Herbert Hoover

by Glen Jeansonne

  37. Compilation of clippings, August 13, 1928, CF, HHPL.

  38. Fausold, The Presidency of Herbert Hoover, 29; McCoy, “To the White House,” 42–43.

  39. New York World, June 24, 1928; Chicago Daily News, October 18, 1928; Chicago Tribune, September 28, October 19, 1928, all in CF, HHPL.

  40. Chicago Tribune, September 30, October 1, 1928, CF, HHPL.

  41. Editorial, Washington Post, September 28, 1928, CF, HHPL.

  42. Timothy Walch and Dwight M. Miller, eds., Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt (Westport, CT, 1998), 24–26.

  43. Ibid., 27.

  44. Editorial, Chicago Daily News, November 6, 1928, November 7, 1928, CF, HHPL; George H. Nash, Herbert Hoover and Stanford University (Stanford, CA, 1988), 91–92. Final quote from Chicago Daily News, November 8, 1928, CF, HHPL.

  45. Editorial, Washington Post, November 8, 1928, CF, HHPL.

  46. Chicago Daily News, November 7, 1928, CF, HHPL.

  47. Hoff, Hoover: Forgotten Progressive, 128.

  48. Burner, Hoover: A Public Life, 285–86; Chicago Daily News, July 19, 1929, Reprint File, HHPL; DeConde, Hoover’s Latin-American Policy, 15–17; Wolfe, Hoover: Public Servant, 126–27; Robert H. Ferrell, American Diplomacy in the Great Depression: Hoover-Stimson Foreign Policy, 1929–1933 (New Haven, 1957), 217; French Strother, “Four Years of Hoover: An Interpretation,” New York Times, February 26, 1933, transcript, Reprint File, HHPL; McCoy, “To the White House,” 46–47; Wert, Hoover: The Fishing President, 173–76.

  49. Louis W. Liebovich, Bylines in Despair: Herbert Hoover, the Great Depression, and the U.S. News Media (Westport, CT, 1994), 85; Hoff, Hoover: Forgotten Progressive, 133–34; Burner, Hoover: A Public Life, 208–9; Theodore G. Joslin Diaries, Box 10, F 7, August 27, 1931, HHPL; Fausold, The Presidency of Herbert Hoover, 34–37; unmarked clipping, Associated Press, July 7, 1929, CF, HHPL.

  Chapter 8. Getting a Grip on the Presidency

  1. New York Times, May 12, 1929, Clipping File (hereafter cited as CF), Herbert Hoover Presidential Library (hereafter cited as HHPL).

  2. Davis W. Houck, “Rhetoric as Currency: Herbert Hoover and the 1929 Stock Market Crash,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 3, no. 2 (2000): 161.

  3. Quoted in David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 (New York, 1999), 11.

  4. Editorial, “The Trend of Events,” Outlook and Independent, March 20, 1929, 450.

  5. Chicago Daily News, March 2, 1929, Reprint File, HHPL.

  6. Martin L. Fausold, The Presidency of Herbert Hoover (Lawrence, KS, 1985), 39–40; Nancy Beck Young, Lou Henry Hoover: Activist First Lady (Lawrence, KS, 2004), 5; Chicago Daily News, March 4, 1929, CF, HHPL; Helen B. Pryor, Lou Henry Hoover: Gallant First Lady (New York, 1969), 163–65; Donald R. McCoy, “To the White House, Herbert Hoover, August 1927–March 1929,” in Martin L. Fausold, ed., The Hoover Presidency: A Reappraisal (Albany, NY, 1974), 48–49; Louis W. Liebovich, Bylines in Despair: Herbert Hoover, the Great Depression and the U.S. News Media (Westport, CT, 1994), 89.

  7. Fausold, The Presidency of Herbert Hoover, 41; Chicago Daily News, April 14, 1929, CF, HHPL; Theodore Joslin, “Hoover’s First Year,” World’s Work, March 1930, 6–65, 118–20, Reprint File, HHPL; Liebovich, Bylines in Despair, 84–85; Lawrence Richey to Arthur Brisbane, January 2, 1932, White Book 2, HHPL.

  8. David Burner, “Before the Crash: Hoover’s First 8 Months in the Presidency,” in Fausold, The Hoover Presidency, 50–58.

  9. Richard Norton Smith, An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover (New York, 1984), 108; Fausold, The Presidency of Herbert Hoover, 56; Richard Norton Smith, “Herbert Hoover and the Third Way,” in Timothy Walch, ed., Uncommon Americans: The Lives and Legacies of Herbert and Lou Henry Hoover (Westport, CT, 2003), 256–57.

  10. David Burner, Herbert Hoover: A Public Life (New York, 1979), 234; French Strother, “Four Years of Hoover: An Interpretation,” New York Times, February 26, 1933, transcript, Reprint File, HHPL.

  11. Burner, Hoover: A Public Life, 219; Joan Hoff, Herbert Hoover: Forgotten Progressive (Boston, 1975), 8, 159–60; Christian Science Monitor, March 11, 1925, CF, HHPL.

  12. Theodore Joslin, Hoover Off the Record (New York, 1934), 73, 207–12.

  13. Burner, Hoover: A Public Life, 212; James D. Calder, “Herbert Hoover’s Contributions to the Administrative History of Crime Control Policy,” transcript prepared for delivery at Southwest Political Science Association Convention, 1981, 1–4, Reprint File, HHPL.

  14. Chicago Daily News, April 22, 1929, CF, HHPL; Robert P. Lamont to Charles L. McNary, April 18, 1929, Presidential Papers (hereafter cited as PP), Subject File (hereafter cited as SF), Box 127, Farm Matters, Export Debenture Plan, 1929, January–April; Jordan A. Schwarz, “Hoover and Congress: Politics, Personality and the Presidency,” in Fausold, The Hoover Presidency: A Reappraisal, 96; David E. Hamilton, From New Day to New Deal: American Farm Policies from Hoover to Roosevelt, 1928–1933 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1991), 27–37, 48–50.

  15. Harris Gaylord Warren, Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression (New York, 1967), 169–71; Fausold, The Presidency of Herbert Hoover, 66; Hamilton, From New Day to New Deal, 13–15.

  16. Victor L. Albeg, “Hoover, the Presidency in Transition,” Current History (October 1960): 213–19, Reprint File, HHPL; New York Times, April 16, 1929, CF, HHPL.

  17. Fausold, The Presidency of Herbert Hoover, 37, 53, 93–95; Edward Eyre Hunt, “The Fight on the Depression, First Phase,” transcript, Box 335, HH Presidential Files, Stanford University (hereafter cited as HHPF), undated, 95–96.

  18. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 49; Alfred Steinberg, Herbert Hoover (New York, 1967), 206–8.

  19. Hoover, Memoirs, 2:315; Vaughn Davis Bornet, “Herbert Hoover’s Planning for Unemployment and Old Age Coverage, 1921 to 1933,” in Lawrence E. Gelfand, ed., The Quest for Social Security: Papers on the Origins of the American Social Security System (Washington, DC, 1982), 35–71, Reprint File, HHPL; Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 90; Harold Wolfe, Herbert Hoover: Public Servant and Leader of the Loyal Opposition (New York, 1956), 159–61; Ray Lyman Wilbur and Arthur Mastick Hyde, The Hoover Policies (New York, 1937), 91–92; Burner, Hoover: A Public Life, 261.

  20. Hoover, Memoirs, 2:316; Bornet, “Herbert Hoover’s Planning for Unemployment,” 38–47.

  21. Fausold, The Presidency of Herbert Hoover, 63–65; Maury Klein, Rainbow’s End: The Crash of 1929 (New York, 2001), 28–30, 115.

  22. Klein, Rainbow’s End, 48–49, 175–93.

  23. Ibid., 194; Wolfe, Hoover: Public Servant, 217; Hal Elliott Wert, Hoover: The Fishing President: Portrait of the Private Man and His Life Outdoors (Mechanicsburg, PA, 2005), 194; New York Times, October 26, 1929, CF, HHPL; New York Evening Post, October 29, 1929, CF, HHPL.

  24. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 38–40; Louis W. Liebovich, Bylines in Despair: Herbert Hoover, the Great Depression, and the U.S. News Media (Westport, CT, 1994), 192; David Hinshaw, Herbert Hoover: American Quaker (New York, 1950), 154–55; Burner, Hoover: A Public Life, 249; James T. Shotwell, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Division of Economics and History, Annual Report for the Year 1932, 6, in Edward Eyre Hunt, “The Fight on the Depression, Second Phase,” Box 336, HHPF.

  25. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 40–41; New York Times, January 3, 1933, CF, HHPL; R. Gordon Hoxie, “Hoover and the Banking Crisis,” Commentary on the Hoover Presidential Seminar, August 7, 1974, unpaginated, Reprint File, HHPL.

  26. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 53–55; Fausold, The Presidency of Herbert Hoover, 75–76; Burner, Hoover: A Public Life, 252; New York Times, November 17, 1929, CF, HHPL; New York Herald Tribune, November 19, 1929, CF, HHPL; New York Evening Post, November 19, 1929, CF, HHPL; New York World, November 21, 1929, CF, HHPL; William Starr Myers and Walter H. Newton, The Hoover Administration: A Documen
ted Narrative (New York, 1936), 28.

  27. New York Herald Tribune, November 19, 1929, November 27, 1929, CF, HHPL; New York Evening Post, November 25, 1929, CF, HHPL; Craig Lloyd, Aggressive Introvert: Herbert Hoover and Public Relations Management, 1912–1932 (Columbus, OH, 1972), 157.

  28. John Spargo, The Legend of Hoover Who “Did Nothing,” 18–19, Box 226, March 21, 1936, HHPF; Houck, “Rhetoric as Currency,” 151–81, 170.

  29. Robert Sobel, Herbert Hoover at the Onset of the Great Depression, 1929–1930 (Philadelphia, 1975), 62–63.

  30. The New York Times and the New York Herald Tribune are quoted in Smith, An Uncommon Man, 117.

  31. See Amity Schlaes, The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression (New York, 2007) and Coolidge (New York, 2013); and Murray N. Rothbard, America’s Great Depression (Los Angeles, 1972).

  32. Wolfe, Hoover: Public Servant, 148; New York Herald-Tribune, February 4, 1930, CF, HHPL; New York Times, April 27, 1930, CF, HHPL; unmarked clipping, “Chief Justice Hughes,” SF, PP, Box 193, Judiciary—Supreme Court of the U.S., Appointment of Hughes as Chief Justice, HHPL; Los Angeles Times, February 15, 1930, SF, PP, Box 193, Judiciary—Supreme Court of the U.S., Appointment of Hughes as Chief Justice, HHPL.

  33. Burner, Hoover: A Public Life, 235: Donald Lisio, Hoover, Blacks, and Lily-Whites: A Study of Southern Strategies (Chapel Hill, NC, 1985), 205–8; Fausold, The Presidency of Herbert Hoover, 88–90; Hinshaw, Hoover: American Quaker, 176–77; New York Herald Tribune, March 29, 1930, CF, HHPL.

  34. Lisio, Hoover, Blacks, and Lily-Whites, 228–37; Wolfe, Hoover: Public Servant, 148.

  35. New York Times, May 8, 1930, CF, HHPL.

  36. Minneapolis Journal, May 8, 1930, CF, HHPL.

  37. Editorial, New York Herald Tribune, May 5, 1930, CF, HHPL.

  38. New York Herald Tribune, May 21, 1930, CF, HHPL; New York Evening Post, May 10, 1930, CF, HHPL; Fausold, The Presidency of Herbert Hoover, 93.

  39. Theodore G. Joslin Diaries, Box 10, F 7, February 15, 1932, HHPL; James H. MacLafferty Diary, Box 1, February 16, 1932, 6, HHPL, copyright Stanford University; New York Herald Tribune, February 16, 1932, CF, HHPL; New York Evening Post, February 16, 1932, CF, HHPL; Lisio, Hoover, Blacks, and Lily-Whites, 246.

  Chapter 9. Holding a Finger in the Dike

  1. Edward Eyre Hunt, “The Fight on the Depression, First Phase,” Box 335, 98–102, Herbert Hoover Presidential Files, Hoover Archives, Stanford University; Martin L. Fausold, The Presidency of Herbert Hoover (Lawrence, KS, 1985), 63–73; New York World, May 3, 1930, Clipping File (hereafter cited as CF), Herbert Hoover Presidential Library (hereafter cited as HHPL), West Branch, Iowa; New York Herald Tribune, May 4, 1930, CF, HHPL; Nancy Beck Young, Lou Henry Hoover: Activist First Lady (Lawrence, KS, 2004), 93–108.

  2. Edward Eyre Hunt, “The Fight on the Depression, Second Phase,” 1935, 57, Herbert Hoover Presidential Files, Hoover Archives, Stanford University; New York Times, April 2, 1930, October 12, 1930, CF, HHPL; U.S. Daily News, September 21, 1931, CF, HHPL; New York World, October 11, 1930, October 21, 1930, CF, HHPL; David Hinshaw, Herbert Hoover: American Quaker (New York, 1950), 65.

  3. David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 (New York, 1999), 88.

  4. David Burner, Herbert Hoover: A Public Life (New York, 1979), 265–66; Ray Lyman Wilbur and Arthur Mastick Hyde, The Hoover Policies (New York, 1937), 371–75; William Starr Myers and Walter H. Newton, The Hoover Administration: A Documented Narrative (New York, 1936), 52–53; Hunt, “The Fight on the Depression, First Phase,” Box 335, 103–4, Herbert Hoover Presidential Files, Hoover Archives, Stanford University; New York Times, January 28, 1931, CF, HHPL; U.S. Daily News, April 28, 1931, CF, HHPL; New York Herald Tribune, April 28, 1931, CF, HHPL; New York Evening Post, October 22, 1930, October 23, 1930, CF, HHPL.

  5. Chicago Daily News, February 5, 1930, CF, HHPL.

  6. E. Francis Brown, “Mr. Hoover Faces Nation’s Problem,” Current History (January 1932), 32: 575–83; Herbert Hoover, Memoirs, vol. 3, The Great Depression, 1919–1941 (New York, 1952), 175.

  7. Hoover, Memoirs, 3:175.

  8. Ibid., 55.

  9. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 47.

  10. Burner, Hoover: A Public Life, 260.

  11. Hoover, Memoirs, 3:56.

  12. Presidential Papers (hereafter cited as PP), Subject Files (hereafter cited as SF), Box 55, Accomplishments of the Administration, 1930, January–June; New York Herald Tribune, December 17, 1929, CF, HHPL.

  13. Theodore Joslin, Hoover Off the Record (Garden City, NY, 1934), 33.

  14. Richard Norton Smith, “Herbert Hoover and the Third Way,” in Timothy Walch, ed., Uncommon Americans: The Lives and Legacies of Herbert and Lou Henry Hoover (Westport, CT, 2003), 257–58; Albert U. Romasco, The Poverty of Abundance: Hoover, the Nation, the Depression (New York, 1963), 34, 55; Louis W. Liebovich, Bylines in Despair: Herbert Hoover, the Great Depression and the U.S. News Media (Westport, CT, 1994), 148–49; Kendrick A. Clements, Hoover, Conservation, and Consumerism: Engineering the Good Life (Lawrence, KS, 2000), 173–74; U.S. Daily News, October 9, 1931, CF, HHPL; New York Times, November 30, 1929, October 19, 1930, July 3, 1931, CF, HHPL; Chicago Daily News, February 22, 1929, CF, HHPL.

  15. Richard Norton Smith, An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover (New York, 1984), 111; Myers and Newton, The Hoover Administration, 33; Maury Klein, Rainbow’s End: The Crash of 1929 (New York, 2001), 246.

  16. Myers and Newton, The Hoover Administration, 32–33; New York Times, July 3, 1930, CF, HHPL; “The Tyrannies of Minorities in American Life,” Current History (July 1931): 543–46.

  17. Burner, Hoover: A Public Life, 262, 267; New York Times, June 19, 1930; New York Herald Tribune, April 3, 1930, CF, HHPL; Joslin, Hoover Off the Record, 75.

  18. Wilbur and Hyde, The Hoover Policies, 197–200; James H. MacLafferty Diary, June 5, 1930, June 26, 1930, Box 1, HHPL, copyright Stanford University; New York Times, June 28, 1931, CF, HHPL; New York Evening Post, June 26, 1930, CF, HHPL; Editorial, New York Herald Tribune, June 26, 1930, June 29, 1930, CF, HHPL.

  19. Clements, Hoover, Conservation, and Consumerism, 89; Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 63; New York Herald Tribune, April 17, 1930, CF, HHPL.

  20. Clements, Hoover, Conservation, and Consumerism, 180; David E. Hamilton, “Herbert Hoover and the Great Drought of 1930,” Journal of American History 68, no. 4 (March 1982): 850–54; Robert Sobel, Herbert Hoover at the Onset of the Great Depression, 1929–1930 (Philadelphia, 1975), 99–100.

  21. Wilbur and Hyde, The Hoover Policies, 399–401; Hinshaw, Hoover: American Quaker, 249; John Spargo, The Legend of Hoover Who “Did Nothing,” transcript, Box 226, March 21, 1936, 20–25, Herbert Hoover Presidential Files, Hoover Archives, Stanford University; Hunt, “The Fight on the Depression, First Phase,” Box 335, 98–99, Herbert Hoover Presidential Files, Hoover Archives, Stanford University.

  22. Myers and Newton, The Hoover Administration, 55–56; MacLafferty Diary, September 16, 1930, September 19, 1930, Box 1, HHPL, copyright Stanford University; New York Times, September 22, 1929, August 17, 1930, CF, HHPL; New York Herald Tribune, September 3, 1930, October 14, 1930, November 7, 1930, CF, HHPL; New York Evening Post, October 10, 1930, CF, HHPL; New York World, July 14, 1930, CF, HHPL.

  23. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 59–61; Louis W. Liebovich, Bylines in Despair: Herbert Hoover, the Great Depression, and the U.S. News Media (Westport, CT, 1994), 124–25; New York Evening Post, November 6, 1930, CF, HHPL; New York Times, December 5, 1930, Editorial, November 5, 1930, CF, HHPL.

  24. Fausold, The Presidency of Herbert Hoover, 132–35; Spargo, The Legend of Hoover Who “Did Nothing”; New York Evening Post, November 8, 1930, November 14, 1930, CF, HHPL; New York Times, November 8, 1930, CF, HHPL.

  25. Message to Congress, December 2, 1930, i
n New York Times, December 3, 1930, in Sobel, Herbert Hoover at the Onset of the Great Depression, 95–98.

  26. Editorial, Boston Transcript, March 7, 1931, CF, HHPL.

  27. Herbert Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover, vol. 2, The Cabinet and the Presidency, 1920–1933 (New York, 1952), 340–44; Burner, Hoover: A Public Life, 290–91; Fausold, The Presidency of Herbert Hoover, 172–73; Robert H. Ferrell, American Diplomacy in the Great Depression: Hoover-Stimson Foreign Policy, 1929–1933 (New Haven, CT, 1957), 68–86; New York Times, October 6, 1929, CF, HHPL; Darwin Lambert, “Herbert Hoover’s Hideaway,” bulletin no. 4, Shenandoah National Historical Society, 1971, 77–81.

  28. Eugene Lyons, Herbert Hoover: A Biography (Garden City, NY, 1964), 256–57, 269–73; Myers and Newton, The Hoover Administration, 71–73; Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 70–72; Ferrell, American Diplomacy in the Great Depression, 107–12.

  29. Henry L. Stimson and McGeorge Bundy, On Active Service in Peace and War (New York, 1948), 201–11; U.S. Daily News, June 23, 1931, CF, HHPL; New York Evening Post, December 15, 1931, December 23, 1931, CF, HHPL; New York Herald Tribune, December 20, 1931, CF, HHPL.

  30. New York Times, July 24, 1931, March 24, 1932, CF, HHPL; Wilbur and Hyde, The Hoover Policies, 411–13; Ferrell, American Diplomacy in the Great Depression, 116–19.

  31. New York Evening Post, November 7, 1931, November 19, 1931, Editorial, July 21, 1932, CF, HHPL; New York Times, November 18, 1931, CF, HHPL; New York Herald Tribune, November 18, 1931, CF, HHPL.

  32. Ferrell, American Diplomacy in the Great Depression, 198–204; Fausold, The Presidency of Herbert Hoover, 189; New York Times, October 24, 1931, October 25, 1931, October 26, 1931, October 27, 1931, CF, HHPL; New York Evening Post, October 26, 1931, October 27, 1931, CF, HHPL; New York Herald Tribune, October 26, 1931, Editorial, October 27, 1931, CF, HHPL.

  33. Richard Nelson Current, Secretary Stimson: A Study in Statecraft (Rutgers, NJ, 1954), 67–70; Ferrell, American Diplomacy in the Great Depression, 123–26; Burner, Hoover: A Public Life, 293–94.