the politics of boom and bust - weebly

33

The Politics ofBoom and Bust

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1920–1932

We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over povertythan ever before in the history of any land. We have not yet reachedthe goal—but . . . we shall soon, with the help of God, be in sight of

the day when poverty will be banished from this nation.

HERBERT HOOVER, 1928

Three Republican presidents—Warren G. Hard-ing, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover—

steered the nation on the roller-coaster ride of the1920s, a thrilling ascent from the depths of post–World War I recession to breathtaking heights ofprosperity, followed by a terrifying crash into theGreat Depression. In a retreat from progressivereform, Republicans sought to serve the public goodless by direct government action and more throughcooperation with big business. Some corrupt offi-cials served themselves as well, exploiting publicresources for personal profit. Meanwhile, theUnited States retreated from its brief international-ist fling during World War I and resumed with avengeance its traditional foreign policy of militaryunpreparedness and political isolationism.

The Republican “Old Guard” Returns

Warren G. Harding, inaugurated in 1921, lookedpresidential. With erect figure, broad shoulders,high forehead, bushy eyebrows, and graying hair, hewas one of the best-liked men of his generation. An easygoing, warm-handed backslapper, he exudedgraciousness and love of people. So kindly was hisnature that he would brush off ants rather thancrush them.

Yet the charming, smiling exterior concealed aweak, inept interior. With a mediocre mind, Hardingquickly found himself beyond his depth in the presi-dency. “God! What a job!” was his anguished cry onone occasion.

753

Harding, like Grant, was unable to detect moralhalitosis in his evil associates, and he was soon sur-rounded by his poker-playing, shirt-sleeved croniesof the “Ohio Gang.” “A good guy,” Harding was “oneof the boys.” He hated to hurt people’s feelings,especially those of his friends, by saying no, anddesigning political leeches capitalized on this weak-ness. The difference between George Washingtonand Warren Harding, ran a current quip, was thatwhile Washington could not tell a lie, Harding couldnot tell a liar. He “was not a bad man,” said oneWashington observer. “He was just a slob.”

Candidate Harding, who admitted his scantymental furnishings, had promised to gather abouthim the “best minds” of the party. Charles EvansHughes—masterful, imperious, incisive, brilliant—brought to the position of secretary of state a domi-nating if somewhat conservative leadership. Thenew secretary of the Treasury was a lean and elderlyPittsburgh aluminum king, Andrew W. Mellon, mul-timillionaire collector of the paintings that are nowdisplayed in Washington as his gift to the nation.Chubby-faced Herbert Hoover, famed feeder of theBelgians and wartime food administrator, becamesecretary of commerce. An energetic businessmanand engineer, he raised his second-rate cabinet postto first-rate importance, especially in drumming upforeign trade for U.S. manufacturers.

But the “best minds” of the cabinet were largelyoffset by two of the worst. Senator Albert B. Fall ofNew Mexico, a scheming anticonservationist, wasappointed secretary of the interior. As guardian ofthe nation’s natural resources, he resembled the

wolf hired to protect the sheep. Harry M. Daugherty,a small-town lawyer but a big-time crook in the“Ohio Gang,” was supposed to prosecute wrong-doers as attorney general.

GOP Reaction at the Throttle

Well intentioned but weak-willed, Harding was aperfect “front” for enterprising industrialists. AMcKinley-style old order settled back into placewith a heavy thud at war’s end, crushing the reformseedlings that had sprouted in the progressive era. A nest-feathering crowd moved into Washingtonand proceeded to hoodwink Harding, whom manyregarded as an “amiable boob.”

This new Old Guard hoped to improve on theold business doctrine of laissez-faire. Their plea wasnot simply for government to keep hands off busi-ness, but for government to help guide businessalong the path to profits. They subtly and effectivelyachieved their ends by putting the courts and theadministrative bureaus into the safekeeping of fel-low stand-patters for the duration of the decade.

The Supreme Court was a striking example ofthis trend. Harding lived less than three years aspresident, but he appointed four of the nine jus-tices. Several of his choices were or became deep-dyed reactionaries, and they buttressed the dikeagainst popular currents for nearly two decades.Harding’s fortunate choice for chief justice was ex-president Taft, who not only performed his duties

754 CHAPTER 33 The Politics of Boom and Bust, 1920–1932

ably but surprisingly was more liberal than some ofhis cautious associates.

In the first years of the 1920s, the SupremeCourt axed progressive legislation. It killed a federalchild-labor law, stripped away many of labor’s hard-won gains, and rigidly restricted government inter-vention in the economy. In the landmark case ofAdkins v. Children’s Hospital (1923), the Courtreversed its own reasoning in Muller v. Oregon(see p. 670–672), which had declared women to bedeserving of special protection in the workplace,and invalidated a minimum-wage law for women.Its strained ruling was that because women nowhad the vote (Nineteenth Amendment), they werethe legal equals of men and could no longer be pro-tected by special legislation. The contradictorypremises of the Muller and Adkins cases framed adebate over gender differences that would continuefor the rest of the century: were women sufficientlydifferent from men that they merited special legaland social treatment, or were they effectively equalin the eyes of the law and therefore undeserving ofspecial protections and preferences? (An analogousdebate over racial differences haunted affirmative-action policies later in the century.)

Corporations, under Harding, could once morerelax and expand. Antitrust laws were often ignored,circumvented, or feebly enforced by friendly prose-cutors in the attorney general’s office. The InterstateCommerce Commission, to single out one agency,came to be dominated by men who were personallysympathetic to the managers of the railroads. Hard-ing reactionaries might well have boasted, “We carenot what laws the Democrats pass as long as we arepermitted to administer them.”

Big industrialists, striving to reduce the rigors ofcompetition, now had a free hand to set up tradeassociations. Cement manufacturers, for example,

would use these agencies to agree upon standard-ization of product, publicity campaigns, and aunited front in dealing with the railroads and labor.Although many of these associations ran counter tothe spirit of existing antitrust legislation, their for-mation was encouraged by Secretary Hoover. Hissense of engineering efficiency led him to condemnthe waste resulting from cutthroat competition, andhis commitment to voluntary cooperation led himto urge businesses to regulate themselves ratherthan be regulated by big government.

The Aftermath of War

Wartime government controls on the economy wereswiftly dismantled. The War Industries Board disap-peared with almost indecent haste. With its passing,progressive hopes for more government regulationof big business evaporated.

Washington likewise returned the railroads toprivate management in 1920. Reformers had hopedthat wartime government operation of the linesmight lead to their permanent nationalization.Instead Congress passed the Esch-Cummins Trans-portation Act of 1920, which encouraged privateconsolidation of the railroads and pledged the Inter-state Commerce Commission to guarantee theirprofitability. The new philosophy was not to save thecountry from the railroads, as in the days of the Pop-ulists, but to save the railroads for the country.

The federal government also tried to pull upanchor and get out of the shipping business. TheMerchant Marine Act of 1920 authorized the Ship-ping Board, which controlled about fifteen hundredvessels, to dispose of much of the hastily built war-time fleet at bargain-basement prices. The boardoperated the remaining vessels without conspicu-ous success. Under the La Follette Seaman’s Act of1915, American shipping could not thrive in compe-tition with foreigners, who all too often providedtheir crews with wretched food and starvationwages.

Labor, suddenly deprived of its wartime crutchof friendly government support, limped along badlyin the postwar decade. A bloody strike in the steelindustry was ruthlessly broken in 1919, partly byexploiting ethnic and racial divisions among thesteelworkers and partly by branding the strikers asdangerous “reds.” The Railway Labor Board, a suc-cessor body to the wartime labor boards, ordered a

The Harding Administration 755

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841–1935),wryly dissenting in the Adkins case, said,

“It would need more than the NineteenthAmendment to convince me that there areno differences between men and women, orthat legislation cannot take those differencesinto account.”

wage cut of 12 percent in 1922, provoking a two-month strike. It ended when Attorney GeneralDaugherty, who fully shared Harding’s big-businessbias, clamped on the strikers one of the mostsweeping injunctions in American history. Unionswilted in this hostile political environment, andmembership shriveled by nearly 30 percentbetween 1920 and 1930.

Needy veterans were among the few nonbusi-ness groups to reap lasting gains from the war. Congress in 1921 generously created the VeteransBureau, authorized to operate hospitals and providevocational rehabilitation for the disabled.

Veterans quickly organized into pressuregroups. The American Legion had been founded inParis in 1919 by Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.Legionnaires met periodically to renew old hard-ships and let off steam in good-natured horseplay.The legion soon became distinguished for its mili-tant patriotism, rock-ribbed conservatism, andzealous antiradicalism.

The legion also became notorious for its aggres-sive lobbying for veterans’ benefits. The chief grievance of the former “doughboys” was mone-tary—they wanted their “dough.” The former servicemen demanded “adjusted compensation” tomake up for the wages they had “lost” when theyturned in their factory overalls for military uniformsduring the Great War.

Critics denounced this demand as a holdup“bonus,” but the millions of veterans deployedheavy political artillery. They browbeat Congressinto passing a bonus bill in 1922, which Hardingpromptly vetoed. Re-forming their lines, the re-pulsed veterans gathered for a final attack. In 1924Congress again hoisted the white flag and passedthe Adjusted Compensation Act. It gave every for-mer soldier a paid-up insurance policy due intwenty years—adding about $3.5 billion to the totalcost of the war. Penny-pinching Calvin Coolidgesternly vetoed the measure, but Congress overrodehim, leaving the veterans with their loot.

America Seeks BenefitsWithout Burdens

Making peace with the fallen foe was the mostpressing problem left on Harding’s doorstep. TheUnited States, having rejected the Treaty of Ver-

sailles, was still technically at war with Germany,Austria, and Hungary nearly three years after thearmistice. Peace was finally achieved by lone-wolftactics. In July 1921 Congress passed a simple jointresolution that declared the war officially ended.

Isolation was enthroned in Washington. TheHarding administration, with the Senate “irreconcil-ables” holding a hatchet over its head, continued toregard the League of Nations as a thing unclean.Harding at first refused even to support the League’sworld health program. But the new world body wasmuch too important to be completely ignored.“Unofficial observers” were sent to its seat inGeneva, Switzerland, to hang around like detectivesshadowing a suspected criminal.

Harding could not completely turn his back onthe outside world, especially the Middle East, wherea sharp rivalry developed between America andBritain for oil-drilling concessions. Rememberingthat the Allies had floated to victory on a flood of oil,experts recognized that liquid “black gold” would beas necessary as blood in the battles of tomorrow.Secretary Hughes eventually secured for American


oil companies the right to share in the exploitationof the sandy region’s oil riches.

Disarmament was one international issue onwhich Harding, after much indecision, finally seizedthe initiative. He was prodded by businesspeopleunwilling to dig deeper into their pockets for moneyto finance the ambitious naval building programstarted during the war. A deadly contest was shap-ing up with Britain and Japan, which watched withalarm as the oceans filled with American vessels.Britain still commanded the world’s largest navy, but the clatter of American riveters proclaimed thatthe United States would soon overtake it.

Public agitation in America, fed by these wor-ries, brought about the headline-making Wash-ington “Disarmament” Conference in 1921–1922.Invitations went to all the major naval powers—except Bolshevik Russia, whose government theUnited States refused officially to recognize. Thedouble agenda included naval disarmament andthe situation in the Far East.

At the outset Secretary Hughes startled the dele-gates, who were expecting the usual diplomaticfence-straddling, with a comprehensive, concreteplan for declaring a ten-year “holiday” on construc-tion of battleships and even for scrapping some ofthe huge dreadnoughts already built. He proposedthat the scaled-down navies of America and Britainshould enjoy parity in battleships and aircraft carri-ers, with Japan on the small end of a 5:5:3 ratio. Thisarrangement sounded to the sensitive Japaneseambassador like “Rolls-Royce, Rolls-Royce, Ford.”

Complex bargaining followed in the wake ofHughes’s proposals. The Five-Power Naval Treaty of

1922 embodied Hughes’s ideas on ship ratios, butonly after face-saving compensation was offered tothe insecure Japanese. The British and Americansboth conceded that they would refrain from fortify-ing their Far Eastern possessions, including thePhilippines. The Japanese were not subjected tosuch restraints in their possessions. In addition, aFour-Power Treaty replaced the twenty-year-oldAnglo-Japanese alliance. The new pact boundBritain, Japan, France, and the United States to pre-serve the status quo in the Pacific—another conces-sion to the jumpy Japanese. Finally, the WashingtonConference gave chaotic China—“the Sick Man ofthe Far East”—a shot in the arm with the Nine-Power Treaty of 1922, whose signatories agreed tonail wide open the Open Door in China.

When the final gavel banged, the Hardingitesboasted with much fanfare—and some justifica-tion—of their globe-shaking achievement in dis-armament. But their satisfaction was somewhatillusory. No restrictions had been placed on smallwarships, and the other powers churned ahead with the construction of cruisers, destroyers, and

Illusory Disarmament 757

Battleships Battleship TonnageAircraft Carrier

Tonnage

135,000

135,000

81,000

60,000

60,000

U.S.

Britain

Japan

France

Italy

18

22

10

7

6

525,000

525,000

315,000

175,000

175,000

Limits Imposed by Washington Conference, 1921–1922 The pledge of the British andAmericans to refrain from fortifying their Far Eastern possessions, while Japan was allowedto fortify its possessions, was the key to the naval limitation treaty. The United States andGreat Britain thus won a temporary victory but later paid a horrendous price when they had to dislodge the well-entrenched Japanese from the Pacific in World War II.

As for the burdens of armament, the NewYork Independent, a prominent magazine,noted in January 1921,

“[The country is] more afraid of the taxcollector than of any more distant foe.”

submarines, while penny-pinching Uncle Sam laggeddangerously behind. Congress also pointedly de-clared that it was making no commitment to the useof armed force or any kind of joint action when itratified the Four-Power Treaty. These reservations,in effect, rendered the treaty a dead letter. Omi-nously, the American people seemed content to relyfor their security on words and wishful thinkingrather than on weapons and hardheaded realism.

A similar sentimentalism welled up later in thedecade, when Americans clamored for the “outlawryof war.” The conviction spread that if quarrelingnations would only take the pledge to foreswear waras an instrument of national policy, swords could bebeaten into plowshares. Calvin Coolidge’s secretaryof state, Frank B. Kellogg, who later won the NobelPeace Prize for his role, was lukewarm about theidea. But after petitions bearing more than 2 millionsignatures cascaded into Washington, he signed with the French foreign minister in 1928 the famedKellogg-Briand Pact. Officially known as the Pact ofParis, it was ultimately ratified by sixty-two nations.

This new parchment peace was delusory in theextreme. Defensive wars were still permitted, andwhat scheming aggressor could not cook up anexcuse of self-defense? Lacking both muscles andteeth, the pact was a diplomatic derelict—and virtu-ally useless in a showdown. Yet it accurately—anddangerously—reflected the American mind in the1920s, which was all too willing to be lulled into afalse sense of security. This mood took even deeperhold in the ostrichlike neutralism of the 1930s.

Hiking the Tariff Higher

A comparable lack of realism afflicted foreign eco-nomic policy in the 1920s. Businesspeople, short-sightedly obsessed with the dazzling prospects inthe prosperous home market, sought to keep thatmarket to themselves by flinging up insurmount-able tariff walls around the United States. They werespurred into action by their fear of a flood of cheapgoods from recovering Europe, especially during thebrief but sharp recession of 1920–1921.

In 1922 Congress passed the comprehensiveFordney-McCumber Tariff Law. Glib lobbyists oncemore descended upon Washington and helpedboost schedules from the average of 27 percentunder Wilson’s Underwood Tariff of 1913 to an aver-

age of 38.5 percent, which was almost as high asTaft’s Payne-Aldrich Tariff of 1909. (See the Appen-dix.) Duties on farm produce were increased, andthe principle was proclaimed that the general rateswere designed to equalize the cost of American andforeign production. A promising degree of flexibilitywas introduced for the first time, when the presi-dent was authorized, with the advice of the fact-finding Tariff Commission, to reduce or increaseduties by as much as 50 percent.

Presidents Harding and Coolidge, true to theirbig-industry sympathies, were far more friendly totariff increases than to reductions. In six years theyauthorized thirty-two upward changes, including ontheir list vital commodities like dairy products,chemicals, and pig iron. During the same period, theWhite House ordered only five reductions. These in-cluded mill feed and such trifling items as bobwhitequail, paintbrush handles, phenol, and cresylic acid.

The high-tariff course thus charted by the Repub-lican regimes set off an ominous chain reaction. Euro-pean producers felt the squeeze, for the Americantariff walls prolonged their postwar chaos. An impov-erished Europe needed to sell its manufactured goodsto the United States, particularly if it hoped to achieveeconomic recovery and to pay its huge war debt toWashington. America needed to give foreign nations achance to make a profit from it so that they could buyits manufactured articles and repay debts. Interna-tional trade, Americans were slow to learn, is a two-way street. In general, they could not sell to others inquantity unless they bought from them in quantity—or lent them more U.S. dollars.

Erecting tariff walls was a game that two couldplay. The American example spurred Europeannations, throughout the feverish 1920s, to pile uphigher barriers themselves. These artificial obstacleswere doubly bad: they hurt not only American-made goods but the products of European countriesas well. The whole vicious circle further deepenedthe international economic distress, providing onemore rung on the ladder by which Adolf Hitlerscrambled to power.

The Stench of Scandal

The loose morality and get-rich-quickism of theHarding era manifested themselves spectacularly ina series of scandals.


Early in 1923 Colonel Charles R. Forbes, one-time deserter from the army, was caught with hishand in the till and resigned as head of the VeteransBureau. An appointee of the gullible Harding, heand his accomplices looted the government to thetune of about $200 million, chiefly in connectionwith the building of veterans’ hospitals. He was sen-tenced to two years in a federal penitentiary.

Most shocking of all was the Teapot Dome scan-dal, an affair that involved priceless naval oil reservesat Teapot Dome (Wyoming) and Elk Hills (California).In 1921 the slippery secretary of the interior, Albert B.Fall, induced his careless colleague, the secretary ofthe navy, to transfer these valuable properties to theInterior Department. Harding indiscreetly signed thesecret order. Fall then quietly leased the lands to oil-men Harry F. Sinclair and Edward L. Doheny, but notuntil he had received a bribe (“loan”) of $100,000from Doheny and about three times that amount inall from Sinclair.

Teapot Dome, no tempest in a teapot, finallycame to a whistling boil. Details of the crooked trans-action gradually began to leak out in March 1923, twoyears after Harding took office. Fall, Sinclair, andDoheny were indicted the next year, but the casedragged through the courts until 1929. Finally Fallwas found guilty of taking a bribe and was sentencedto one year in jail. By a curious quirk of justice, the

two bribe givers were acquitted while the bribe takerwas convicted, although Sinclair served severalmonths in jail for having “shadowed” jurors and forrefusing to testify before a Senate committee.

The oily smudge from Teapot Dome pollutedthe prestige of the Washington government. Right-thinking citizens wondered what was going onwhen public officials could sell out the nation’s vitalresources, especially those reserved for the U.S.Navy. The acquittal of Sinclair and Doheny under-mined faith in the courts, while giving further cur-rency to the cynical sayings, “You can’t put a milliondollars in jail” and “In America everyone is assumedguilty until proven rich.”

Still more scandals erupted. Persistent reports asto the underhanded doings of Attorney GeneralDaugherty prompted a Senate investigation in 1924 ofthe illegal sale of pardons and liquor permits. Forcedto resign, the accused official was tried in 1927 butwas released after a jury twice failed to agree. Duringthe trial Daugherty hid behind the trousers of thenow-dead Harding by implying that persistent prob-ing might uncover crookedness in the White House.

Harding was mercifully spared the full revela-tion of these iniquities, though his worst suspicionswere aroused. While news of the scandals wasbeginning to break, he embarked upon a speech-making tour across the country all the way toAlaska. On the return trip, he died in San Francisco,on August 2, 1923, of pneumonia and thrombosis.His death may have been hastened by a brokenheart resulting from the disloyalty of designingfriends. Mourning millions, not yet fully aware ofthe graft in Washington, expressed genuine sorrow.

The brutal fact is that Harding was not a strongenough man for the presidency—as he himself pri-vately admitted. Such was his weakness that he tol-erated people and conditions that subjected theRepublic to its worst disgrace since the days of Pres-ident Grant.

“Silent Cal” Coolidge

News of Harding’s death was sped to Vice PresidentCoolidge, then visiting at his father’s New Englandfarmhouse. By the light of two kerosene lamps, theelder Coolidge, a justice of the peace, used the oldfamily Bible to administer the presidential oath tohis son.

The Harding Scandals 759

This homespun setting was symbolic ofCoolidge. Quite unlike Harding, the stern-faced Ver-monter, with his thin nose and tightly set lips,embodied the New England virtues of honesty,morality, industry, and frugality. As a youth, hisfather reported, he seemed to get more sap out of a

maple tree than did any of the other boys. Practicinga rigid economy in both money and words, “SilentCal” came to be known in Washington conversa-tional circles for his brilliant flashes of silence. Hisdour, serious visage prompted the acid observationthat he had been “weaned on a pickle.”

Coolidge seemed to be a crystallization of thecommonplace. Painfully shy, he was blessed withonly mediocre powers of leadership. He wouldoccasionally display a dry wit in private, but hisspeeches, delivered in a nasal New England twang,were invariably boring. A staunch apostle of the sta-tus quo, he was no knight in armor riding forth totilt at wrongs. His only horse, in fact, was an electric-powered steed on which he took his exercise. True toRepublican philosophy, he became the “high priestof the great god Business.” He believed that “theman who builds a factory builds a temple” and that“the man who works there worships there.”

The hands-off temperament of “Cautious Cal”Coolidge suited the times perfectly. His thriftynature caused him to sympathize fully with Secre-tary of the Treasury Mellon’s efforts to reduce bothtaxes and debts. No foe of industrial bigness, he letbusiness have its head. “Coolidge luck” held duringhis five and a half prosperity-blessed years.

Ever a profile in caution, Coolidge slowly gavethe Harding regime a badly needed moral fumi-gation. Teapot Dome had scalded the Republicanparty badly, but so transparently honest was thevinegary Vermonter that the scandalous oil did notrub off on him. The public, though at first shockedby the scandal, quickly simmered down, and analarming tendency developed in certain quarters toexcuse some of the wrongdoers on the grounds that“they had gotten away with it.” Some critics evencondemned the government prosecutors for con-tinuing to rock the boat. America’s moral sensibilitywas evidently being dulled by prosperity.

Frustrated Farmers

Sun-bronzed farmers were caught squarely in aboom-or-bust cycle in the postwar decade. Whilethe fighting had raged, they had raked in moneyhand over gnarled fist; by the spring of 1920, theprice of wheat had shot up to an incredible $3 abushel. But peace brought an end to government-guaranteed high prices and to massive purchases by


other nations, as foreign production reentered thestream of world commerce.

Machines also threatened to plow the farmersunder an avalanche of their own overabundantcrops. The gasoline-engine tractor was working arevolution on American farms. This steel mule wasto cultivation and sowing what the McCormickreaper was to harvesting. Blue-denimed farmers nolonger had to plod after the horse-drawn plow withhigh-footed gait. They could sit erect on their chug-ging mechanized chariots and turn under and har-row many acres in a single day. They could growbigger crops on larger areas, using fewer horses andhired hands. The wartime boom had encouragedthem to bring vast new tracts under cultivation,especially in the “wheat belt” of the upper Midwest.But such improved efficiency and expanded agri-cultural acreage helped to pile up more price-dampening surpluses. A withering depression sweptthrough agricultural districts in the 1920s, when onefarm in four was sold for debt or taxes. As a plaintivesong of the period ran,

No use talkin’, any man’s beat,With ’leven-cent cotton and forty-cent meat.

Schemes abounded for bringing relief to thehard-pressed farmers. A bipartisan “farm bloc” fromthe agricultural states coalesced in Congress in 1921

and succeeded in driving through some helpfullaws. Noteworthy was the Capper-Volstead Act,which exempted farmers’ marketing cooperativesfrom antitrust prosecution. The farm bloc’s favoriteproposal was the McNary-Haugen Bill, pushedenergetically from 1924 to 1928. It sought to keepagricultural prices high by authorizing the govern-ment to buy up surpluses and sell them abroad.Government losses were to be made up by a specialtax on the farmers. Congress twice passed the bill,but frugal Coolidge twice vetoed it. Farm pricesstayed down, and farmers’ political temperaturesstayed high, reaching fever pitch in the election of1924.

A Three-Way Racefor the White House in 1924

Self-satisfied Republicans, chanting “Keep Cool andKeep Coolidge,” nominated “Silent Cal” for the pres-idency at their convention in Cleveland in the sim-mering summer of 1924. Squabbling Democratshad more difficulty choosing a candidate when theymet in New York’s sweltering Madison Square Gar-den. Reflecting many of the cultural tensions of thedecade, the party was hopelessly split between

Farmers and Reformers 761

“wets” and “drys,” urbanites and farmers, Funda-mentalists and Modernists, northern liberals andsouthern stand-patters, immigrants and old-stockAmericans. In one symptomatic spasm of discord,the conventioneers failed by just one vote to pass aresolution condemning the Ku Klux Klan.

Deadlocked for an unprecedented 102 ballots,the convention at last turned wearily, sweatily, andunenthusiastically to John W. Davis. A wealthy cor-poration lawyer connected with the Wall Streetbanking house of J. P. Morgan and Company, thepolished nominee was no less conservative thancautious Calvin Coolidge.

The field was now wide open for a liberal candi-date. The white-pompadoured Senator (“FightingBob”) La Follette from Wisconsin, perennial aspirantto the presidency and now sixty-nine years of age,sprang forward to lead a new Progressive grouping.He gained the endorsement of the American Federa-tion of Labor and enjoyed the support of the shrink-ing Socialist party, but his major constituency wasmade up of the price-pinched farmers. La Follette’snew Progressive party, fielding only a presidentialticket, with no candidates for local office, was a headwithout a body. It proved to be only a shadow of therobust Progressive coalition of prewar days. Its plat-form called for government ownership of railroadsand relief for farmers, lashed out at monopoly andantilabor injunctions, and urged a constitutionalamendment to limit the Supreme Court’s power toinvalidate laws passed by Congress.

La Follette turned in a respectable showing,polling nearly 5 million votes. But “Cautious Cal”and the oil-smeared Republicans slipped easilyback into office, overwhelming Davis, 15,718,211 to8,385,283. The electoral count stood at 382 forCoolidge, 136 for Davis, and 13 for La Follette, allfrom his home state of Wisconsin (see the mapbelow). As the so-called conscience of the calloused1920s, La Follette injected a badly needed liberaltonic into a decade drugged on prosperity. Buttimes were too good for too many for his reformingmessage to carry the day.

Foreign-Policy Flounderings

Isolation continued to reign in the Coolidge era.Despite presidential proddings, the Senate provedunwilling to allow America to adhere to the WorldCourt—the judicial arm of the still-suspect Leagueof Nations. Coolidge only halfheartedly—andunsuccessfully—pursued further naval disarma-ment after the loudly trumpeted agreementsworked out at the Washington Conference in 1922.

A glaring exception to the United States’inward-looking indifference to the outside worldwas the armed interventionism in the Caribbeanand Central America. American troops were with-drawn (after an eight-year stay) from the Domini-can Republic in 1924, but they remained in Haiti


Coolidge—RepublicanDavis—DemocraticLa Follette—Progressive

Presidential Election of 1924(showing popular vote by county)Note the concentration of LaFollette’s votes in the old Populiststrongholds of the Midwest and themountain states. His ticket didespecially well in the grain-growingdistricts battered by the postwarslump in agricultural prices.

from 1914 to 1934. President Coolidge in 1925briefly removed American bayonets from troubledNicaragua, where they had glinted intermittentlysince 1909, but in 1926 he sent them back, five thou-sand strong, and they stayed until 1933. Americanoil companies clamored for a military expedition toMexico in 1926 when the Mexican governmentbegan to assert its sovereignty over oil resources.Coolidge kept cool and defused the Mexican crisiswith some skillful diplomatic negotiating. But hismailed-fist tactics elsewhere bred sore resentmentssouth of the Rio Grande, where angry critics loudlyassailed “yanqui imperialism.”

Overshadowing all other foreign-policy prob-lems in the 1920s was the knotty issue of interna-tional debts, a complicated tangle of private loans,Allied war debts, and German reparations pay-ments. Almost overnight, World War I had reversedthe international financial position of the UnitedStates. In 1914 America had been a debtor nation inthe sum of about $4 billion; by 1922 it had become acreditor nation in the sum of about $16 billion. Thealmighty dollar rivaled the pound sterling as thefinancial giant of the world. American investorsloaned some $10 billion to foreigners in the 1920s,though even this huge river of money could not fully

refloat the war-shelled world economy. Americans,bewitched by lucrative investment opportunities intheir domestic economy, did not lend nearly solarge a fraction of their national income overseas ashad the British in the prewar period.

The key knot in the debt tangle was the $10 bil-lion that the U.S. Treasury had loaned to the Alliesduring and immediately after the war. Uncle Samheld their IOUs—and he wanted to be paid. TheAllies, in turn, protested that the demand for repay-ment was grossly unfair. The French and the Britishpointed out, with much justice, that they had heldup a wall of flesh and bone against the common foeuntil America the Unready had finally entered thefray. America, they argued, should write off its loansas war costs, just as the Allies had been tragicallyforced to write off the lives of millions of youngmen. The debtors also complained that the realeffect of their borrowed dollars had been to fuel theboom in the already roaring wartime economy inAmerica, where nearly all their purchases had beenmade. And the final straw, protested the Europeans,was that America’s postwar tariff walls made italmost impossible for them to sell the goods to earnthe dollars to pay their debts.

Unraveling the Debt Knot

America’s tightfisted insistence on getting its moneyback helped to harden the hearts of the Alliesagainst conquered Germany. The French and theBritish demanded that the Germans make enor-mous reparations payments, totaling some $32 bil-lion, as compensation for war-inflicted damages.The Allies hoped to settle their debts to the UnitedStates with the money received from Germany. TheFrench, seeking to extort lagging reparations pay-ments, sent troops into Germany’s industrializedRuhr Valley in 1923. Berlin responded by permittingits currency to inflate astronomically. At one pointin October 1923, a loaf of bread cost 480 millionmarks, or about $120 million in preinflation money.German society teetered on the brink of mad anar-chy, and the whole international house of financialcards threatened to flutter down in colossal chaos.

Sensible statesmen now urged that war debtsand reparations alike be drastically scaled down oreven canceled outright. But to Americans such pro-posals smacked of “welshing” on a debt. “We went

The War Debts Tangle 763

across, but they won’t come across,” cried a promi-nent politician. Scroogelike, Calvin Coolidge turnedaside suggestions of debt cancellation with a typi-cally terse question: “They hired the money, didn’tthey?” The Washington administration proved espe-cially unrealistic in its dogged insistence that therewas no connection whatever between debts andreparations.

Reality finally dawned in the Dawes Plan of1924. Negotiated largely by Charles Dawes, about tobe nominated as Coolidge’s running mate, itrescheduled German reparations payments andopened the way for further American private loansto Germany. The whole financial cycle now becamestill more complicated, as U.S. bankers loanedmoney to Germany, Germany paid reparations toFrance and Britain, and the former Allies paid wardebts to the United States. Clearly the source of thismonetary merry-go-round was the flowing well ofAmerican credit. When that well dried up after thegreat crash in 1929, the jungle of internationalfinance quickly turned into a desert. President Her-bert Hoover declared a one-year debt moratoriumin 1931, and before long all the debtors haddefaulted—except “honest little Finland,” whichstruggled along making payments until the last of itsdebt was discharged in 1976.

The United States never did get its money, but itharvested a bumper crop of ill will. Irate Frenchcrowds on occasion attacked American tourists, andthroughout Europe Uncle Sam was caricatured asUncle Shylock, greedily whetting his knife for the

last pound of Allied flesh. The bad taste left in Amer-ican mouths by the whole sorry episode contributedpowerfully to the storm-cellar neutrality legislationpassed by Congress in the 1930s.

The Triumphof Herbert Hoover, 1928

Poker-faced Calvin Coolidge, the tight-lipped“Sphinx of the Potomac,” bowed out of the 1928presidential race when he announced, “I do notchoose to run.” His logical successor was super-Secretary (of Commerce) Herbert Hoover, unpopularwith the political bosses but the much-admired dar-ling of the masses, who asked, “Hoo but Hoover?” Hewas nominated on a platform that clucked content-edly over both prosperity and prohibition.

Still-squabbling Democrats nominated Alfred E.Smith, four-time governor of New York and one ofthe most colorful personalities in American politics.He was a wisecracking, glad-handing liberal whosuffered from several fatal political handicaps.“Al(cohol)” Smith was soakingly and drippingly“wet” at a time when the country was still devotedto the “noble experiment” of prohibition. To anation that had only recently moved to the city,native New Yorker Smith seemed too abrasivelyurban. He was a Roman Catholic in an overwhelm-ingly Protestant—and unfortunately prejudiced—land. Many dry, rural, and Fundamentalist Dem-


U.S. INVESTORSWALL

STREETBANKERS

GREATBRITAINU.S. TREASURY FRANCE

GERMANYPrivate$ loans

Debtpayments

Allied wardebt payments

Allied war debt payments

Reparations Reparations

Aspects of the Financial Merry-go-round, 1921–1933Great Britain, with a debt of over $4 billion owed to the U.S. Treasury,had a huge stake in proposals forinter-Allied debt cancellation, butFrance’s stake was even larger. Lessprosperous than Britain in the 1920sand more battered by the war, whichhad been fought on its soil, Franceowed nearly $3.5 billion to the UnitedStates and additional billions toBritain.

ocrats gagged on his candidacy, and they saddledthe wet Smith with a dry running mate and a dryplatform. Jauntily sporting a brown derby and a bigcigar, Smith, “the Happy Warrior,” tried to carryalcohol on one shoulder and water on the other. Buthis effort was doomed from the start.

Radio figured prominently in this campaign forthe first time, and it helped Hoover more thanSmith. The New Yorker had more personal sparkle,but he could not project it through the radio (whichin his Lower East Side twang he pronounced “radd-dee-o,” grating on the ears of many listeners). Iowa-born Hoover, with his double-breasted dignity,came out of the microphone better than he went in.Decrying un-American “socialism” and preaching“rugged individualism,” he sounded both grass-rootish and statesmanlike.

Chubby-faced, ruddy-complexioned HerbertHoover, with his painfully high starched collar, was aliving example of the American success story and anintriguing mixture of two centuries. As a poororphan boy who had worked his way through Stan-ford University, he had absorbed the nineteenth-century copybook maxims of industry, thrift, andself-reliance. As a fabulously successful miningengineer and a brilliant businessman, he had honedto a high degree the efficiency doctrines of the pro-gressive era.

A small-town boy from Iowa and Oregon, he hadtraveled and worked abroad extensively. Long yearsof self-imposed exile had deepened his determina-tion, abundantly supported by national tradition, toavoid foreign entanglements. His experiences abroadhad further strengthened his faith in American indi-vidualism, free enterprise, and small government.

With his unshaken dignity and Quaker restraint,Hoover was a far cry from the typical backslappingpolitician. Though a citizen of the world and ladenwith international honors, he was quite shy, stand-offish, and stiff. Personally colorless in public, hehad been accustomed during much of his life to giving orders to subordinates and not to solicitingvotes. Never before elected to public office, he wasthin-skinned in the face of criticism, and he did notadapt readily to the necessary give-and-take ofpolitical accommodation. His real power lay in hisintegrity, his humanitarianism, his passion forassembling the facts, his efficiency, his talents foradministration, and his ability to inspire loyalty inclose associates. They called him “the Chief.”

As befitted America’s newly mechanized civi-lization, Hoover was the ideal businessperson’s can-didate. A self-made millionaire, he recoiled fromanything suggesting socialism, paternalism, or“planned economy.” Yet as secretary of commerce,he had exhibited some progressive instincts. Heendorsed labor unions and supported federal regu-lation of the new radio broadcasting industry. Heeven flirted for a time with the idea of government-owned radio, similar to the British BroadcastingCorporation (BBC).

As bands blared Smith’s theme song, “The Side-walks of New York,” the campaign sank into the sewers beneath the sidewalks. Despite the best effortsof Hoover and Smith, below-the-belt tactics wereemployed to a disgusting degree by lower-level cam-paigners. Religious bigotry raised its hideous head

Hoover Trounces Smith 765

over Smith’s Catholicism. An irresponsible whisperingcampaign claimed that “A Vote for Al Smith Is a Votefor the Pope” and that the White House, under Smith,would become a branch of the Vatican—completewith “Rum, Romanism, and Ruin.” Hoover’s attemptsto quash such rumors were in vain.

The proverbially solid South—“100 percentAmerican” and a stronghold of Protestant Ku KluxKlanism—shied away from “city slicker” Al Smith. Itmight have accepted a Catholic, or a wet, or thedescendant of Irish grandparents, or an urbanite.But a concoction of Catholicism, wettism, foreign-ism, and liberalism brewed on the sidewalks of NewYork was too bitter a dose for southern stomachs.Smith’s theme song was a constant and raspingreminder that his upbringing had not been convinc-ingly American.

Hoover triumphed in a landslide. He bagged21,391,993 popular votes to 15,016,169 for hisembittered opponent, while rolling up an electoralcount of 444 to 87. A huge Republican majority wasreturned to the House of Representatives. Tens ofthousands of dry southern Democrats—“Hoover-crats”—rebelled against Al Smith, and Hooverproved to be the first Republican candidate in fifty-two years, except for Harding’s Tennessee victory in1920, to carry a state that had seceded. He swept fivestates of the former Confederacy, as well as all theBorder States.

President Hoover’s First Moves

Prosperity in the late 1920s smiled broadly as theHoover years began. Soaring stocks on the bull mar-ket continued to defy the laws of financial gravita-tion. But two immense groups of citizens were notgetting their share of the riches flowing from thenational cornucopia: the unorganized wage earnersand especially the disorganized farmers.

Hoover’s administration, in line with its philoso-phy of promoting self-help, responded to the outcry of the wounded farmers with legislativeaspirin. The Agricultural Marketing Act, passed byCongress in June 1929, was designed to help thefarmers help themselves, largely through producers’cooperatives. It set up the Federal Farm Board, with arevolving fund of half a billion dollars at its disposal.Money was lent generously to farm organizationsseeking to buy, sell, and store agricultural surpluses.

In 1930 the Farm Board itself created both theGrain Stabilization Corporation and the Cotton Sta-bilization Corporation. The prime goal was to bol-ster sagging prices by buying up surpluses. But thetwo agencies were soon suffocated by an avalancheof farm produce, as wheat dropped to fifty-sevencents a bushel and cotton to five cents a pound.

Farmers had meanwhile clutched at the tariff asa possible straw to help keep their heads above the


WASH.7

ORE.5

CALIF.13

NEV.3

IDAHO4

MONTANA4

WYO.3

UTAH5 COLO.

8

ARIZ.3

S.D.5

KANSAS10

OKLA.10

MICH.15

N.Y.45

N.D.5 MINN.

12

IOWA13NEBR.

8

MO.18

ARK.9

LA.10

TEXAS20

N.M.3 MISS.

10

ALA.12 GA.

14

FLA.6

TENN. 12N.C.12

S.C.9

VA.12

W. VA.8

PA.38

OHIO24IND.

5ILL.29

WISC.13

KY.13

ME.6

N.H.4

VT.4

MASS.18

R.I. 5CONN. 7

N.J. 14

DEL. 3MD. 8

Hoover—Republican

Smith—Democratic

Presidential Election of 1928 (with electoral vote by state)Smith, despite his defeat, managedto poll almost as many votes as thevictorious Coolidge had in 1924. Byattracting to the party an immenseurban or “sidewalk” vote, thebreezy New Yorker foreshadowedRoosevelt’s New Deal victory in1932, when the Democrats patchedtogether the solid South and theurban North. A cruel joke had Smithcabling the Pope a single word afterthe election: “Unpack.”

waters of financial ruin. During the recent presiden-tial campaign, Hoover, an amateur in politics, hadbeen stampeded into a politically unwise pledge. Hehad promised to call Congress into special sessionto consider agricultural relief and, specifically, tobring about “limited” changes in the tariff. Thesehope-giving assurances no doubt won many votesfor Hoover in the midwestern farm belt.

The Hawley-Smoot Tariff of 1930 followed thewell-worn pattern of Washington horse trading. Itstarted out in the House as a fairly reasonable pro-tective measure, designed to assist the farmers. Butby the time the high-pressure lobbyists had pushedit through the Senate, it had acquired about a thou-sand amendments. It thus turned out to be the high-est protective tariff in the nation’s peacetime history.The average duty on nonfree goods was raised from 38.5 percent, as established by the Fordney-McCumber Act of 1922, to nearly 60 percent.

To angered foreigners, the Hawley-Smoot Tariffwas a blow below the trade belt. It seemed like adeclaration of economic warfare on the entire out-side world. It reversed a promising worldwide trendtoward reasonable tariffs and widened the yawningtrade gaps. It plunged both America and othernations deeper into the terrible depression that hadalready begun. It increased international financialchaos and forced the United States further into the

bog of economic isolationism. And economic isola-tionism, both at home and abroad, was playingdirectly into the hands of a hate-filled German dem-agogue, Adolf Hitler.

The Great Crash Ends the Golden Twenties

When Herbert Hoover confidently took the presi-dential oath on March 4, 1929, there were few blackclouds on the economic horizon. The “long boom”seemed endless, with the painful exception of thedebt-blanketed farm belt. America’s productivecolossus—stimulated by the automobile, radio,movie, and other new industries—was roaring alongat a dizzy speed that suggested a permanent plateauof prosperity. Few people sensed that it mightsmother its own fires by pouring out too much.

The speculative bubble was actually near thebursting point. Prices on the stock exchange contin-ued to spiral upward and create a fool’s paradise ofpaper profits, despite Hoover’s early but fruitlessefforts to curb speculation through the Federal Re-serve Board. A few prophets of disaster were boldenough to sound warnings but were drowned out bythe mad chatter of the ticker-tape machine.

The Great Crash 767

A catastrophic crash came in October 1929. Itwas partially triggered by the British, who raisedtheir interest rates in an effort to bring back capitallured abroad by American investments. Foreigninvestors and wary domestic speculators began todump their “insecurities,” and an orgy of selling fol-lowed. Tension built up to the panicky “Black Tues-day” of October 29, 1929, when 16,410,030 shares ofstocks were sold in a save-who-may scramble. WallStreet became a wailing wall as gloom and doomreplaced boom, and suicides increased alarmingly.A “sick joke” of the time had hotel room clerks askregistrants, “For sleeping or jumping?”

Losses, even in blue-chip securities, were unbe-lievable. By the end of 1929—two months after theinitial crash—stockholders had lost $40 billion inpaper values, or more than the total cost of WorldWar I to the United States.

The stock-market collapse heralded a businessdepression, at home and abroad, that was the mostprolonged and prostrating in American or worldexperience. No other industrialized nation sufferedso severe a setback. By the end of 1930, more than 4million workers in the United States were jobless;two years later the figure had about tripled. Hungryand despairing workers pounded pavements insearch of nonexistent jobs (“We’re firing, not hir-ing”). Where employees were not discharged, wagesand salaries were often slashed. A current jingle ran,

Mellon pulled the whistle,Hoover rang the bellWall Street gave the signalAnd the country went to hell.

The misery and gloom were incalculable, asforests of dead chimneys stood stark against the sky.Over five thousand banks collapsed in the first threeyears of the depression, carrying down with themthe life savings of tens of thousands of ordinary citi-zens. Countless thousands of honest, hard-workingpeople lost their homes and farms to the forecloser’shammer. Bread lines formed, soup kitchens dis-pensed food, and apple sellers stood shivering onstreet corners trying to peddle their wares for fivecents. Families felt the stress, as jobless fathersnursed their guilt and shame at not being able toprovide for their households. Breadless breadwin-


1921 1923 1925 1927 1929 1931 1933 1935 1937

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200

180

160

140

120

100

80

60

40

20

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Index of Common Stock Prices(1926 = 100)

The Depression spectacle of want in theshadow of surplus moved an observer towrite in Current History (1932),

“We still pray to be given each day our dailybread. Yet there is too much bread, toomuch wheat and corn, meat and oil andalmost every commodity required by man for his subsistence and material happiness.We are not able to purchase the abundancethat modern methods of agriculture, miningand manufacture make available in suchbountiful quantities. Why is mankind beingasked to go hungry and cold and povertystricken in the midst of plenty?”

ners often blamed themselves for their plight,despite abundant evidence that the economic sys-tem, not individual initiative, had broken down.Mothers meanwhile nursed fewer babies, as hardtimes reached even into the nation’s bedrooms, pre-cipitating a decade-long dearth of births. As cashregisters gathered cobwebs, the song “My God, Howthe Money Rolls In” was replaced with “Brother, CanYou Spare a Dime?”

Hooked on the Horn of Plenty

What caused the Great Depression? One basicexplanation was overproduction by both farm andfactory. Ironically, the depression of the 1930s wasone of abundance, not want. It was the “great glut”or the “plague of plenty.”

The nation’s ability to produce goods had clearlyoutrun its capacity to consume or pay for them. Toomuch money was going into the hands of a fewwealthy people, who in turn invested it in factories

and other agencies of production. Not enough wasgoing into salaries and wages, where revitalizingpurchasing power could be more quickly felt.

Other maladies were at work. Overexpansion ofcredit through installment-plan buying overstimu-lated production. Paying on so-called easy termscaused many consumers to dive in beyond theirdepth. Normal technological unemployment, re-sulting from new laborsaving machines, also addedits burden to the abnormal unemployment of the“threadbare thirties.”

This already bleak picture was further darkenedby economic anemia abroad. Britain and the Conti-nent had never fully recovered from the upheaval ofWorld War I. Depression in America was given a fur-ther downward push by a chain-reaction financialcollapse in Europe, following the failure in 1931 of aprominent Vienna banking house. A drying up ofinternational trade, moreover, had been hastenedby the shortsighted Hawley-Smoot Tariff of 1930.European uncertainties over reparations, war debts,and defaults on loans owed to America caused ten-sions that reacted unfavorably on the United States.

The Depression Descends 769

Many of these conditions had been created or wors-ened by Uncle Sam’s own narrow-visioned policies,but it was now too late to unscramble the omelet.

As if man-made disasters were not enough, aterrible drought scorched the Mississippi Valley in1930. Thousands of farms were sold at auction fortaxes, though in some cases kind neighbors wouldintimidate prospective buyers, bid one cent, andreturn the property to its original owner. Farm tenancy or rental—a species of peonage—wasspreading at an alarming rate among both whitesand blacks.

By 1930 the depression had become a nationalcalamity. Through no fault of their own, a host ofindustrious citizens had lost everything. Theywanted to work—but there was no work. The insidi-ous effect of all this dazed despair on the nation’sspirit was incalculable and long-lasting. America’s“uniqueness” no longer seemed so unique or itsManifest Destiny so manifest. Hitherto the peoplehad grappled with storms, trees, stones, and otherphysical obstacles. But the depression was a bafflingwraith they could not grasp. Initiative and self-respect were stifled, as panhandlers begged for foodor “charity soup.” In extreme cases “ragged individu-alists” slept under “Hoover blankets” (old newspa-pers), fought over the contents of garbage cans, orcooked their findings in old oil drums in tin-and-paper shantytowns cynically named “Hoovervilles.”

The very foundations of America’s social and politi-cal structure trembled.

Rugged Times for Rugged Individualists

Hoover’s exalted reputation as a wonder-worker andefficiency engineer crashed about as dismally as thestock market. He doubtless would have shone in the


Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) spokeapprovingly in a campaign speech in 1928 of “the American system of RuggedIndividualism.” In 1930 he referred toCleveland’s 1887 veto of a bill to appropriateseed grain for the drought-stricken farmers of Texas:

“I do not believe that the power and duty of theGeneral Government ought to be extended tothe relief of individual suffering. . . . The lessonshould be constantly enforced that though thepeople support the Government the Govern-ment should not support the people.”

prosperity-drenched Coolidge years, when he hadforeseen the abolition of poverty and poor-houses.But damming the Great Depression proved to be atask beyond his engineering talents.

The perplexed president was impaled on thehorns of a cruel dilemma. As a deservedly famedhumanitarian, he was profoundly distressed by thewidespread misery about him. Yet as a “rugged indi-vidualist,” deeply rooted in an earlier era of freeenterprise, he shrank from the heresy of govern-ment handouts. Convinced that industry, thrift, andself-reliance were the virtues that had made Amer-ica great, President Hoover feared that a govern-ment doling out doles would weaken, perhapsdestroy, the national fiber.

As the depression nightmare steadily worsened,relief by local government agencies broke down.Hoover was finally forced to turn reluctantly fromhis doctrine of log-cabin individualism and acceptthe proposition that the welfare of the people in anationwide catastrophe is a direct concern of thenational government.

The president at last worked out a compromisebetween the old hands-off philosophy and the“soul-destroying” direct dole then being used in

England. He would assist the hard-pressed rail-roads, banks, and rural credit corporations, in thehope that if financial health were restored at the topof the economic pyramid, unemployment would berelieved at the bottom on a trickle-down basis.

Hoover and the Depression 771

Wall Streeter Martin Devries, observingPresident Herbert Hoover’s struggle to keephis footing as the tidal wave of the GreatDepression washed over him, decided he wasa good man stuck in the wrong place, at thewrong time:

“Hoover happened to be in a bad spot. TheDepression came on, and there he was. IfJesus Christ had been there, he’d have had thesame problem. It’s too bad for poor old Herbiethat he happened to be there. This was aworld-wide Depression. It wasn’t Hoover’sfault. In 1932, . . . a monkey could have beenelected against him, no question about it.”

Partisan critics sneered at the “Great Humani-tarian”—he who had fed the faraway Belgians butwould not use federal funds to feed needy Ameri-cans. Hostile commentators remarked that he waswilling to lend government money to the bigbankers, who allegedly had plunged the countryinto the mess. He would likewise lend money toagricultural organizations to feed pigs—but notpeople. Pigs, the cynics of the time noted, had nocharacter to undermine.

Much of this criticism was unfair. Although con-tinued suffering seemed to mock the effectivenessof Hoover’s measures, his efforts probably pre-vented a more serious collapse than did occur. Andhis expenditures for relief, revolutionary for thatday, paved the path for the enormous federal out-lays of his New Deal successor, Franklin Roosevelt.Hoover proved that the old bootstrap-pulling tech-niques would no longer work in a crisis of this mag-nitude, especially when people lacked boots.

Herbert Hoover:Pioneer for the New Deal

President Hoover, in line with his “trickle-down”philosophy, at last recommended that Congressvote immense sums for useful public works. Thoughat heart an antispender, he secured from Con-gress appropriations totaling $2.25 billion for such projects.

Most imposing of the public enterprises was thegigantic Hoover Dam on the Colorado River. Votedby Congress in the days of Coolidge, it was begun in1930 under Hoover and completed in 1936 underRoosevelt. It succeeded in creating a huge man-made lake for purposes of irrigation, flood control,and electric power.

But Hoover sternly fought all schemes that heregarded as “socialistic.” Conspicuous among themwas the Muscle Shoals Bill, designed to dam theTennessee River and ultimately embraced byFranklin Roosevelt’s Tennessee Valley Authority.Hoover emphatically vetoed this measure, primarilybecause he opposed the government’s selling elec-tricity in competition with its own citizens in privatecompanies.

Early in 1932 Congress, responding to Hoover’sbelated appeal, established the ReconstructionFinance Corporation (RFC). With an initial working

capital of half a billion dollars, this agency became agovernment lending bank. It was designed to pro-vide indirect relief by assisting insurance compa-nies, banks, agricultural organizations, railroads,and even hard-pressed state and local governments.But to preserve individualism and character, therewould be no loans to individuals from this “billion-dollar soup kitchen.”

“Pump-priming” loans by the RFC were nodoubt of widespread benefit, though the organiza-tion was established many months too late for max-imum usefulness. Projects that it supported werelargely self-liquidating, and the government as abanker actually profited to the tune of many mil-lions of dollars. Giant corporations so obviouslybenefited from this assistance that the RFC wasdubbed—rather unfairly—“the millionaires’ dole.”The irony is that the thrifty and individualisticHoover had sponsored the project, though with ini-tial reluctance. It actually had a strong New Dealishflavor.

Hoover’s administration also provided someindirect benefits for labor. After stormy debate,Congress passed the Norris–La Guardia Anti-Injunction Act in 1932, and Hoover signed it. Themeasure outlawed “yellow-dog” (antiunion) con-tracts and forbade the federal courts to issue injunc-tions to restrain strikes, boycotts, and peacefulpicketing.

The truth is that Herbert Hoover, despite criti-cism of his “heartlessness,” did inaugurate a signifi-cant new policy. In previous panics the masses hadbeen forced to “sweat it out.” Slow though Hooverwas to abandon this nineteenth-century bias, by theend of his term he had started down the road toward government assistance for needy citizens—a road that Franklin Roosevelt would travel muchfarther.

Hoover’s woes were increased by a hostile Con-gress. At critical times during his first two years, theRepublican majority proved highly uncooperative.Friction worsened during his last two years. Adepression-cursed electorate, rebelling in the con-gressional elections of 1930, so reduced the Repub-lican majority that Democrats controlled the newHouse and almost controlled the Senate. InsurgentRepublicans could—and did—combine with oppo-sition Democrats to harass Hoover. Some of thepresident’s troubles were deliberately manufacturedby Congress, who, in his words, “played politics withhuman misery.”


Examining the Evidence 773

Lampooning Hoover, 1932 The pages of TheAmerican Pageant are filled with political cartoonsfor the pungent commentary they provide on his-torical events. With one image rather than manywords, a cartoonist can convey a point of viewmuch the way editorial writers do. This cartoonappeared in the Washington Daily News on July 25,1932, three and one-half months before Republi-can President Hoover lost the presidential electionto his Democratic challenger Franklin D. Roosevelt.The cartoonist foretells Hoover’s defeat in Novem-ber and departure from the White House the fol-lowing March (not January, as at present), andexpresses his support for the Home Loan BankBill. With this proposal, Hoover sought to come tothe aid of home mortgage lenders in order to fore-stall them from foreclosing on homeowners. Thecartoonist jokes that Hoover supported this billbecause he identified with home owners about to

lose their homes, but he also cleverly insinuatesthat Hoover’s banking reform was motivated byelectoral opportunism. Surely Hoover sought towin public support in return for his new bankingprogram as he battled for reelection, but the HomeLoan Bank Bill also reflected Hoover’s growingrecognition that the federal government had totake direct action to remedy flaws that had precipi-tated the crisis of the Great Depression. As Hooverlater recorded in his memoirs, “All this seems dulleconomics, but the poignant American dramarevolving around the loss of the old homestead hada million repetitions straight from life, not becauseof the designing villain but because of a fault in ourfinancial system.” How does the cartoonist use car-icature to make his point? What accounts for thepolitical cartoon’s special power? Are there limita-tions to this genre? Find another cartoon in thebook and subject it to similar analysis.

Routing the Bonus Army in Washington

Many veterans of World War I were numbered amongthe hard-hit victims of the depression. Industry hadsecured a “bonus”—though a dubious one—in theHawley-Smoot Tariff. So the thoughts of the formersoldiers naturally turned to what the governmentowed them for their services in 1917–1918, when theyhad “saved” democracy. A drive developed for thepremature payment of the deferred bonus voted byCongress in 1924 and payable in 1945.

Thousands of impoverished veterans, both ofwar and of unemployment, were now prepared tomove on to Washington, there to demand of Con-gress the immediate payment of their entire bonus.The “Bonus Expeditionary Force” (BEF), whichmustered about twenty thousand souls, convergedon the capital in the summer of 1932. These suppli-cants promptly set up unsanitary public camps and erected shacks on vacant lots—a gigantic“Hooverville.” They thus created a menace to thepublic health, while attempting to intimidate Con-gress by their presence in force. After the pendingbonus bill had failed in Congress by a narrow mar-gin, Hoover arranged to pay the return fare of aboutsix thousand bonus marchers. The rest refused todecamp, though ordered to do so.

Following riots that cost two lives, Hooverresponded to the demands of the Washingtonauthorities by ordering the army to evacuate theunwanted guests. Although Hoover charged that the“Bonus Army” was led by riffraff and reds, in factonly a sprinkling of them were former convicts andcommunist agitators. The eviction was carried outby General Douglas MacArthur with bayonets andtear gas, and with far more severity than Hoover hadplanned. A few of the former soldiers were injuredas the torch was put to their pathetic shanties in theinglorious “Battle of Anacostia Flats.” An eleven-month-old “bonus baby” allegedly died from expo-sure to tear gas.

This brutal episode brought down additionalabuse on the once-popular Hoover, who by now wasthe most loudly booed man in the country. TheDemocrats, not content with Hoover’s vulnerablerecord, employed professional “smear” artists todrive him from office. Cynics sneered that the“Great Engineer” had in a few months “ditched,drained, and damned the country.” The existingpanic was unfairly branded “the Hoover depres-

sion.” In truth, Hoover had been oversold as a wiz-ard, and the public grumbled when his magician’swand failed to produce rabbits. The time was ripen-ing for the Democratic party—and Franklin D. Roo-sevelt—to cash in on Hoover’s calamities.

Japanese Militarists Attack China

The Great Depression, which brewed enough distressat home, added immensely to difficulties abroad.Militaristic Japan stole the Far Eastern spotlight. InSeptember 1931 the Japanese imperialists, notingthat the Western world was badly mired in a depres-sion, lunged into Manchuria. Alleging provocation,they rapidly overran the coveted Chinese provinceand proceeded to bolt shut the Open Door in theconquered area.

Peaceful peoples were stunned by this act ofnaked aggression, which was a flagrant violation ofthe League of Nations covenant, as well as of variousother international agreements solemnly signed byTokyo. Numerous indignant Americans, though byno means a majority, urged strong measures rang-ing from boycotts to blockades. Possibly a tightblockade by the League, backed by the UnitedStates, would have brought Japan sharply to book.

But the League was handicapped in taking two-fisted action by the nonmembership of the UnitedStates. Washington flatly rebuffed initial attempts in1931 to secure American cooperation in applyingeconomic pressure on Japan. Washington and Sec-retary of State Henry L. Stimson in the end decidedto fire only paper bullets at the Japanese aggressors.The so-called Stimson doctrine, proclaimed in 1932,declared that the United States would not recognizeany territorial acquisitions achieved by force. Right-eous indignation—or a preach-and-run policy—would substitute for solid initiatives.

This verbal slap on the wrist from America didnot deter the march of the Japanese militarists.Smarting under a Chinese boycott, they bombedShanghai in 1932, with shocking losses to civilians.Outraged Americans launched informal boycotts ofJapanese goods, chiefly dime-store knickknacks.But there was no real sentiment for armed inter-vention among a depression-ridden people, whoremained strongly isolationist during the 1930s.

In a broad sense, collective security died andWorld War II was born in 1931 on the windswept


plains of Manchuria. The League members had theeconomic and naval power to halt Japan but lackedthe courage to act. One reason—though not theonly one—was that they could not count on Amer-ica’s support. Even so, the Republic came closer tostepping into the chill waters of internationalismthan American prophets would have dared to pre-dict in the early 1920s.

Hoover Pioneersthe Good Neighbor Policy

Hoover’s arrival in the White House brought a morehopeful turn to relations with America’s southernneighbors. The new president was deeply interestedin the often troubled nations below the Rio Grande.Shortly after his election in 1928, he had under-taken a goodwill tour of Latin America—on a U.S. battleship.

World depression softened an age-old aggres-sive attitude in the United States toward weak Latinneighbors. Following the stock-market collapse of1929, Americans had less money to invest abroad.As millions of dollars’ worth of investments in LatinAmerica went sour, many Yankees felt as thoughthey were more preyed upon than preying. So-called economic imperialism became much lesspopular in the United States than it had been in thegolden twenties.

As an advocate of international goodwill,Hoover strove to abandon the interventionist twistgiven to the Monroe Doctrine by Theodore Roo-sevelt. In 1932 he negotiated a new treaty with the French-speaking republic of Haiti, and this pact, later supplanted by an executive agreement,

Troubles Abroad 775

Hoover later wrote of his differences withSecretary of State Stimson over economicboycotts,

“I was soon to realize that my able Secretarywas at times more of a warrior than adiplomat. To him the phrase ‘economicsanctions’ was the magic wand of force bywhich all peace could be summoned from thevasty deep. . . . Ever since Versailles I hadheld that ‘economic sanctions’ meant warwhen applied to any large nation.”

provided for the complete withdrawal of American platoons by 1934. Further pleasing omens cameearly in 1933, when the last marine “leathernecks”sailed away from Nicaragua after an almost contin-uous stay of some twenty years.

Herbert Hoover, the engineer in politics, thushappily engineered the foundation stones of the“Good Neighbor” policy. Upon them rose an impos-ing edifice in the days of his successor, FranklinRoosevelt.


Chronology

1919 American Legion foundedChicago race riot

1920 Esch-Cummins Transportation ActMerchant Marine Act

1921 Veterans Bureau createdCapper-Volstead Act

1922 Five-Power Naval TreatyFour-Power and Nine-Power Treaties on the

Far EastFordney-McCumber Tariff Law

1923 Adkins v. Children’s HospitalTeapot Dome scandalHarding dies; Coolidge assumes presidency

1924 Adjusted Compensation Act for veteransDawes Plan for international financeU.S. troops leave the Dominican RepublicCoolidge wins three-way presidential election

1926 U.S. troops occupy Nicaragua

1928 Kellogg-Briand PactHoover defeats Smith for presidencyHoover takes goodwill tour of Latin America

1929 Agricultural Marketing Act sets up FederalFarm Board

Stock-market crash

1930 Hawley-Smoot Tariff

1931 Japanese invade Manchuria

1932 Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC)established

Norris–La Guardia Anti-Injunction Act“Bonus Army” dispersed from

Washington, D.C.

For further reading, see page A23 of the Appendix. For web resources, go to http://college.hmco.com.

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