In the public eye, Hoover seemed uncaring, unwilling to admit that people were starving and that his ideas were failing. He lost significant public support in the summer of when General Douglas MacArthur— in defiance of Hoover's orders—removed the World War I veterans known as Bonus Marchers who had massed peacefully in Washington, D.
MacArthur was brutal in his treatment of the marchers, using cavalry, tanks, and bayonet-bearing soldiers. In the riot that followed, U. Hoover ran for reelection in , anxious to prove that his policies could still ameliorate the economic crisis. Americans, though, rallied around Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt and his "New Deal," with its vague promises of a "crusade to restore America to its own people. Hoover left the White House in disgrace, having incurred the public's wrath for failing to lift the nation out of the Great Depression.
Hoover's reputation has risen over the years. He is no longer blamed for causing the Depression; instead, scholars note that Hoover's efforts to combat its effects were extraordinary when compared to federal anti-depression measures invoked during previous economic crises. These efforts, moreover, flowed logically from the President's unique brand of social, economic, and political progressivism. Nonetheless, the nation's economy continued to sink during the Hoover presidency.
With the public losing confidence in the President's abilities, leadership, and policies, Hoover paid the ultimate political price for these failures in November Grant Rutherford B. Hayes James A. Garfield Chester A. Roosevelt Harry S. Truman Dwight D. Roosevelt in the general election. Hoover departed Washington with a heavy heart on March 4, Hoover devoted the next 12 years to writing books, speaking on issues of public concern, and serving as chairman of a number of philanthropic organizations.
Hoover and Truman also joined forces in on a commission to reorganize the executive branch of the federal government. In addition to public service, Hoover devoted his post-Presidential years to social causes such as the Boys Clubs of America and the Hoover Institution, a research center he had established on the Stanford campus in He also wrote more than 40 books during those years. Hoover insisted that the building be modest in size in accordance with scale of the other buildings in the community.
The former President made his last visit to Iowa on August 10, , to dedicate that building to the American people. Herbert Hoover died on October 20, On October 25, the body of Herbert Hoover was interred in a simple grave on an Iowa hill overlooking the cottage where he was born.
Smith and won in a landslide. He also contacted business leaders and urged them not to cut wages or lay off workers, and in , he backed the establishment of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, a lending institution intended to help banks and industries in their recovery efforts.
Unfortunately, none of these approaches helped the foundering economy, and Hoover watched helplessly while businesses closed their doors and Americans sank into poverty. He also made a critical mistake in signing into law the Smoot-Hawley Act, which raised taxes on imports and prompted foreign nations to turn their backs on American-made goods when the country desperately needed sales. He was working on another book when he died in New York City in , at age The 31st president has been the subject of several biographies, including a multi-volume work by historian George H.
In , journalist Kenneth Whyte introduced a new profile to the collection, Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times , which explored the former president's lengthy record of public service and the events that shaped his personality and decision-making.
We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! Subscribe to the Biography newsletter to receive stories about the people who shaped our world and the stories that shaped their lives. This privately endowed organization later became the Hoover Institution, devoted to the study of peace and war. No isolationist, Hoover supported American participation in the League of Nations.
He believed, though, that Wilson's stubborn idealism led Congress to reject American participation in the League. In , Hoover emerged as a contender for the Republican presidential nomination. His run was blocked, however, by fellow a Californian, Senator Hiram Johnson, who objected to Hoover's support for the League.
Republican Warren Harding won the White House in and appointed Hoover as his secretary of commerce, a position that Hoover retained under Harding's successor, President Calvin Coolidge. Under Hoover's leadership, the Department of Commerce became as influential and important a government agency as the Departments of State and Treasury.
Hoover encouraged research into measures designed to counteract harmful business cycles. He supported government regulation of new industries like aviation and radio.
He brought together more than one hundred different industries and convinced them to adopt standardized tools, hardware, building materials, and automobile parts. Finally, he aggressively pursued international trade opportunities for American business. To win these reforms, Hoover strengthened existing agencies in the Commerce Department, like the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, or simply established new ones, like the Bureau of Standards, for the standardization project.
He also formed commissions that brought together government officials, experts, and leaders of the relevant economic sectors to work towards reform. The initiatives Hoover supported as commerce secretary—and the ways in which he pursued them—reveal his thinking about contemporary life in the United States and about the federal government's role in American society.
Hoover hoped to create a more organized economy that would regularize the business cycle, eliminating damaging ebbs and flows and generating higher rates of economic growth.
He believed that eradicating waste and improving efficiency would achieve some of these results— thus, his support for standardization and for statistical research into the workings of the economy. He also believed that the American economy would be healthier if business leaders worked together, and with government officials and experts from the social sciences, in a form of private-sector economic planning.
This stance led him to support trade associations—industry-wide cooperative groups wherein information on prices, markets, and products could be exchanged among competitors—which Hoover saw as a middle way between competition and monopoly. He insisted, though, that participation in these associations remain voluntary and that the government merely promote and encourage, rather than require, their establishment.
Hoover hoped that these innovations would strengthen what he saw as the central component of the American experience: individualism. In , Hoover published a small book, entitled American Individualism, that examined the Western intellectual tradition's major social philosophies, including individualism, socialism, communism, capitalism, and autocracy.
Hoover concluded that individualism was the superior principle around which to organize society. He rejected the laissez-faire capitalism of the Right and the socialism and communism of the Left because he believed that these ideologies hindered rather than helped the individual.
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