Quick questions on Hoover and the Depression: HSC Modern History USA 1929-1933

The Depression was the deepest economic contraction in American history.

Hoover was a self-made Quaker engineer, head of relief in occupied Belgium in the First World War, and Commerce Secretary under Harding and Coolidge. He believed in "associationalism", in which government would coordinate but not coerce business and labour, and in "rugged individualism" rather than direct federal welfare.

Hoover went well beyond Coolidge's hands-off approach. The record matters because contemporary criticism that he "did nothing" was unfair.

Tariffs. The Hawley-Smoot Tariff (17 June 1930) raised average rates to around 60 per cent. Over 1,000 economists signed a public letter against it. World trade fell around 65 per cent between 1929 and 1934. Foreign retaliation hit American exports hard.

The Democratic National Convention nominated Franklin Delano Roosevelt of New York on the fourth ballot (2 July 1932). Roosevelt broke convention and flew to Chicago to accept in person, promising "a new deal for the American people". Hoover ran on the Republican platform of constitutional restraint and an eventual recovery.

Joan Hoff Wilson (Herbert Hoover, Forgotten Progressive, 1975) is the standard rehabilitative biography.

Real GDP fell around 30 per cent from 1929 to 1933. Industrial production fell around 46 per cent. Investment collapsed from around 16 per cent of GDP to around 4 per cent.

Unemployment rose from around 3.2 per cent (1929) to around 25 per cent (1933, around 13 million workers). Around 50 per cent of Black workers in northern cities were unemployed. Underemployment (short hours, low pay) added millions more.

Wholesale prices fell around 33 per cent. The Consumer Price Index fell around 24 per cent from 1929 to 1933. Farm prices fell around 50 per cent.

Around 9,000 banks failed between 1930 and 1933. Money supply (M2) fell around 30 per cent. Around 9 million savings accounts were wiped out.

Around 1,000 home foreclosures a day were recorded by 1932. Around 250,000 families lost their homes.

Shantytowns of unemployed Americans grew on the edges of every major city. The Central Park "Hooverville" in New York had around 200 residents at its peak. "Hoover blankets" (newspapers), "Hoover wagons" (cars pulled by horses), and "Hoover flags" (empty pockets) became sardonic shorthand.

A series of severe droughts (1931 to 1939) combined with decades of over-ploughing of the Great Plains produced massive dust storms across Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico. "Black Sunday" (14 April 1935) was the worst single storm. Around 2.5 million Okies migrated west, mostly to California, the subject of Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" (1939) and Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother" (1936).

The White House conferences of November 1929 secured pledges from major industrialists to maintain wages and from major unions to refrain from strikes. The pledges broke down by 1931.

Federal construction expanded under the Federal Building program, the Hoover Dam (begun 1931, completed 1936), and Bureau of Public Roads grants. Federal public works rose to around 700 million dollars a year.