President Herbert Hoover: Did He Cause the Great Depression?

American History Hit

History Hit

America, History

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 2 January 2025

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

President Herbert Hoover is synonymous with failure. As the Great Depression hit, shanty town across America were nicknamed 'Hoovervilles' in honour of the man held responsible for their birth. But there's more to him than this. Today Don restores depth and nuance to Hoover's tragic story with his wonderful guest Eric Rauchway, author of "Winter War: Hoover, Roosevelt, and the First Clash Over the New Deal".

Edited by Aidan Lonergan. Produced by Freddy Chick. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	It's a scene of stark contrast. We are standing in a gathering of slumped ramshackle sheds made of corrugated cardboard, tar paper, and tin sheet, clustered across the dry, dusty grounds of an empty reservoir. Residents of this Hovell community loiter in the lanes and doorways looking forlorn.
0:21.6	All this, against the grand backdrop of towering high rises
0:25.3	constructed in the boom times just a few years ago.
0:29.5	Geographically, we're in Central Park in New York City,
0:32.6	halfway between the east and west sides of Manhattan in a spacious area
0:36.0	that will one day be called the Great Lawn.
0:39.1	Economically, however, it's more like we're being crushed in a vice of poverty and desolation,
0:45.4	here in a squatter settlement like so many others across this distressed nation, places they call Hooverville.
1:20.2	Music places they call Hoover Films. It is American History Hit you're listening to.
1:21.2	We're glad you here.
1:24.1	Let's talk about a president, the next in our series.
1:30.3	Herbert Hoover, 31st chief executive of the United States, served one term from 1928 to 1932, taking the baton from Calvin Coolidge, who he had served for two terms
1:36.4	as Secretary of Commerce, all through the boom times we call the roaring 20s, the Jazz Age. Hoover
1:42.9	was anything but jazzy, a principled man of good Quaker stock.
1:47.7	His was a Horatio Alger story, climbed up from his modest Iowan childhood to attain great wealth
1:53.5	in his life, then took his business acumen to the White House, first in the Harding and then in the
1:58.8	Coolidge administration. Then to his own presidency, which he won in a massive landslide, only to see the bottom drop out in his first year in office.
2:07.8	Black Monday, October 28, 1929, eight months after Hoover swore his oath, and it only got worse.
2:15.4	Demanding visionary leadership, bold new economic ideas, and, well, instead we had Herbert Hoover.
2:21.5	Today, we'll discuss what it all meant with the distinguished professor of history at UC Davis, Eric Rauchway, whose book Winter War, Hoover, Roosevelt, and the First Clash Over the New Deal, has been my guide prepping for this pod.
2:33.9	Greetings, Professor Rauchway.
2:35.2	Eric, nice to meet you.
	...

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