The Presidency of Herbert Hoover

Herbert Hoover, a Republican, was elected president in 1928. Hoover was highly intelligent, and had been a successful mining engineer and Secretary of Commerce before becoming president. When he was inaugurated, Hoover believed that American prosperity would continue and expand. He had the misfortune of being inaugurated only months before the stock market crash in 1929. Hoover's administration adopted several policies to end the Depression.

Hoover did support some programs to combat the Depression. In 1932, he signed a bill creating the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC). This federal agency loaned money to businesses and to local governments to provide jobs or relief. But Hoover's conservative philosophy led him to distrust too much government intervention in the nation's economy. He worried that government programs that aided citizens directly would undercut Americans' self-reliance. As a result, he sometimes seemed uncaring to many Americans, who desperately wanted their government to do something to combat growing unemployment and poverty. In 1932, when the Depression was at its worst and one in four workers was unemployed, the president declared that "no one has starved."

Because Americans were angered and worried by the Depression, Hoover became widely unpopular. Americans began calling the shantytowns and hobo camps where homeless people lived Hoovervilles. The most forceful protest of the president's reluctance to aid poor Americans occurred in June 1932, when a group of 20,000 World War I veterans, known as the Bonus Army, marched to Washington, DC, to demand that the government pay them their bonus for serving in the war. The government had approved paying a bonus to the veterans in 1924, but it was not due to be paid until 1945. Because of the Depression, the veterans were seeking to receive their bonuses more than a decade early. In July, Hoover ordered police and the U.S. Army to remove the veterans' camp from the Mall in Washington. Battles between veterans, police, and the U.S. Army in the nation's capital further increased many Americans' dislike for Hoover and added to their fears that the nation was on the brink of chaos.