American Public University
The Reputation Roller Coaster of Herbert Hoover
A Paper Submitted for
HIST 520
Graduate Seminar in U.S. History
Don Sine, Ph.D.
by
Michael B. Enders
1
Introduction
The “standard history” of the Great Depression, as recent historians describe the work of early
historians, is that it resulted from the excesses of unregulated capitalism and what otherwise
might have been an ordinary recession became the Great Depression because President Herbert
Hoover, a laissez-faire conservative, did nothing to stop it. Recent libertarian historians also
blame the Great Depression on Herbert Hoover, but from the opposite direction, that it was his
progressive activism that caused the Great Depression. This paper summarizes the actions and
reputation of Herbert Hoover at several stages of his career and concludes, that although the
picture is mixed and Hoover later portrayed himself as a small-government libertarian, he was
closer to being a progressive than a libertarian, and that the depression was not all his fault.
The Roller Coaster Reputation of Herbert Hoover
Few, if any, figures in American history has been both revered and despised as much as Herbert
Hoover. His reputation took a roller coaster ride that peaked at about the time he was elected
president United States in 1928 and went into a deep decline after the onset of the Great
Depression, and never fully recovered. This paper will explore the changes in Hoover’s
reputation, particularly with regard to his role in the Great Depression, including what he thought
of himself as well as what others thought of him. It will compare his actual role with what
conventional wisdom says his role was with regard to the Great Depression. The conventional
view is said to be that the Great Depression was a consequence of the excesses of free market
capitalism during the Roaring Twenties and that what otherwise might have been a recession or
relatively mild depression became the Great Depression because President Herbert Hoover was a
laissez-faire conservative who did nothing to stop it. At least that is what historians claim is the
conventional wisdom. As the libertarian historian, Thomas Woods said, “Most people believe
2
that Hoover stood by and did nothing as the Depression ravaged the country, and that it was the
Franklin Roosevelt’s vigorous intervention into the economy have finally brought recovery.”1
Political scientist Barry C. Edwards also says, “Conventional wisdom holds that Hoover was a
laissez-faire conservative who stubbornly refused to compromise his ideological beliefs in
response to the Great Depression (e.g. Leuchtenburg, 2009).”2 Amity Shlaes describes the
“standard history” of the Great Depression as being caused by the breakdown of capitalism and
that, although the situation called for intervention from Washington, President Hoover made
things worse by his stubborn refusal to take control because of his commitment to what he called
rugged individualism.3 However, I have not been able to find in my research any historian who
has examined the actions of Hoover and has concluded that he took no action to head off the
depression. In fact, the only prominent people who claim that Herbert Hoover was a laissez-faire
conservative seem to be liberal and Democratic politicians, whose logic seem to run something
like, “Herbert Hoover caused the Great Depression; he was a Republican; therefore if you elect a
Republican president, he will cause the next depression. Republican politicians tend to avoid
talking about Herbert Hoover altogether, and Libertarian historians such as Professor Woods and
Murray Rothbard4 do agree that, to a large extent, the Great Depression was Herbert Hoover’s
fault, but for the opposite reason. They claim that Hoover intervened far too much in the
1
Thomas E. Woods, The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History (Washington, DC:
Regnery Publishing, 2004), 140.
2
Barry C. Edwards, "Putting Herbert Hoover on the Map: Was the 31st President a Progressive?"
Congress & the Presidency 41, no. 1 (2014): 50. Incidentally, the author has read the Professor
Leuchtenburg’s book (cited below) and does not recall him saying anything about conventional
wisdom or that he himself thought that Hoover was a laissez-faire conservative. Otherwise, the
article by Professor Edwards seems to have a very thorough summary of opinions of scholars
who have examine Hoover’s record and have expressed opinions about his political orientation.
3
Amity Shlaes, The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, paperback ed.
(New York: Harper Perennial, 2008), 3-4.
4
Murray N. Rothbard, America's Great Depression (Princeton, NJ: D. Van Nostrand, 1963;
Baltimore, MD: Laissez Faire Books, 2013), Barnes & Noble Nook e-book.
3
economy and that his intervention turned what otherwise might have been an ordinary recession
in 1929 into the greatest depression that the United States has ever known. Most other historians
note that Hoover was far more active in intervening in the economy than any of his predecessors,
but they avoid taking a position with regard to whether his interventions helped alleviate the
depression or made it worse. Professor Edwards - after doing a statistical analysis of the
legislation the Hoover asked for, signed, or vetoed with the roll call votes of members of
Congress known to be progressive or conservative - concludes that President Hoover was more
conservative than his own party in Congress who in turn were on average more conservative than
the Democrats. The conclusion of Edwards that Hoover was more conservative than other
Republicans of his era is a minority opinion among recent scholars who have studied Hoover.
The history of Herbert Hoover’s public service before his Presidency indicates that he was very
active in trying to promote the economy. He had a sterling reputation as long as the economy
was good or improving, and he would be expected to remain actively involved in trying to
manage the economy if he should become President. Upon examining the record, it seems likely
that his reputation was undeserved at both extremes. Economies are very complicated things,
with many actors involved. To assign most of the credit for a good economy and most of the
blame for a bad economy to one person is unrealistic and unfair. Following is a brief history of
the actions of Herbert Hoover and his reputation at various points in his career.
After being a successful mining engineer and businessman, Hoover pushed his way into the
public service in August 1914, as he was living in London, when more than 100,000 U.S.
nationals fled the continent of Europe after Germany invaded Belgium.5 He organized a group
of American businessmen in London into a “Committee of American Residents in London for
5
William Edward Leuchtenburg, Herbert Hoover, The American Presidents (New York: Times
Books, 2009), 25, Barnes & Noble Nook e-book.
4
Assistance of American Travelers” to scrounge up money to make small loans to stranded
travelers. Shortly thereafter, Ambassador Walter Hines Page asked Hoover to head a private
undertaking, with unofficial U.S. government sponsorship, to save the Belgians from starvation.
The German army had devastated the country and the British had imposed a blockade on the
entire European continent to try to starve the German Reich into submission. Boldly and
energetically, Hoover solicited donations of millions of dollars, bought tens of thousands of tons
of food from all over the world, and arranged for it to be delivered.
Historian William
Leuchtenburg opined, “If a man without Hoover’s daring had held his post, many thousands
would have starved to death.”6 Hoover’s mission involved delicate negotiations with belligerent
countries in the war.
He negotiated with both the British government and the German
government and got cooperation from both. Although his bold actions made him many enemies,
he acquired a reputation as a great humanitarian and administrator. After World War I began,
President Wilson created the position of Food Administrator and appointed Hoover to it.7 In this
position, he encouraged Americans to conserve food, bought large quantities of food from
farmers, and distributed food to troops and allies overseas. He became known as the “food czar.”
His exhortations to conserve were so pervasive that the term “Hooverize” became popular and a
Valentine’s Day card in 1918 read:
I can Hooverize on dinner,
And on lights and fuel too,
But I’ll never learn to Hooverize,
6
7
Leuchtenburg, Herbert Hoover, 26.
Leuchtenburg, Herbert Hoover, 34.
5
When it comes to loving you.
8
After his accomplishments in the war, many people in both major political parties suggested that
he would make an excellent President of the United States if he should choose to run in 1920.9
As historian Robert H. Wiebe put it at the very end of his book about the period from 1877 to
1920, “In the year that Roosevelt died and Wilson crumpled, Republicans and Democrats alike
were talking about the possible candidacy of a young man whose reputation had prospered
enormously during the war. Herbert Hoover … represented a new generation…. “10 Particularly
noteworthy are the comments of his future adversary, Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin
Delano Roosevelt, “He certainly is a wonder, and I wish we could make him President of the
United States. There would not be a better one.”11 Hoover got a handful of votes from delegates
to the Republican National Convention of 1920, but the man who won the nomination and the
election, Warren G. Harding, persuaded him to become Secretary of Commerce. According to
historian Robert K. Murray, Hoover resisted politics because he preferred to remain out of public
life, and several members of the Republican establishment also opposed Hoover being chosen
Secretary of Commerce because he was “too liberal, too internationally minded, too popular, and
too ambitious.”12 He certainly was ambitious. A predecessor to the position told him that the
duties would be “putting the fish to bed at night and turning on the lights around the coast.”13 He
turned the department into an empire, asking for ever increasing appropriations, setting up new
8
Leuchtenburg, Herbert Hoover, 35.
Robert K. Murray, The Harding Era: Warren G. Harding and His Administration
(Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1969), 192.
10
Robert H. Wiebe, The Search for Order: 1877-1922 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1994), 302.
11
Leuchtenburg, Herbert Hoover, 47. Many other historians also report the quote, apparently
because it differed so radically regarding what he said about Hoover later.
12
Murray, The Harding Era, 98, 99.
13
Leuchtenburg, Herbert Hoover, 52.
9
6
bureaus, and taking over some functions of other departments. He became so involved in all
areas of government that many people said that he was “secretary of commerce and assistant
secretary of everything else.”14
Economists and historians often compare the reaction of the Harding administration often
compare the reaction of the Harding administration to the depression of 1920-1921 with the
reactions of the Hoover and Roosevelt administrations to the Great Depression. In particular
libertarians and economists of the Austrian school of economics use the comparison as evidence
that decreased government spending and taxation rather than increased government spending is
the best way to get the country out of a bad economy. Government spending and taxes decreased
markedly under the Harding administration and, although the depression was in some ways at
least as severe as the Great Depression, it was relatively short and followed by nearly a decade of
prosperity. However, Daniel Kuehn points out that the situation is not that simple, because
government spending had already decreased dramatically in the Woodrow Wilson administration
as a result of the end of World War I before the depression began, and monetary policy of the
Federal Reserve was an important factor in the onset of both depressions that makes evaluation
of causes and effects difficult.15 The relevance to Hoover’s reputation is that Hoover is often
erroneously associated with the economic policies of Presidents Harding and Coolidge, when he
was not at the time an advocate of decreased spending and his attempt as Secretary of Commerce
was to try to persuade businesses to keep wages high. The depression of 1920-1921 had no
apparent effect on how popular Hoover was, but may have falsely branded him as a laissez-faire
conservative by his association with the Harding administration, and later with the Coolidge
14
Amity Shlaes, Coolidge, Barnes & Noble e-book ed. (New York: Harper, 2013). 387, digital
file.
15
Daniel Kuehn, "A Critique of Powell, Woods, and Murphy on the 1920-1921 Depression," The
Review of Austrian Economics 24, no. 3 (October 28, 2010): 275-291.
7
administration.
As if Hoover’s reputation needed the help, a great natural disaster occurred in 1927, a flood of
the Mississippi River, with which he was put in charge of dealing, as he had been in charge of
previous disasters. As Amity Shlaes put it, “Hoover slipped into the role of flood chief so
naturally that it was as if the war had never ended, as if he were again rescuing Belgium.”16 He
commandeered equipment and helped the Red Cross with a fund drive. The flood was so bad
that hundreds died and several hundred thousand were housed in refugee camps. Although he
drew some criticism for heavy-handed tactics and not saving some areas, overall, he was again a
hero. The most significant clue during his tenure as Secretary of Commerce about how Hoover
would later behave as President with regard to the economy was his frequent meetings with
business leaders. Throughout the 1920s, Hoover met with business leaders to encourage them to
form trade associations. Contrary to the anti-monopoly tendencies of other government officials,
he encouraged companies to cooperate with each other to serve the interest of their industries.17
In accepting the nomination of the Republican Party to be President of the United States, Hoover
seemed to promise to resist his own activist tendencies to follow in the laissez-faire conservative
footsteps of Presidents Harding and Coolidge. He said, “Given a chance to go forward with the
policies of the last eight years, we shall soon with the help of God be in sight of the day when
poverty shall be banished from this nation.”18 On the other hand, maybe he meant his own
policies of the last eight years rather than the policies of the Presidents he served under.
According to historians Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen, in the 1928 election, it was the
16
Shlaes, Coolidge, 390.
Alan Brinkley, The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War (New York:
Vintage Books, 1996), 36.
18
Leuchtenburg, Herbert Hoover, 70.
17
8
Democratic candidate, Al Smith, who was closer to the laissez-faire tradition, and Hoover was
the progressive.19 Franklin Roosevelt apparently saw no laissez-faire conservatism in Hoover,
because he remarked to an industrialist, “Mr. Hoover has ... shown in his own Department a most
alarming desire to issue regulations and to tell businessmen generally how to conduct their
affairs.”20 Hoover, prophetically, was concerned that the expectations of him by the people were
exaggerated. In January 1929, a couple of months before he took office, he told the editor of
Christian Science Monitor: “I have no dread of the ordinary work of the presidency. What I do
fear is the … exaggerated idea the people have conceived of me, that no problem is beyond my
capacity….
If some unprecedented calamity should come upon the nation… I would be
sacrificed to the unreasoning disappointment of a people who expected too much.”21
Hoover called a special session of Congress three days after he became President to deal with
tariff reform and farm relief and, two months after Congress convened, he signed the
Agricultural Marketing Act of 1929, which set up a Federal Farm Board to lend to farmer co-ops
and authorized stabilization corporations to buy surplus crops.22 In June 1929, he approved the
Boulder Canyon Project Act, which was to build what would later be called Hoover Dam. These
are not the actions of a Harding or a Coolidge.
The stock market crash of October 1929 marked the beginning of the end of Hoover’s reputation,
but the decline in his reputation did not take place instantly. Although many people consider the
stock market crash to mark the beginning of the Great Depression, the depression did not begin
19
Larry Schweikart and Michael Patrick Allen, A Patriot's History of the United States: From
Columbus's Great Discovery to the War on Terror (New York: Sentinel, 2004), 732, Barnes &
Noble e-book.
20
Leuchtenburg, Herbert Hoover, 72.
21
Leuchtenburg, Herbert Hoover, 77.
22
Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 43-44.
9
suddenly all at once, and the crash was more of a symptom than a cause. As the historian David
Kennedy puts it,
“Perhaps the most imperishable misconception portrays the Crash as the cause of
the Great Depression that persisted throughout the decade of the 1930s. This
scenario owes its durability, no doubt, to its intuitive plausibility and to its
convenient fit with the canons of narrative, which require historical accounts to
have recognizable beginnings, middles, and ends and to explain events in terms of
identifiable origins, development, and resolution.
These conventions are
comforting; they render understandable and thus tolerable even the most terrifying
human experiences. The storyteller and the shaman sometimes feed the same
psychic needs.”23
Hoover had warned for a long time that speculative excesses in the stock market made it due for
a correction. He had much distinguished company in his belief that the stock market crash was
good for the economy. John Maynard Keynes said at the time that the stock market crash was a
healthy move of money from speculative to productive uses.24
At first, most commentators
actually praised Hoover for his vigorous response to the stock market crash. One of Hoover’s
early responses to the rapidly declining economy was to gather together the heads of large
corporations and ask them to avoid cutting wages, and the business leaders complied.25 Douglas
Mackenzie asserts that the reason why Hoover asked business leaders to keep wages high was
high wages would spur consumer spending that would spur recovery.26 Although this idea is
23
Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 38.
Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 39.
25
Leuchtenburg, Herbert Hoover, 99.
26
Douglas W. MacKenzie, "Industrial Employment and the Policies of Herbert C. Hoover,"
Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics 13, no. 31 (Fall 2010): 101.
24
10
associated with the economist John Maynard Keynes, MacKenzie points out that such a belief
was common among economists of the time, before Keynes published his famous book
promoting this idea, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money in 1936.27
MacKenzie pointed out that Hoover had previously, as Secretary of Commerce, to persuade
business leaders to keep wages high to combat the depression of 1920-1922, but he had much
less influence over business leaders then.28 Jonathan Rose, an economist with the Federal
Reserve, makes the case that the fact that employers did not reduce wages, as they usually do in a
recession or depression was the result of conferences that Hoover had with business and labor
leaders in November and December of 1929 in which the business leaders pledged not to reduce
wages and the labor leaders pledged not to strike.29 The bargain was known as “Hoover’s truce.”
If the Great Depression can be said to have a definite time which can be a more plausible
candidate for its beginning than the stock market crash, it was when Hoover signed the SmootHawley Tariff Act in June 1930. The act set tariffs at an extraordinarily high level, which caused
the other countries to retaliate. Indeed, it did much to shut down trade between countries.
Hoover seems never to have recognized the significance of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff.
Even
though 1028 economists signed an open letter asking Hoover to veto the tariff legislation and
published the letter in the New York Times in May 193030, Hoover barely mentions it in his
memoirs and not in a way that indicates he thinks it had any significance.31 Much of Hoover’s
response to the depression was to encourage state and local governments to pursue public works,
although he placed less emphasis on public works by the federal government.
27
The sour
MacKenzie, "Industrial Employment," 105.
MacKenzie, "Industrial Employment," 107.
29
Jonathan D. Rose, "Hoover's Truce: Wage Rigidity in the Onset of the Great Depression,"
Journal of Economic History 70, no. 4 (December 2010): 843-870.
30
Shlaes, TheForgottenMan, 96.
31
Herbert Hoover, The Great Depression: 1929-1941 (New York: Macmillan, 1952).
28
11
economy increased the expenses and decreased the revenues of the government, which Hoover
and Congress responded to with a large tax increase. The result was the Revenue Act of 1932,
which greatly increased income tax rates, and was subsequently condemned by economist for
decreasing purchasing power.32 He discouraged direct monetary relief to the unemployed poor
because he thought direct relief would create dependency on the government. Although many
have criticized Hoover’s overall reliance on private business and state government for fiscal
stimulus, the historian David Kennedy, in effect, defends him by pointing out that at the
beginning of the Great Depression the federal government was a rather small size to the point
that federal expenditures were only about three percent of gross national product.33 In other
words, the federal government realistically did not have enough size and power to do much to
save the economy.
By the time the election of 1932 came along, Hoover changed from being arguably the most
revered man in America to being the most despised. Although nearly everyone seemed to hate
Herbert Hoover, the reasons why he was hated were often inconsistent and sometimes
hypocritical. In light of what the subsequent administration of Franklin Roosevelt was like, it is
almost amusing to see that Roosevelt said during the campaign, "I accuse the present
Administration of being the greatest spending Administration in peacetime in all our history."34
Roosevelt also accused Hoover as being "committed to the idea that we ought to center control
of everything in Washington as rapidly as possible."35 What did Roosevelt do that was that
much different? His administration increased spending and regulation even more. However, to
32
Leuchtenburg, HerbertHoover, 128.
Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 55.
34
William E. Leuchtenburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal (New York: Harper &
Row, 1963), 11.
35
William E. Leuchtenburg, The Perils of Prosperity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1958), 10.
33
12
be fair, Roosevelt did favor lowering tariffs, and offered cash assistance to struggling citizens.
However, the legislation Roosevelt is most famous for supporting, the Social Security Act,
imposed an additional tax on working people and did nothing to give money to people of
retirement age until after the depression was over. One would think, after all the criticism
heaped on Hoover by the Roosevelt administration, that they would do a radical change of
course. However, Rexford Tugwell, one of the key officials responsible for constructing and
implementing Roosevelt’s New Deal later acknowledged, "We didn't admit it at the time, but
practically the whole New Deal was extrapolated from programs that Hoover started."36
Hoover’s reputation did not improve much after his presidency, but at least one prominent person
showed him respect. President Harry Truman said to Hoover on March 1, 1946, “I have a job for
you that nobody else in the country can do. You know more about feeding nations and people
than anyone in the world.”37 He sent Hoover to Europe to determine what should be done about
the worldwide food crisis. Hoover raised large sums of money to feed the Poles and the Finns,
but complained that “the whole thing should be on donations from governments.”
Hoover got
the opportunity to do what he did best. Truman turned to Hoover again in 1947 to head a
Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch, which came to be known as the Hoover
Commission.38 President Eisenhower named him to chair a second Hoover Commission.39
Considering all that he did, where did Herbert Hoover get the reputation for doing nothing to try
to save the struggling economy of the United States during his administration? Perhaps the
biggest factor is that when they are hurting economically, people have a tendency to want help
36
Woods, The Politically Incorrect Guide, 140.
Leuchtenburg, Herbert Hoover, 148.
38
Leuchtenburg, Herbert Hoover, 149.
39
Leuchtenburg, Herbert Hoover, 150.
37
13
from the government, and then there is no such thing as enough help. The sentiment that the
government should do more very easily translated into one that the President should do more,
and from there it is a small step to one of that the President is doing nothing. With all the things
he was doing, he emphasized volunteerism over government coercion, which feeds the idea that
he wasn’t doing enough. However, when the President of the United States asks someone to
volunteer, it is very easy for the person who is asked to volunteer, to hear an unspoken “or else”
appended to the request to volunteer, especially when the President describes the promise as a
pledge. Whether or not intended, a threat is inferred. Another major factor was Hoover’s own
rhetoric, both before and after his presidency. He promised at the beginning of his election
campaign to continue the policies of Presidents Harding and Coolidge, who were more or less
laissez-faire conservatives. People could have been gullible enough to think that Hoover was a
politician doing what he promised to do, even if they conclude later that keeping the promise was
a bad thing. Finally, in his prolific writings, more than two dozen books40, after his presidency,
Hoover’s opinions about the proper role of government make him appear to be an
enthusiastically small government libertarian.
Historian William Leuchtenburg said, “If a
generation of historians mistakenly thought of him as an apostle of laissez-faire throughout his
career, Hoover cued them to that conclusion.”41 Perhaps he became one after he left office, but
he was certainly not a small government libertarian at the time when it would have made the
most impact.
In the volume of his memoirs about the depression,42
Hoover blames the
depression on everything other than his own policies. He claimed that the depression resulted
from a delayed response to the policies of the irresponsible Europeans to the aftermath of World
40
Leuchtenburg, Herbert Hoover, 141.
Leuchtenburg, Herbert Hoover, 143.
42
Hoover, The Great Depression.
41
14
War I. He blamed Roosevelt for ignoring his advice. Inconsistently, but probably closer to the
truth than his more frequent portrayal of himself as a laissez-faire conservative, he also claimed
to be the original source of New Deal innovations for which Roosevelt got credit.43 He did
everything but admit that he had made mistakes. Ironically, it is likely that his obsession for
saving his reputation was the main barrier to his reputation being saved. The American public is
very tolerant of the mistakes of public officials provided that the officials will admit that they
have made mistakes. If he had displayed some humility and admitted that he made mistakes,
perhaps the American public would realize that a lot of other people also made mistakes and
perhaps they would have paid more attention to his remarkable accomplishments. He might
have been remembered as an associate described him to the press shortly after he died, as the
man who “fed more people and saved more lives than any other man in history.”44
Conclusion
The “standard history” that Herbert Hoover did nothing to attempt to slow or stop the Great
Depression is incorrect. He was active in trying to head off the depression and by his actions
was more of a progressive than a libertarian. The confusion of his political and economic policy
that he was a laissez-faire conservative was based more on his rhetoric before and after his
presidency than on his actions.
43
44
Leuchtenburg, Herbert Hoover, 143.
Leuchtenburg, Herbert Hoover, 152.
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