Herbert Hoover's New Deal With The Great Depression

2276 Words10 Pages
The New Deal On November 1918, World War I ended and brought with it a feeling of elation that was translated into the early 1920’s, an era of jazz, promiscuity, and romanticized crime. After World War I, the United States emerged victorious and although Woodrow Wilson did not achieve some of his goals, such as the League of Nations, the country was in excellent shape. However, this sentiment of happiness caused people to invest more and more money. When the stock market crashed in 1929, the Great Depression began. Herbert Hoover, ill equipped to deal with the crisis was soon voted out of office and Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected. What followed were a series of Acts and pieces of executive legislation that impacted American forever.…show more content…
Although Hoover did try to ameliorate the situation, his efforts proved fruitless. He beseeched business, in a desperate Hail Mary, to keep their doors open and wages at normal rates and almost coerced union leaders into remaining quiet. He tried to accelerate government construction to provide jobs but it backfired when state and local cutbacks completely offset the budget. The Glass-Steagall Act of 1932 tried to increase commercial but his critics responded that his maneuvers were based on the “trickle-down” theory and would not reach the masses. Hoover’s most destructive and wrong move was the Hawley-Smoot Tariff that, although good intentioned, decimated foreign trade. But Hoover’s attempt were half-hearted because “his own philosophy, now hardened into dogma, set strict limits on action by the federal government, and he refused to set his philosophy aside even to meet the unprecedented emergency” (T&S 818). When Roosevelt came into office he had to fix a legacy of broken promises and failed legislature by the federal government. Although the New Deal was unprecedented in the amount of legislature it passed, it had many sources that had been building for the last years. Progressivism had been growing the last decades, as it had roots deep in American society, and the New Deal shared many aspects with Progressive ideals. Even though the Progressive and New Dealers had different core problems and wished to accomplish different things in different time frames, they shared “a far greater willingness than had been seen in previous American history to make use of the machinery of government to meet the needs of the people and supplement the workings of the national economy” (Hofstadter 302). Therefore the New Deal did have some resonance in American minds. It resonated further because before Roosevelt took office “a silent revolution had taken place in public opinion…the federal government was to be
Open Document