on their own resources. When there was a panic and depositors rushed to take out whatever money they had before they lost it all, banks went under if it didn't have enough money on reserve. So, in 1930, a wave of bank failures began in Louisville Kentucky then spread to the Midwest then to the South. As depositors lined up to take their money out before the banks went down, banks called in loans and sold assets. Ultimately, this meant that credit froze up, which was what really destroyed the economy. Because a frozen credit system meant that less money was in circulation and that led to deflation. When prices drop, businesses cut costs mainly by laying off workers. These workers then can't buy anything so inventories continue to build up and prices drop further. Banks weren't lending money cause they themselves were broke and unsupported, so employers couldn't borrow any money to make payroll to pay their workers, and more and more businesses went bankrupt, leaving more and more workers unable to purchase the goods and services that would keep the businesses open and importantly keep the economy up and running. the Federal Reserve does deserve a good chunk of the blame as well for not rescuing the banks and not infusing money into the economy.
Then comes Hoover, ( Again I'm still doing research so please bear with me with an open mind) When it comes to historians, economists, and ordinary students they will always say/ask " Why didn't the Hoover administration embrace Keynesian economics like FDR did? Well, first, John Maynard Keynes, "The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money" wasn't published until 1936, when the Depression was well underway. Also when comes Hoover, who believes the depression was caused by ww1 which is a fair argument to make, due to the debt and reparations that were created due to the war. Germany had to pay 33 billion dollars in reparations, to France and Britain, which it couldn't pay without borrowing money from American banks. In addition, the U.S. itself was owed ten billion dollars by Britain and France, so overall, you have this web of people owning people's money. Receiving their money back after giving it to someone else, who then gave it to someone else who then gave it to you back. The economies of Germany, France, and Britain fell off a cliff when America's credit went down. So, with the largest non-U.S. industrial economies in total turmoil, fewer people abroad could buy American products so world trade came to a halt. And then, when the world needed more trade to simply survive, America ruins it, responding by raising tariffs to their highest levels ever with the Hawley-Smooth Tariff passed by the HOOVER administration. This protectionist's failure of a idea was to protect American industry but since Europe responded with their own high tariffs, that just meant that there were fewer buyers for American goods, less trade, fewer sales, and, ultimately, fewer jobs. (good reason why America should reject protectionism). (I can go over the details of how this Tariff ruined America but I'll let u guys ask for me to explain more)
So what did Hoover do? Not enough. let's take the foreign debt issue as an example. The Hoover Moratorium which Hoover proposed on intergovernmental debt payments wasn't enough, mainly because the central bankers in Europe and America refused to let go of the gold standard, which would have allowed the governments to devalue their currency and pump needed money into their economies, which meant that world financial markets froze up even further, which FDR would make a note and not the same mistake again. when Hoover was president, political and economic theory counseled in favor of doing nothing. Hoover believed that the best course of action was to "use the powers of government to cushion the situation", in a White House conference, he persuaded a large number of industrialists to agree to preserve wage rates. He also got the Federal Farm Board to support agricultural production and got congressional approval for 140 million dollars in new public works(like the hoover dam). Overall, he nearly doubled the federal public works expenditure between 1929 and 1931, it just wasn't nearly enough. Because what Hoover didn't allow was for the federal government to take over the situation completely. He relied primarily on private businesses and state and local governments to stimulate the economy, and that was insufficient. It's not surprising when you consider that in 1929, federal expenditures accounted for 3% of our gross domestic product, whereas in 2010 it was 23.57% which continues to grow today. This forced Hoover to commit to a truly radical move. In January 1932, he and Congress created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which was basically a federal bailout program that borrowed money to provide emergency loans to banks, railroads, and agricultural corporations. The problem was that by 1932, bailing out the banks wasn't enough, and the Great Depression started to take shape. By early 1932, well over 10 million people were out of work – 20% of the labor force. And in big cities, the numbers were even worse, especially for people of color. Like in Chicago, 4% of the population was African-American, but they made up more than 16% of the unemployed.
Overall, By the time he finally decided to do something, it was too late. Farmers were devastated by the lack of support from the government after ww1 which lead to higher prices, farmers moving away from the rural, and trade tariffs by protectionists further destroying trade that is important for framers and for all consumers, the Hawley tariffs destroy trade during a time when the world needed more trade to survive. Small local banks weren't supported by the treasury and federal reserve. So everyone knows after reading this I want to say that I'm a proud republican but what I might say that some people don't like to hear is that GOVERNMENT matters, especially in areas where it has a duty to play. Alan Brinkley(a great historian) puts it best in his textbook – unfished nation. historian David Kennedy Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945. Pivotal Tuesdays: Four Elections That Shaped the Twentieth Century by Margaret O'Mara.
Thank you! Just today, I heard a commentator, who was talking about Biden, call him one of America's worst presidents.
I would love to see more videos about the presidents of the past
All men have their good traits, but it would behoove me to not point out how hyperinterventionist Hoover should not be blamed for doing nothing. On the contrary, Hoover deserves a share of the blame for the Great Depression. He did too much. In reality, Hoover was a hyperinterventionist who expanded government interference in the American economy, and these interventionist policies were the cause of the Great Depression. Worse, these policies continued into FDRs administrations, as FDRs own top economic adviser, Rexford Tugwell, acknowledged when he said that the New Dealers "owe much to Hoover." Roosevelts continuation of these interventionist policies made the Depression longer and more severe than it otherwise would have been. He believed society could be engineered just as a mining operation could be. He believed human manipulations could triumph over any alleged laws of economics. Hoover, as secretary of commerce increased his departments budget by more than 50 percent, expanded the Commerce Dept into thirty divisions, and hired more than three thousand additional govt bureaucrats. He intended to centrally plan American industry into prosperity, but his efforts as secretary provide a case study of the futility of such planning.
While he complained of the lawlessness by capitalism, it was lost on him that most of the lawlessness of the 20s was a direct effect of federal regulation–Prohibition. He didn't consider that there was no shortage of federal law enforcement authority in the age of Prohibition.
His believe that certain people"made too much money" was a crudely socialistic idea. It ignored the fact that much of the wealth of the rich goes into savings and fuels business investment and that they create jobs, invest millions of dollars in the economy, and are often the very source of economic survival for many communities. FDR would continue denigrating of the rich.
Hoover believed in the power fallacy He said that a key to prosperity was "to maintain the purchasing power of labor through high wages". He was the main initiator of labor legislation in the Harding and Coolidge administrations, all of which aimed at artificially propping up wages. The fallacy here is the belief that "high" wages can sustain without increased production or productivity. Whenever a government passes laws that artificially push wages up above what is justified by labor productivity, the end result is higher unemployment.
In addition, Hoover advocated easy credit, mistakenly believing that if the Federal Reserve created money it would lead to prosperity. The Feds' easy money policy of the late 20s was a major cause of the Great Depression.
He was a frenetic regulator. He attempted to interfere in dozens of industries like broadcasting and airlines. He initiated a policy where the govt granted broadcast licenses mostly to larger radio broadcasters, creating essentially a government-approved cartel in that industry.
He championed public works spending to stimulate the economy, failing to understand that government can "stimulate' one sector of the economy only by depressing other sectors since it must tax, borrow, or inflate the money supply to finance the spending.
One of his interventions was the idea that businesses must not, in a slow economy, reduce wages, even in the face of shrinking profits. But artificially propping up wages was more harmful in the depressed economy than it had been when he was commerce secretary. In a recession, of course, inflexible wages cause unemployment to be higher than it otherwise would be.
In 1929 HOover devoted a sizable chunk of the federal budget–half a billion dollars, or 13 percent of the total budget–to public works spending. The negative effects were all this govt spending took money out of the private sector, extracted through taxes. As a result, private sector spending, which could have reinvigorated the economy, declined. I could go on, but essentially, Hoover orchestrated massive interventions, high-wage policies, tax and spending increases, protectionism, government credit rationing, and much else. In short, he did just about everything wrong that could have been done and that destroyed the economy's prospects for the kinds of adjustments that needed to take place. He turned a recession into the Great Depression. Unfortunately, FDR ran with everything that Hoover set up and continued the policies and made the Great Depression longer and more severe than was necessary. Verdict? Both success and failure.
There is a nice city square named after him, here in my home town in Belgium
Awesome information. Always enjoy learning some new things and picked up a bunch of new facts about Hoover.
Funny. The first two recessions came about under Republican presidents (Herbert Hoover /Calvin Coolidge and George W. Bush respectively) and we got out of it under Democratic presidents (Franklin Roosevelt and Barack Obama).
Now, we’re on the brink of another recession, where it’s the opposite. Brought about under a Democratic president (Joe Biden). You know what that means?
Republican president 2024!
(please don’t be joe or donald please…)
He got a bad rap. My parents still believe he caused or made the depression worse.
I'd say the major flaw of Hoover IS that he did too much. Government intervention is never the solution to economic hardship, no matter how much we want it to be (see covid payments of 2020). Hoover cultivated the playbook of an autocrat that worked in the fields of mining, charity, central planning of specific sectors, but the economy is a best of millions upon millions that cannot be steered easily if at all. Roosevelt is "credited" with "ending" the depression, until he isn't with WW2, but even then we were still in the midst of recession/depression into the 1950s because of the policies Hoover started and Roosevelt expanded. That is why he is known for his failure, because he failed catastrophicly
PragerU: Small government is best. Government shouldn't get involved in the economy.
Also PragerU: Hoover was a great President because he expanded government control over the economy.
🤡
Wow, people here seem to hate FDR a lot!
Upholding prohibition was a huge blunder in its own right.
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Prohibition cost Hoover, that's all