Herbert Hoover

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Herbert Hoover |

Chapter 25 |

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As Herbert Hoover took the place of president his views in policies that he had in the beginning of his presidency were defied by the Great Depression. He chose aberrant ways of dealing with resolving the Great Depression issues that not many people would do, and at the same time steered away from the interventionist policies that followers of him had wanted. He believed that the stock market would eventually correct itself and that there was no need for government intervention. President Herbert Hoover’s beliefs have led many to believe that he did nothing to help the crisis and hindered his political status.

Many believe that President Herbert Hoover was a person in an executive position that did nothing to face the challenges of the Great Depression. However, he did engage in a few things to try to stabilize the depression, one in which was voluntarism. Voluntarism was that he wanted leaders of business, labor and agriculture to adopt programs of voluntary cooperation for recovery. When implementing voluntarism he obtained help from business leaders to maintain employment and wage levels, but soon enough they slashed wages and started refusing to help. President Herbert Hoover created the President’s Organization for Unemployment Relief to raise money for the voluntary agencies helping. He did many good things with these agencies as well like the Boulder Dam which was to jump start the economy and add jobs, he had Congress pass the Federal home Loan Bank Act which lowered mortgage rates for homeowners to avoid home foreclosures. The Great Depression made his beliefs a laughing stock in the society. Voluntarism was bound not to work because for example if you went to school for 8 years and got a degree to be a doctor, would you want to volunteer work or actually get paid for everything you learned to do? That is why it failed, he did not have enough support in his beliefs and started helping a little late into...