The Crash and the Hoover Years, 1929–1932

This is Unit Ten, part two, on the Depression beyond the cities, Hoover's wider record, and what caused it all. Part one closed on the scale of hardship, with roughly half of African Americans out of work, and pointed to a case that drew national attention. Carry one discipline through this part: name all the causes, and weigh them. The last two entries ask what caused the Great Depression and whether Hoover did nothing, and the course answers both with more than one half. By the end you will be able to hold apart the measures of Mexican repatriation. To explain the Dust Bowl's two causes. To describe Hoover's policies abroad and at home. To explain what caused the Depression, naming structure and trigger. And to answer whether Hoover did nothing.

Three entries: a trial in Alabama, and Mexicans and Mexican Americans sent south of the border.

A case that drew national attention.

USH2 1378 The Scottsboro Boys

In nineteen thirty-one nine Black teenagers were arrested in Alabama and tried at Scottsboro on charges of raping two White women. One of the women later recanted, and an all-White jury convicted most of the defendants anyway. The Supreme Court overturned the convictions, Alabama issued posthumous pardons in twenty thirteen, and the Yawp calls the accusation unjust.

Mexican Americans in the Depression.

USH2 1379 Mexican Repatriation

During the Depression federal and local authorities rounded up Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans and sent them to Mexico to reduce relief rolls, Digital History says, and in February nineteen thirty five thousand gathered at San Antonio's station to leave. Digital History counts over four hundred thousand, many of them citizens by birth.

How the sources measure it.

USH2 1380 Deportation and Departure

The anchor's chapter does not carry the story of Mexican repatriation; both witnesses do. Digital History says more than four hundred thousand Mexicans and Mexican Americans were sent to Mexico, many of them citizens born in the United States, and that Texas's and Los Angeles's Mexican-born populations each fell by a third. The Yawp counts fifty-four thousand deported between nineteen thirty and nineteen thirty-two, and forty-four thousand more who left voluntarily, a word the Yawp itself treats with suspicion. The figures measure different things: formal deportations, pressured departures, and a total that includes citizens. Hold the measures apart, and hold the fact they share: citizens were sent out of their own country.

Three entries on the disaster on the Plains: the dust, its two causes, and the families who left.

The disaster on the Plains.

USH2 1381 The Dust Bowl

Drought struck the Great Plains from nineteen thirty-one for eight years, and in nineteen thirty-five alone eight hundred fifty million tons of topsoil blew away, carried, the Yawp says, as far as Washington, New England and ships on the Atlantic. The name Dust Bowl was coined in nineteen thirty-five.

What caused it.

USH2 1382 A Nebraska Farm

The anchor gives the Dust Bowl two causes: overproduction and overuse of the land in the boom years, and the harsh weather that followed. Digital History agrees that it had not occurred by accident: the Plains had always been harsh and arid, and farming had stripped away the natural cover. One Nebraska farm shows the result in money: mortgaged for four thousand one hundred dollars, it was sold for forty-nine dollars and fifty cents. The two sums are compared as they stood, and measure a collapse in the value of the land itself. The environment was not only the setting of the Depression on the Plains but one of its causes, which is why unit eleven's New Deal turned to conservation.

The families who left.

USH2 1383 Leaving the Plains

Families from Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Arkansas who were baked out, blown out and broke headed west to California, the Yawp says, and in the winter of nineteen thirty-five states including California set up border blockades against poor migrants. John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath, which appeared in nineteen thirty-nine, made their story famous.

Two entries on the song of the Depression and the screens of hard times.

The song of the Depression.

USH2 1384 Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?

The song Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? appeared in nineteen thirty-two, written for a Broadway musical by Jay Gorney and Yip Harburg, about a veteran who built railroads and towers and now asks a stranger for a dime. The anchor calls it the anthem of the Depression. It sang of workers who had built the prosperity of the twenties.

The movies of hard times.

USH2 1385 The Movies in Hard Times

Movie tickets cost twenty-five cents, and attendance dipped early in the Depression before recovering, the anchor says, as audiences paid for a few hours of escape. Films often linked to the Depression, such as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and The Grapes of Wrath, came in nineteen thirty-nine and nineteen forty, after this unit's years.

Four entries on Hoover abroad: a tariff, a moratorium, a reversal in Latin America, and an answer to Japan.

The tariff that deepened the slump.

USH2 1386 Smoot-Hawley

In nineteen thirty Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, raising duties on thousands of imports to protect American manufacturers, and trading partners retaliated with tariffs of their own. The Yawp calls it the highest tariff in American history, and says tariff walls rose across the globe until international trade ground to a halt.

Hoover's attempt to ease the debts of Europe.

USH2 1387 The Hoover Moratorium

In nineteen thirty-one Hoover proposed a moratorium halting German reparation payments and Allied war debts, the debts of unit eight's war that still weighed on Europe. The anchor judges the moratorium ineffective. Digital History says American tariffs had made it hard for European nations to pay their debts at all.

A change in Latin American policy.

USH2 1388 The Clark Memorandum

After a goodwill tour of Latin America, Hoover shaped the Clark Memorandum of nineteen thirty, which largely repudiated the Roosevelt Corollary of unit seven and its claim to police the hemisphere. The anchor says it set the stage for Franklin Roosevelt's Good Neighbor policy.

Hoover's response to Japan.

USH2 1389 The Stimson Doctrine

After Japan seized Manchuria in September nineteen thirty-one, Hoover and Secretary of State Henry Stimson answered with a doctrine: the United States would refuse to recognise any territory taken by force, a doctrine the Yawp dates to January nineteen thirty-two. It continues unit seven's thread of American interest in China, and leads toward unit twelve's war with Japan.

Five entries on Hoover at home: civil rights, Native policy, a quarter of the workforce idle, his defeat, and the anchor's verdict.

Hoover and civil rights.

USH2 1390 Hoover and Civil Rights

Hoover refused the NAACP's plea for a federal anti-lynching law, arguing that education and assimilation, not federal law, would do more for African Americans, while lynchings rose and the federal government declined to act. The anchor reports his refusal plainly. It sits beside the rise in lynchings recorded in this unit.

Hoover's Native American policy.

USH2 1391 Charles Curtis

Hoover's vice president, Charles Curtis of the Kaw nation, became the first Native American to hold so high an office, and federal spending on Native schools and health care doubled under Hoover. His commissioner, Charles Rhoads, pursued self-sufficiency and assimilation, the aim of unit two's Dawes Act. Unit eleven reverses both.

How bad unemployment became.

USH2 1392 Unemployment Near a Quarter

By early nineteen thirty-two unemployment was near twenty-five percent, the anchor says, and the Yawp puts it that at the Depression's lowest point nearly one in four Americans who wanted a job could not find one. Digital History puts unemployment at twenty-five percent by nineteen thirty-three, up from about three percent in nineteen twenty-nine.

The election that followed.

USH2 1393 The Election of 1932

In nineteen thirty-two Hoover lost overwhelmingly to the Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, governor of New York, who promised a new deal for the American people; afterward Hoover said that democracy is a harsh employer. The Bonus Army sealed his defeat, the anchor says. Unit eleven carries Roosevelt's victory and its numbers.

How the anchor judges Hoover.

USH2 1394 The Anchor's Verdict

The anchor says Hoover must not be blamed for all the Depression's suffering, because he did not cause the crash, and that his stubborn belief in American individualism deserves blame for the Depression's depth and duration. This is the anchor taking a side, and the course reports it as the anchor's verdict, not as settled fact.

Four entries on the economy beneath the boom, what caused the Depression, and the charge that Hoover did nothing.

The economy beneath the boom.

USH2 1395 Growth Without Shared Wages

Industrial production rose thirty percent between nineteen nineteen and nineteen twenty-nine, Digital History says, and income per person climbed from five hundred twenty dollars to six hundred eighty-one, while wages stagnated or fell in mining, transportation and manufacturing. Growth that did not reach wages left workers unable to buy what factories made.

How many families lived near the line.

USH2 1396 Families Below the Line

In nineteen twenty-nine, Digital History says, more than sixty percent of American families earned less than the two thousand dollars a year needed for basic necessities, and over forty percent less than fifteen hundred. It adds that Mexican Americans and Native Americans had failed to share in the prosperity. The boom had never reached most homes.

What caused the Depression.

USH2 1397 What Caused the Depression

The sources give several answers rather than one. The anchor leads with speculation and panic: buying on margin, a market that had risen tenfold, and the collapse of October nineteen twenty-nine. Its own chapter also supplies distribution, with a tiny share of Americans holding over a third of the wealth, and savings, with eighty percent of families having almost none. The Yawp calls the Depression the confluence of many problems: overproduction and declining consumption, a construction bubble, the Smoot-Hawley tariff, speculative bubbles, and finally panic. Digital History adds that production rose thirty percent while wages stagnated. Two misreadings sit on either side. One blames the crash alone, which cannot explain why a fall in shares owned by one household in ten became a decade of unemployment. The other dismisses the crash, which cannot explain the timing, or the bank failures and panic it triggered. The sources point to a structure and a trigger: an economy whose growth had outrun its workers' incomes, whose banks were exposed, and whose trade was walled off, set off by the collapse of speculation. Name all the causes, and weigh them.

Whether Hoover did nothing.

USH2 1398 Whether Hoover Did Nothing

Part one set out Hoover's record; this entry weighs it. He called business leaders to hold wages, cut taxes, coordinated private relief, created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation with two billion dollars, and signed a public works act, and the Yawp calls the corporation radical and out of character for a president committed to limited government. What he refused was direct federal relief to individuals: he opposed the relief bill of nineteen thirty-one, and the corporation's first loans went largely to three institutions. Unemployment stood at four point four percent when he took office and twenty-three point six when he left. Two misreadings sit on either side. One repeats the charge that Hoover did nothing, which the record contradicts. The other 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 verdict holds both, reported as the anchor's: he did not cause the crash, and his stubborn individualism deserves blame for the Depression's depth and duration. Hoover acted, but he would not give relief directly to people, and that is the line unit eleven crosses.

Look at what you can now do. You can hold apart the measures of Mexican repatriation, deportations, pressured departures and a total that includes citizens, and keep the fact they share: citizens were sent out of their own country. You can explain the Dust Bowl's two causes, overuse of the land and harsh weather, and read a mortgage of four thousand one hundred dollars against a sale of forty-nine fifty. You can describe Hoover's policies: Smoot-Hawley and the moratorium, the Clark Memorandum and the Stimson Doctrine, and at home, no federal anti-lynching law. You can explain what caused the Depression: a structure, growth that outran incomes, exposed banks and walled-off trade, and a trigger, the collapse of speculation. And you can answer whether Hoover did nothing. He acted, but he would not give relief directly to people.