Herbert Hoover’s Presidency1929 – 1933

Ending the Roaring Twenties… Entering a Busted 1930’s.

Ending the Roaring Twenties… Entering a Busted 1930’s.

The New Morality• Marriage began to be

redefined among the younger generation – they began to believe that a successful marriage required romance, friendship, and sexual compatibility rather than just a sense of duty to one’s family

Religious Fundamentalism• The relaxed morality and growing

materialism of the US during the 1920s led many people, especially the older and more rural population, to embrace a new wave of religious fundamentalism

• Fundamentalists placed much of the blame on immigration, alcohol, science, and new technologies for America’s slide into immorality

Billy Sunday• 1862 – 1935• Former Major League

baseball player who left sports to become a wildly popular revivalist minister, preaching to over 1 million people during his career

• One of the driving forces behind Prohibition, he also opposed unrestricted immigration and the teaching of evolution in schools

Aimee Semple McPherson

• 1890 – 1944• Revivalist minister who sometimes

engaged in faith healing and speaking in tongues, she operated her own 5000 seat church in LA and broadcast her sermons over the radio

• Lifelong opponent of the teaching of evolution

• Complicated personal life included several marriages, a faked kidnapping publicity stunt, and death by accidental overdose of sedatives

Science vs. Religion (Traditional vs. Modern lifestyles)

• American Fundamentalism: Protestants that believed in EVERY SINGLE WORD of the Bible;

• Complete rejection of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution

• Biggest clash between Science and Religion = The Scopes Trial

Scopes Trial / Monkey Trial (1925)• Tennessee passed a state law = if you

teach evolution = CRIME!

• American Civil Liberties Union *ACLU* - claims they will defend teachers that teach evolution in Tenn.

Story:

John T. Scopes – teacher that

taught evolution in Dayton, Tenn,

was caught teaching it and arrested

Clarence Darrow vs. William Jennings Bryan ACLU hired Clarence Darrow to serve as the defense lawyer• William Jennings Bryan (fundamentalist) served as the

prosecutor –remember him? • Trial: July 10, 1925• Verdict: Butler Act until 1967 / Scopes is guilty and fined $100

• Most Important: The two groups that clashed over the Scopes Trial (1925) would be(1) Science

(2) Religion

The Dust Bowl• From 1930 – 36, a terrible

drought, coupled with decades of damage to the topsoil from plowing, led to wind erosion and huge dust clouds

• Thousands of farmers lost everything and were forced to move west and work as migrant farmers

Dorothea Lange• 1895 – 1965• Photojournalist• Lange's photographs

humanized the tragic consequences of the Great Depression and profoundly influenced the development of documentary photography

Lange’s Photos

John Steinbeck• 1902 – 1968• Author of The Grapes of

Wrath, a Pulitzer Prize winning novel about the tragedies which befell his fictional family of Oklahoma farmers during the Dust Bowl

• Also wrote Of Mice and Men, a story about the tragic relationship between two poor migrant farmers

Hoover’s Public Response to stock market Crash…

• After “Black Tuesday,” Hoover worked hard to assure Americans that the economy would recover quickly

• Hoover stepped up a propaganda campaign aimed at boosting consumer confidence

Hoover’s Private Response

• Hoover, however, knew that the economy was extremely unstable

• He held multiple meetings with business leaders trying to win pledges that factories would remain open, but to no avail

National Credit Corporation

• Hoover tried to ease the nation’s credit crisis with the creation of the NCC

• The NCC held a pool of private money that it could lend to banks so that banks could continue to offer loans; the NCC, however, never had enough cash to meet the demand and so was a failure

Reconstruction Finance Corporation

• When the NCC failed, Hoover resorted to government lending

• The RFC was created to make direct loans to banks & railroads

• Even the RFC could not meet the demands for loans, and the economy continued to fail

Emergency Relief & Construction Act

• In desperation, the government approved $1.5 billion in spending on public works projects and an additional $300 million to provide “direct relief” – money provided directly to families in need

Hunger Marches• Crowds of the unemployed

and hungry began to hold large-scale demonstrations across the US

• The largest was organized by the American Communist Party in Washington DC; protesters chanting “Feed the hungry, tax the rich” were blocked from marching by the police

Farmers Revolt• Meanwhile, desperate

farmers began to destroy their crops and produce in an effort to increase prices

• Some even resorted to burning their crops for heat in their home

• Anger continued to grow as more and more farmers had their land foreclosed on by banks

Breadlines & Soup Kitchens• As unemployment

approached 30%, many people began to rely heavily on soup kitchens and breadlines run by churches, charitable organizations, & some city governments in order to survive

Hoovervilles• In large cities, as people

could no longer afford to pay rent, they were forced into homelessness

• Many began to live in homemade shacks that they built in any open space available – whole villages of such shacks began to appear, mockingly referred to as “Hoovervilles”

Hobos

• Hundreds of thousands of homeless, jobless men began to live a nomadic lifestyle, moving from place to place usually by illegally hiding on freight trains

• Often lived in temporary Hoovervilles called “hobo jungles” along the railroad tracks

The Bonus Army• In 1924, Congress had

promised to pay every WWI veteran a $1000 bonus in 1925

• May 1932 – over 15,000 vets arrived in DC to lobby Congress to move the bonuses up – Congress voted against the idea

Hoover Responds to the Bonus Army

• After the vote, much of the Bonus Army remained in Washington, living in Hoovervilles and vacant buildings

• Pres. Hoover ordered them dispersed; after the DC police failed, Hoover sent in US Army, who used tear gas and bayonets to clear the Bonus Army out

Election of 1932

• Republicans nominated Hoover, while Democrats ran NY Gov. Franklin Delano Roosevelt

• Hoover continued his mantra that recovery was just around the corner, while Roosevelt pledged himself to a “new deal” for the American people

• Roosevelt won easily

Franklin Delano Roosevelt• 1882 – 1945• 32nd President (1933-45)• President throughout most of

the Great Depression and WWII; elected President 4 times!

• Roosevelt had been paralyzed from the waist down from polio since 1921, making him our only physically disabled president, however, he carefully controlled his public appearances so that the public wasn’t constantly reminded of his disability