Two Letters by Herbert Hoover Regarding the Great Depression

On Thursday October 24th, 1929, less than eight months into Herbert Hoover's presidency and less than a year since he had been elected by the widest margin ever, the stock market crashed. Most experts, including Hoover, who had served brilliantly as the Secretary of Commerce for the two previous administrations, thought that the crash was part of a passing recession. But by the time the president wrote the first of these two letters, this one to his friend Governor Emmerson of Illinois, it had become clear that excessive speculation and a worldwide economic slowdown had plunged America into the midst of a Great Depression. While Hoover wrote in July 1931 that "considerable continuance of destitution over the winter," and perhaps longer, was unavoidable, he was far from inactive in dealing with the problem. Since the crash, he had worked ceaselessly trying to fix the economy. He founded government agencies, encouraged labor harmony, supported local aid for public works, fostered cooperation between government and business in order to stabilize prices, and struggled to balance the budget. His work focused on indirect relief coming from individual states and the private sector. This focus can be seen in this letter in his emphasis on supporting "each state committee" and his stress on "appeals for funds" from outside the government, known as volunteerism.

As the Depression became worse, however, calls grew for more radical measures involving increased Federal intervention and spending. But Hoover refused, adhering strongly to his principles. While he was willing to use his influence to persuade business leaders to set moderate prices and employ more men, he refused to involve the Federal government in forcing fixed prices, controlling businesses, or manipulating the value of the currency, all of which he felt were steps towards socialism. And while he was inclined to give indirect aid to banks or local public works projects, he refused to use Federal money for direct aid to citizens, since he felt that the dole was un-American and would only further weaken public morale. He focused on volunteerism to raise money because he refused to engage in massive deficit spending, which he worried would only exacerbate the depression. These decisions allowed his opponents to paint Hoover as cold and uncaring toward the common citizen, even though he was in fact a philanthropist and a progressive before becoming president. During his reelection campaign, Hoover tried to convince Americans that the measures they were calling for might seem to help in the short term, but would be ruinous in the long run. In his speeches he asserted that he cared for common Americans too much to destroy the country's foundations with deficits and Socialist institutions. But he could not escape the reputation of being both heartless and ineffectual, and was soundly defeated by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932.

Roosevelt promised Americans a "New Deal" when he took office, and from March until June of 1932, a period known as the "Hundred Days," he singed a number of groundbreaking new laws. Roosevelt's aids would later admit that most New Deal agencies were closely modeled on those that Hoover had attempted during his presidency. But Roosevelt's plans differed in financing and scope. New Deal bills supported direct federal aid, tightened government control over many industries, and eschewed volunteerism in favor of deficit spending, all in the hopes of jump starting both consumer confidence and the economy. In the second of these letters, Hoover expresses his fears about the recent flurry of legislation to Barton, a friend and famous advertising executive. Hoover sees the country already "going sour on the New Deal." He thinks revolution is inevitable "unless there is a halt" to the fundamental changes in government and the deficit spending. Roosevelt's reforms have led Americans to "cast off all moorings," and Hoover predicts the United States will veer dangerously "to the 'left,'" followed by a reaction leading to "some American interpretation of Hitler or Mussolini." In 1934, after two years out of the public eye, Hoover made these same thoughts public in an article titled "The Challenge to Liberty."

Though his fears of revolution would prove to be overstated, Hoover was right when he predicted that the role of American government would fundamentally change because of the New Deal. These two brief private letters allow the reader to see past the image of the man who was blamed for the Depression, and instead see Herbert Hoover as a man who was struggling to fight an economic crisis without destroying what he saw as the foundations of American liberty.

-Daniel Wolf, Manuscript Cataloger

GLC03146 and GLC00691. Two letters by Herbert Hoover.

For more information or to obtain copies, contact Ana Ramirez-Luhrs at reference@gilderlehrman.com or call (212) 787-6616 ext. 209.