Herbert Hoover

by Glen Jeansonne

  On December 2, 1930, Hoover delivered his State of the Union address to the 71st Congress with an overview describing his principles of government and the direction in which he wanted to lead the nation. He followed up two days later with his budget address, which was more specific. Upbeat yet restrained, eager to lead yet respectful that his role was to lead, not herd, the president urged an acceleration of government compared to the Harding-Coolidge era, with greater spending and measures designed to nip the Wall Street disaster in the bud. He called for an income tax reduction; prompt completion of work on the tariff left over from the special session, which was creating business uncertainty; reform of the banking system; railroad consolidation; creation of a powerful Federal Power Commission; and extension of civil service to postal employees. He vowed to strive for prison reform, greater economy and efficiency, increased public works, and reorganization of the executive branch.15

  Herbert Hoover was a fledgling politician thrust into the nation’s highest political office, and he felt uncomfortable with the artifice of politics. It is possible to be good at something one does not enjoy, but it rarely comes easily. What drove Hoover to public life was a sense of duty and his belief that the higher the position, the more good he could accomplish.

  Though facing America’s greatest crisis since the Civil War, Hoover was matched with one of the more contentious Congresses in memory. The Republicans controlled the House and reliably voted with the president. Yet in the Senate, while the GOP held the majority, they did not hold control. Forty-two conservative Republicans clashed with fourteen Progressive Republicans, who frequently voted with the thirty-nine sitting Democrats. Most Progressives were independents who carried individualism to an almost eccentric degree, leaping headfirst into virtually every fray. Troubling all waters, they were significant more for their aggressiveness than for their numbers, as well as for their freewheeling, uninhibited rhetoric and their mercurial temperaments. While the Democrats and Republican regulars voted with their respective blocs, the insurgent Progressives voted unpredictably. They considered Hoover, whose political roots had been sunk as a Theodore Roosevelt “Bull Moose” progressive, as too liberal, perhaps even a radical, a protégé of TR and Wilson.16

  Though the Wall Street crash occurred during the first session of the 71st Congress, the crisis did not inspire a proliferation of anti-Depression legislation. Senator Robert Wagner, however, became one of the most aggressive combatants against the downturn, often in sympathy with Hoover’s objectives. The Democrat from New York initiated legislation to improve the gathering of statistics dealing with unemployment, which Congress passed and Hoover signed. The senator also sponsored a bill earmarking $150 million for public works, which became law, although Hoover knew that additional money would be needed. At times Wagner advocated greater appropriations than the president considered wise. A third bill designed to create unemployment exchanges was vetoed on the grounds that such a federal system already existed. The two men traveled along parallel tracks, but at different speeds.17

  In addition to economic issues, Congress skirmished over stipends for veterans and reorganization of the Veterans’ Bureau. Hoover urged Congress to reorganize the bureau in the interest of efficiency and better service, and he received much of what he wanted. The president removed the Veterans’ Bureau from the Interior Department and consolidated all veterans’ affairs under a single agency, the Veterans’ Administration, which included the Veterans’ Bureau, the Pension Bureau, the National Soldiers’ Home, and the veterans’ hospitals. Five new veterans’ hospitals were completed during Hoover’s administration. No comparable expansion had taken place since the Civil War. The chief executive encountered problems in dealing with veterans of the Spanish-American War, however. Veterans’ lobbyists wanted to include all vets of the war, including those with as little as a single day’s service, wealthy veterans who did not need stipends, and those whose disabilities related to their own conduct, such as contraction of venereal disease. The bill erupted into a political volcano. The veterans’ lobby voted to defeat any congressman who opposed their version of the bill. Hoover vetoed the more generous version and was sustained by the House. A new, scaled-down law passed both houses easily. This was one of only two bills Hoover vetoed during the 71st Congress.18

  One of the more contentious issues during the 71st and 72nd Congresses, regional in scope but national in repercussions, concerned a series of nitrate dams and potential fertilizer plants constructed along the Tennessee River in Alabama at a site known as Muscle Shoals. The complex, used to make explosives during the First World War, was no longer needed for munitions, but Senator George Norris of Nebraska, whose own constituents stood to gain or lose nothing by development of the site, wanted the federal government to erect a network of dams to generate electricity for the people of the region. Norris, who hated his fellow Republican in the White House more than any other man in the Senate, was obsessed with Muscle Shoals. In 1923, when Henry Ford offered to lease the site to manufacture fertilizer, Norris had disrupted the project. He feared and detested big business, believing the powerful monopolists would gouge their customers. In contrast, Hoover protested that government bureaucracy, corruption, favoritism, and patronage would undermine the scheme, effectively making Muscle Shoals a corporation with a board of directors consisting of the entire membership of the U.S. House and Senate. Perhaps more important, Norris’s plan would discourage private incentives to develop other hydroelectric sites and retard progress overall, because no independent concern could compete with the government. Congress could dip into its till and use taxpayer money collected nationwide to benefit consumers, in carefully chosen parts of the country, who would employ political leverage to lure projects. There was a bit of truth as well as an element of paranoia in each argument. The feud was political and personal, not purely pragmatic. The only difference was over means, not ends. With significant goodwill and artful compromise the problem could have been finessed. But neither rival would budge one centimeter.19

  Beginning during the summer of 1930, an intense heat wave scorched more than twenty states. In the Ohio, Missouri, and Mississippi valleys, stretching east to Virginia and west to Montana, as well as to the entire Southwest, crops wilted, rivers ran dry, and forest fires raged. Arkansas experienced a span of forty-three days in which the temperature stood above one hundred degrees for all but one. Hoover quickly assembled data from the Agriculture Department and convened a national conference of governors in Washington. The president appointed a national committee to cope with the crisis, chaired by Agriculture Secretary Arthur Hyde. Each governor appointed a state committee, and below each were county and local committees. Hoover established the major priorities of the committees: to maintain public health, to minimize the loss of livestock, and to sustain farm families.20

  During the inferno of 1930, the Red Cross took up the task of providing food, spending $10 million and sustaining some 2.5 million people. The government focused on rebuilding the economic infrastructure and providing credit and work relief in the crippled regions. Hoover negotiated a 50 percent rate reduction by railroads serving the affected states, which now imported corn and water in bulk. The Federal Farm Board provided $47 million in loans to devastated farmers, 75 percent of which was repaid. Due in part to this aid, there was no mass slaughter of livestock and many farm cooperatives were saved from bankruptcy. Congress appropriated $122 million for highway work in the distressed area, employing chiefly local people. The president accelerated work on waterways, dams, and flood control in the affected states.

  Eventually leading to the notorious Dust Bowl of the 1930s, the drought’s effects were exacerbated by the fact that it occurred during the Great Depression. With national resources already stretched thin, the president faced massive hardship in many areas simultaneously. Congress debated the amount and type of assistance for two months before enacting an appropriations measure. Powerful senators threatened to hold H
oover’s legislative agenda hostage unless he increased appropriations for drought relief in their states, and also tried to pad drought relief with pork-barrel bills. Senator Joseph T. Robinson of Arkansas demanded a large appropriation in the form of a grant to the Red Cross. The Red Cross rejected the offer on the grounds it would compromise their independence as a private organization and undermine their fund-raising. Hoover argued that such an appropriation would invite demands from other politicians during a global financial crisis during which resources were limited.21

  The fall congressional campaign of 1930 brought the first significant electoral test of Hoover’s presidency. In virtually every state, the main issue was Herbert Hoover, who served as a proxy for the weak economy. The Democratic National Committee produced an unrelenting stream of speeches, pamphlets, and radio addresses, which were not only effective in the short run but began the process of embedding Hoover’s place in history as an inept, uncaring president. James M. Cox, the Democratic candidate for president back in 1920, blamed Hoover for the stock market crash and added that the Republicans had aggravated conditions by their uncaring arrogance. The GOP, he argued, had then sealed the fate of the Republic by imposing the Smoot-Hawley Tariff. Senator Hugo Black of Alabama added that the prostrate nation had run out of patience waiting for recovery while Hoover dithered. As the opposing parties tried to pin the labels of “Big Spenders” and “Do Nothings” on each other, Hoover did not campaign in the field, preferring to work through surrogates, but he did dispatch the cabinet to campaign, especially in close states. The Republican National Committee also campaigned in crucial states, as did members of the president’s staff and his personal friends. The GOP accused the Democrats of playing politics with human misery and charged that the Democrats could not point to a single law that they were responsible for enacting or repealing during the recent session. Still, Republicans were blamed for the overall downward slide in the economy. During the month prior to the balloting, stocks declined 10 to 15 percent.22

  The returns of early November showed a virtual tie between the parties. The Republicans suffered serious, though not unexpected, defeats, losing eight seats in the Senate and bringing their total down to forty-eight. Yet some senators officially recorded as Republicans were in fact Western independents who routinely voted Democratic. In the House, which the GOP had controlled prior to the election, each party now held 217 seats, with one Farmer-Laborite who usually voted with the Democrats. In effect, the Democrats were to control both houses. Yet they lacked a titular leader and could not agree on a consistent program to deal with the Depression. They found themselves in the awkward position of having the clout to block or alter Hoover’s program but the inability to enact one of their own. This would test the ingenuity of both parties as they strove to relieve the Depression with one eye on the next election.23

  The short session of the 71st Congress commenced in early December 1930, concluding on March 4, 1931. Prior to the sessions, Democratic leaders met with Hoover and agreed to cooperate when possible in order to avoid the necessity for a special session, which would further destabilize business. Among the Democrats forming the coalition were former presidential candidates James M. Cox, John W. Davis, and Alfred E. Smith, along with Senate leader Joseph T. Robinson and House veteran John Nance Garner. The leading Democratic Party officials, John J. Raskob and Jouett Shouse, also cooperated. Hoover established his priorities, calling for an additional $100 million in public works—adding to the $500 million already appropriated—plus $30 million for drought relief. Over the longer term, he recommended railroad consolidation, revision of the antitrust legislation, reform of federal power regulation, and restraint on spending. He urged fiscal restraint in order to avert tax increases, which would deter business expansion. Despite his admonitions, Congress enacted a bill permitting vets to borrow up to 50 percent of their Great War bonus, due to mature in 1945, and overrode Hoover’s veto. Ironically, in looking ahead, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had been reelected as governor of New York by a whopping 750,000 votes, consistently protested against the federal government’s overspending and unwarranted deficit extension.24

  In his opening address to the short session on December 3, the president warned that the fight against the downturn had entered a new, more serious stage and that victory would be neither quick nor easy. Hoover placed the Great Depression in an international context, explaining that its origins lay partly in a speculative bubble in America that had diverted capital and enterprise from constructive investments. Yet, he continued, “had over speculation in securities been the only force operating, we would have seen recovery many months ago.” The roots were deeper, and they stretched worldwide. Production had fallen below the appetite for consumption, and there were shortages in capital and raw materials globally as national economies writhed to recover from the wounds of the Great War. Political agitation and revolutions toppled tottering regimes in Asia, Russia, Europe, and Latin America, precipitating worldwide financial turmoil, which had affected America. The world had grown increasingly interdependent, rising and falling in unison. The American government could mitigate the effects of the global collapse, but it was unrealistic to imagine that America could completely overcome the debacle independently. “Economic depression cannot be cured by legislative action or executive pronouncement,” Hoover argued. “Economic wounds must be healed by the actions of the cells of the economic body—the producers and consumers themselves.” A capitalist, consumer-driven economy could not be restored by government spending alone, he cautioned. In a relative sense, “our unemployment has been far less in proportion than in other large industrial countries.” Hoover explained that he had a commitment to minimize the suffering, “to see that no deserving person in our country suffers from hunger or cold.” The U.S. government had contributed by embarking on the greatest program in history involving construction of waterways, harbors, flood control, public buildings, highways, and airports. He wanted to expand the program prudently without an increase in taxation, which would mean a counterproductive decrease in private employment and consumption. The government could only redistribute wealth; it could not create it. What it gave to some it must first take from someone else.25

  Near the end of the short session the mood of cooperation was declining. Some Democrats were critical of their own leaders, who had promised to assist the president at the beginning of the session. Hoover was losing control of his own party, too. The independents opposed him on principal and personality. Some, like Borah and Norris, tenaciously held out for regional cure-alls not supported by a majority of the Senate or most of the American people. The insurgents played a “rule or ruin” game. There were serious stylistic differences between the president and many veteran politicians as well. Even the regular Republicans, his nominal allies, wanted special favors in return for allegiance. They groused that the president did not play by the expected rules of rewarding friends and punishing foes; he did not play hardball.26

  Hoover, perhaps motivated by his Quaker principles, wanted to stand above the fight, but this was impractical. He wanted congressmen to vote on logic and principle, but they were more interested in getting reelected. His refusal to deal in the grittier aspects of politics gave them the impression that he was weak. They could not conceive of a president who wanted to locate public works in areas of the greatest need for employment rather than trade them for votes. The congressional wing of the party often placed political expediency over fairness and jostled for pork-barrel projects in their own districts at a time when money was tight and need was widespread. Few thought in national terms. Hoover placed principle above his own political expediency, and he paid a political price.

  While navigating the rocky shoals of Congress, the president also had to juggle international diplomacy. In 1929, he began planning to amend the agreements of the Washington Naval Conference of 1921, which had set limits on construction of battleships among the major naval powers. The president s
ought to expand the treaty to include all smaller vessels except submarines, and he called for a conference to include Britain, America, Japan, France, and Italy, the major sea powers. Preceding the conference, which convened in London in early 1930, he invited the new British Labour prime minister, Ramsay MacDonald, also an advocate of naval arms control, to a preliminary summit conference at Washington. MacDonald arrived on October 4, 1929, was feted as a celebrity at New York and Washington, and talked one-on-one with Hoover at the president’s idyllic retreat, Camp Rapidan. The two men found common cause while sitting at opposite ends of a log beneath the fall foliage, adjacent to the gurgling, trout-rich river. America and Britain, with no conceivable reason to go to war, were nonetheless engaged in a naval arms race that stretched dollars and pounds sterling thin during the early days of the Great Depression. The Japanese were also eager to reach an agreement; the French and Italians decided to attend the conference in London more reluctantly, and ultimately they did not sign the agreement. France demanded as the price of its signature an alliance with the United States, meaning a de facto alliance against Germany, which Hoover knew the American people and their Congress would never accept. On December 7, 1929, MacDonald issued the call for the London Naval Disarmament Conference, which convened in mid-January of 1930. Its work accomplished the last serious progress toward disarmament prior to World War II. The Senate procrastinated over ratification but finally approved the document 58–9 at a special session in July 1930. The agreement marked a diplomatic coup for Hoover and the cornerstone of his defense policy of disarmament, saving billions of dollars and drawing the United States and Britain closer. Hoover had also set a milestone of summit diplomacy, marking a new era in which American presidents would meet their foreign counterparts face-to-face rather than via letters, exchanges through ambassadors, or transatlantic telephone calls.27