History of the United States II / Unit 10 USH2 1398 review, 2 to 3 minutes
Whether Hoover Did Nothing
The idea
Whether Hoover did nothing is the familiar charge, and the anchor answers it with a record. Hoover called business leaders to hold wages and production, cut taxes by one hundred sixty million dollars, created an organisation to coordinate private relief, established the Reconstruction Finance Corporation with two billion dollars, and signed a public works act of one and a half billion. The Yawp calls the corporation radical in its use of direct government aid and out of character for a president committed to limited government. What Hoover refused was direct federal relief to individuals: he opposed a three hundred seventy-five million dollar relief bill in nineteen thirty-one, and the corporation's first loans went largely to three institutions, earning Fiorello La Guardia's name for it, a millionaire's dole. Digital History adds that unemployment stood at four point four percent when Hoover took office and twenty-three point six when he left.
In practice
A president signing loans to banks while veterans are driven from their camp by the army.
Where people slip
Two misreadings sit on either side. The first repeats the charge that Hoover did nothing, which the record contradicts. The second defends him as a president who did all he could, which cannot account for his refusal of direct relief as unemployment reached a quarter of the workforce, or for Anacostia. The anchor's own verdict holds both: he did not cause the crash, and his stubborn individualism deserves blame for the Depression's depth and duration. The course reports that verdict as the anchor's, and draws the line that matters for what follows: Hoover acted, but he would not give relief directly to people, and that is the line unit eleven crosses.
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