Herbert Hoover
Herbert Hoover was an American engineer, businessman, and politician who served as the 31st president of the United States from March 4, 1929 to March 4, 1933, during the Great Depression. He was succeeded by Franklin D. Roosevelt as president and was preceded by Calvin Coolidge.
History
An effective humanitarian and cunning businessman he came to national prominence for his work in World War 1, Securing passage for 120,000 stranded Americans in Britain and assisting the Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB), an international organization that supplied food to over 9 million civilians in German-occupied Belgium and northern France. His romanticised work and his legacy of transparency through both the Harding and Coolidge Administrations earned him admiration and the Presidential ballot in 1928, where he went on to defeat Al Smith for the White House.
Unluckily, Herbert Hoover's presidency correlated with the beginning of the Great Depression, heralded by the crash of the Stock Market in October of 1929. Although pursuing a variety of policies to repair the economy, he opposed direct federal involvement in relief efforts. Realising the errors in the principles too late to save his career, he would lead the Republicans into one of their most pulverising defeats in one of the most one-sided American elections, only surpassed by the subsequent 1936 President Election and nearly matched by the 1960 Presidential Election.
- American topics
- Conservative Democrats
- Former heads of state
- People