President Hoover and the Great Depression
- Created by: LeFay
- Created on: 06-01-14 15:02
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Timeline of key dates
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- 1929 - Presidency of Herbert Hoover began. Agricultural Marketing Act.
- 1930 - Hawley-Smoot tariff.
- 1931 - Moratorium on foreign debts. National Credit Corporation set up.
- 1932 - Johnson Act. Federal Home Loan Bank Act. Reconstruction Finance Corporation set up. Emergency Relief and Construction Act. Bonus Army march on Washington. Hoover defeated in the presidential election.
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"In Hoover we trusted
And now we are busted"
Herbert Hoover (1929-33)
- Hoover could not shift from his fundamental beliefs.
- Self-Reliance
- People should be responsible for their own welfare.
- The government should not try to solve people's problems. However, it was up to the government to give people the ability to solve their problems by themselves.
- "American individualism"
- Equality of opportunity.
- Everyone could, with hard work and initiative, become rich just as Hoover had.
- Hoover felt a balance should be struck between people's desire to do whatever they wanted themselves and the needs of the wider community.
- Emphasis was always on the responsibility of the individual, the curbing of excesses in one's personal life and treating others fairly.
- "American individualism" was regarded as the best system in the world. The role of the government was helping its development.
- A belief in self-help and voluntary co-operation to solve problems. People should help themselves and each other.
- Self-Reliance
The USA during the Great Depression
- The economic effects
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- One historian wrote that the unemployment figures matched the casuality figures from WW1. An official government source suggests that it rose from 3.2% of the labour force in 1929 to 25.2% in 1933. Another source suggests that by 1933, one third of the work force was unemployed.
- The national wage bill in 1932 was only 40% of the 1929 figure.
- Uneven distribution of unemployment
- African-Americans
- The number of African-Americans out of work was four to six times higher than whites.
- Poorly paid jobs traditionally reserved for African-Americans were now being increasingly offered to whites.
- "Most blacks did not even know the Great Depression had come. They always had been poor and only thought the whites were catching up."
- Women
- Those in unskilled jobs were likely to be laid off before men, and those in domestic service suffered because families could no longer afford to keep them on.
- Married women often needed to work to keep the family solvent. However, because they were employed, they were often accused of being responsible for male unemployment.
- It was common for women to be dismissed so that their job would be given to men.
- In 1930 over 75% of American school authorities refused to employ married women.
- African-Americans
- Effects on individual industries
- Although some industries escaped the effects of the depression, by 1933, nowhere in the USA could wholly escape its effects.
- With fewer in productive work, the growth rate went into decline, from 6.7% in 1929 to -14.7% in 1932, representing a fall in gross national product (GNP) from $203.6 billion in 1929 to $144.2 billion in 1932.
- General price levels fell by 25%, farm…
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