Buy essay on Herbert Hoover: Bad President or Bad Timing

Herbert Clark Hoover, the thirty-first U.S. president (1929-1933) was born on the 10.28.1874 and died on the 20.10.1964.
Herbert Clark Hoover was the first president whose homeland lay to the west of the Mississippi. He had an unusual and interesting professional development as for the future president, and before entering the White House, he didn’t hold an elective office, which was a rarity.
Herbert Hoover was the president of the United States of America in the period between World War I and World War II. During this period the country experienced a revival – Prosperity – and the terrible crisis – the Great Depression, always finding a way out of the difficulties.
Hoover was born on the 10th of August, 1874 in West Branch, Iowa. His father was a blacksmith and sold land machining tools. Two circumstances came deeply inside the memory of young Hoover: religious upbringing as a Quaker, to which he was later obliged with his humane and pacifist views, and early death of parents, which made him take care of himself since his early youth.
From 1891 to 1895 Hoover was studying geology at the just opened University of Stanford. There he met his future wife, Lou Henry, at the time the first female student of the university, studying geology. They married in 1899. Mrs. Hoover was a moderate defender of the rights of women, she, as first lady, in particular stood for women’s sports and supported the organization of Girl Scouts.
As a student Hoover has shown outstanding capability in mathematics, geology and mining industry.
After graduation, Hoover for almost twenty years had been a successful mining engineer and businessman abroad, having the main office in London, and soon became an internationally renowned expert of mining. World War in 1914 found him in London. Since then, he devoted himself to a humane purpose, first organizing aid agencies of Belgium. After the war he was organizing the food aid to war-torn Europe, including the support to Soviet Russia, which was suffering from hunger. President Wilson, after America’s entry into the war, in 1917 set Hoover in charge of management of food, which he effectively managed in the interests of the country and allies (Ruth).
After the World War I the United States of America strengthened its positions as a leading country. In American history we can see the alternation of conservative and liberal political cycles; conservative cycle, stimulating economic growth at the cost of deepening social inequality, gave the way to liberal cycle, during which the principles of social justice developed, but when the redistributive mechanism threatened the economic growth, the Liberals were replaced by conservatives. Thus, competition between conservatives and liberals helped to maintain a kind of balance between economic freedom and social democracy (Nash G.H.).
The World War I led to the radical changes in the political and economic arena of the world. The World War filed unprecedented demands to the economy. It swallowed a huge amount of wealth of mankind. Military expenditures of the warring countries increased in more than 20 times, exceeding 12 times the cash reserves of gold. Front took more than 59% of industrial production.
U.S. as other overseas members of the Entente didn’t wag the war on its territory, its economic potential only increased during the war, and living standards rose. America turned to be a creditor instead of its role of a debtor. Its economic power increased during the war, the country had a large army and navy. It was the first time Great Britain formally recognized the establishment of equality of its naval fleet with a fleet of the United States and in 1921 signed “a contract of five” powerful countries to limit naval armaments.
In addition, it was a time of confrontation between capitalist and socialist systems. The confrontation led to the two main trends in the systems of economic policy in capitalist countries: the democratic, that was built on the containment of socialism, seeking a compromise, and at the same time increasing real wages and social protections; and totalitarian (very close to socialism), which aim was the military crushing of socialism. The first trend was likely for the United States, Britain, France and other bourgeois-democratic countries of the West, the second – for Italy, Japan and Germany.
After the war, Hoover supported Wilson in his desire to join the League of Nations. In 1920, when Hoover finally returned from abroad, he became a possible Republican candidate for president, and reformist forces of both parties fought for him.
In 1921 Harding made him a Minister of Trade. In this position he worked in a spirit of informal, voluntary cooperation of the Government with the business world. At that time Hoover became a modern conservative politician of the center, who stood for “American individualism”, for the preservation of liberal democracy and capitalist institutions in the country. As the trade minister he developed the statistics and economic analysis, research of the market and industry, as well as exchange of information within the business world. He was totally for the cooperation between employers and trade unions, for an active policy against unemployment and for the development of housing, roads and air traffic. All this was supposed to be achieved not so much by state coercion, but by voluntary collaborative efforts of private entrepreneurs (Wilson J.H., Handlin O.).
At the very beginning of his administration he got from Congress a creation of the Federal farm management and intended to reform antitrust laws, distribution of electricity, rail transport, stock market and banking sector. However, the October stock market crisis of 1929 created a situation radically different from those in which all his predecessors had worked. Hoover did not agree with his Minister of Finance E. Mellon, who told that the economy should be given an opportunity to self-regulate; he decided to soften the blow of the crisis through stimulation of private initiatives to promote humanitarian actions taken by management structures in the field, and private charities.
After Coolidge’s refusal to participate in the elections, Mr. Hoover was able to present himself as a candidate. Pre-election fight between him and Democrat Alfred E. Smith, governor of New York and a Catholic, didn’t leave much of a doubt.
Hoover made his election topic prosperity for the country and announced a soon end to poverty: “a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage.” As a result, Hoover won the elections on the 6th of November, 1928 with the advantage of 6 million votes, and even more compelling advantage in the election board. Republican majority again increased in Congress.
Hoover’s candidacy was approved in the first round of voting in the nomination for president at the convention of the Republican Party in 1928 (Nash G.H.).
Although he was not popular among the farmers of the Midwest because of his counter to the practice of governmental procurement of surplus farm produce; his opponent was Adam Smith, whose name to the rural Protestants voters was associated with the corrupt urban political machine and Catholicism. In addition, Smith openly advocated the abolition of the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, while his opponent was for the dry law, calling it a “noble experiment”. Hoover expressed his commitment to traditional values, the principles of equal opportunity and private enterprise without government interference and its faith in the American economic system. After receiving the Republican nomination, Hoover won a landslide victory in five southern states, as well as in New York and in all Western and Border States. Hoover, swore March 4, 1929, was the first president from the elite managers of the country, a gifted organizer, administrator and technocrat.
Until the fall of 1929 he had a good relationship with the public. His political concept firstly envisaged administrative update, attempting to manage the economy through informal interaction between the government and the leaders of the economy. As it was usual for Republican era, there were many important industrialists and bankers in his cabinet and in government bodies. Experienced Republican politician and diplomat Henry L. Stimson became a Minister of Foreign Affairs has (Hoover H., 1952).