Franklin Roosevelt (FDR) Essay

Also Hoover would not, under any circumstances, allow America to be in debt. He thought that taping into the national debt would prolong the depression even make it worse since the government would have to pay interest on the loans. Hoover was a man set on his ways and helped very little with the Depression.

Compare and contrast Hoover and Roosevelt’s actions in the aftermath of the Crash of 1929. How did both administrations attempt to deal with the economic stagnation, social hardship and psychological impact of the depression? What needed to be fixed and which approach proved more successful? In your essay you should address not only the underlying economic and social problems that both administrations had to deal with and the various corrective measures they adopted, but also the underlying philosophical approaches of Hoover and Roosevelt and their supporters.

From May 1929 to May 1933 Herbert Hoover served one term as the 31st president of the United States. Hoover was a member of the Republican political party. In his election, he won against Al Smith with 444 of the electoral college votes. A few months into his presidency, the Stock Market Crash occurred. Naturally, the United States as a whole started to look to the president and the government agencies for direction. There were many ideas that Hoover had that didn’t provide relief to the civilians during the Great Depression, they actually worsened the crisis. At some points, he rejected bills that would remedy some of the country 's problems, because he believed that the government should not play a huge part in the bettering of the country. This belief was called laissez- faire. (Herbert Hoover)

Herbert Hoover took office in 1929 where he was labeled the 31st president of the United States of America. This particular year was also the year of the U.S. economy plummeting into the Great Depression. The policies of the predecessors undoubtedly contributed to the crisis. Hoover was the blame in the eyes of the American people. While the Great Depression continued to deepen, President Hoover failed to recognize the severity

The Great Depression quickly altered America's view of liberalism and therefore, Roosevelt can be considered a liberal and Hoover a conservative, despite the fact that they did occasionally support very similar policies. The United States experienced political shifts during the Great Depression, which are described by Arthur Schlesinger’s analysis of eras in which public objectives were placed before personal concerns. It seems that the public view of what constitutes as liberal beliefs versus what is thought to be conservative beliefs shifts in a similar way.

This lack of complete dedication to private interest or public purpose is further displayed in Documents B and C where Hoover stresses the importance of the individual in ending the Depression while also assuring government support for job production if the situation required it. Hoover's speeches are remarkably similar to Roosevelt's speech in Document E. Here, even during the Depression, Roosevelt stressed the importance of balancing the budget unless unemployment required the government to spend money stimulating the economy. Instead of Hoover's desire to continue restricting government, Roosevelt wanted to balance the budget. The Depression created the need for government intervention and an unbalanced budget as shown in Document F. However, despite a few efforts by Hoover to create jobs, he still seemed much different than Roosevelt who insisted in 1936 that America must not go back to supporting Conservatives who protected private interest unjustly. (Document G)

Throughout the Great Depression people were getting tired and annoyed of President Hoover. For example, “Hoover was widely criticized for providing public funds to pay for food for farmers” (Hayes). Hoover was paying for the farmers but not for the civilians that were struggling, This is when he was criticized and people wanted a change in presidency. During the Great Depression, Hoover didn’t help the citizens at all and they blamed the Depression on him. This was how President Hoover got the people tired of him and annoyed of him. He didn’t help the citizens because he was afraid the United States would go into debt.

In contrast to Hoover’s action during the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt stepped up for the people of the country and pursues justice for those that are suffering. President Hoover saw that it was more fit to give the state and the people, the role to fix the country and turn a blind eye to the devastation that occur. Whereas President Roosevelt saw that that is was necessary for the government to intervene and help the people overcome these tough times. In his speech to the people Roosevelt stated, “I see millions denied education,... I see millions lacking the means to buy product…. I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.” President Roosevelt approaches the people by sending them a powerful message.

In the years when Hoover was president, he had done nothing in order to help society with the problems they are facing. When 1932 came, the people didn’t want Hoover to be president again. When FDR gave his reasons on what he would be doing to help the people in America, the people thought that he would make a change, so they elected him as president. The problem was that Hoover had done a bad job during his term and FDR now had to find ways in order to fix what Hoover had done. But it then got worse when the Great Depression hit and FDR now had to take more responsibility and take action. During FDR’s presidency, his responses by creating programs to make the economy stable from the Great Depression were effective, but also ineffective. The

In general society, there is a consensus on Hoover more so than nearly any other politician, and that consensus is that he was a “heartless ogre, inept and callous and reactionary, who ‘caused’ a depression then ‘did nothing’ to fix it.” Yet historians tend to take several very different views, describing him as being “like a mariner, starting off on a journey of discovery to bring home rare treasures, who is forced by sudden storms to pour all his energies into just keeping the ship afloat.” Some of their ideas are not contentious, such as that Hoover did not cause the depression. But as to what kind of president he was, and how he handled the depression, there is little agreement. Kennedy, one historian that talks of the era, states that Hoover believed “Government might indeed step in where voluntarism had manifestly failed, but only after a fair trial.” (Kennedy

The country was going through an ongoing rough depression that the previous President Hoover left in the road for his processor, President Roosevelt. Although not only President Hoover decisions and approval of laws added to the great depression, but the

President Herbert Hoover’s response to the crash on Wall Street and the Depression, while good-natured and with the best intentions, was arguably sub par and had a direct effect on how people viewed his policies and the outcome of the presidential election of 1932. “The Great Depression challenged the optimism, policies, and philosophy that Herbert Hoover had carried into the White House in 1929. The president took unprecedented steps to resolve the crisis but shrank back from the interventionist policies activists urged. His failures, personal as well as political and economic, led to his repudiation and to a major shift in government policies” (Goldfield, 722). President Hoover’s basic idea to solve the Depression was through no federal

Hoover attempted many plans to end the Great Depression. Hoover rested on his belief of “volunteerism” which was a key concept of progressivism. Hoover believed private organized charities were sufficient to meet social welfare needs and was the “American Way”. Progressivism was when you displayed the wrong actions businesses were taking to the public in hopes that the public would make businesses reform their ways. This was a keen reason to why Hoover failed to solve the problems of the Great Depression. The first solution to the Great Depression attempted by Hoover came after the great crash. Hoover received a petition from the president of General Electric, Gerard Swoop, in 1929. It called for series of voluntary wage and price freezes of leading industries in the U.S. in exchange for freezing wages and prices. They asked in return for the government to cover the cost of welfare capitalism; which was an attempt to break the union, by providing benefits to make companies obsolete. They would pay workers 80% when laid off, but when the stock market crashed, they would only give them 20% salary. This was due partially to welfare capitalism. They

After the Depression Hoover had some strategies he used to try and fix the economy, but they did not play out as smoothly as he would have liked them too. Roosevelt 's approach to fix the economy was more uplifting to the people in almost every aspect. Even their campaign songs, Roosevelt’s was about Happy Days coming again, and Hoover’s was about the depression. Roosevelt proposed a “New Deal” to the people and manny clung to it. His deal was that he was going to start experimenting with government roles. WHat he means by this is that he promises to increase government help and use the power of the government to address the people’s issues. Although, he did not explain how he was going to fix things such as unemployment and and improving the stock market in

Herbert Hoover, the president in office when the Great Depression hit the country, did very little to ameliorate the devastating situation. Hoover underestimated the seriousness of the crisis, misdiagnosed the causes of the problems, and clung to his beliefs in individual achievement and self-help. His corrective measures, aimed at inflation and the federal budget, were thus damaging themselves. Furthermore, he hesitated to mobilize government resources to aid Americans and instead appealed to private groups to lend a hand (Encarta). Thus Hoover’s administration did little to mitigate the impact of the Depression.