One of the nutty myths of the left is that the “right” reveres Herbert Hoover because he was pro-business, and didn’t interfere in the economy. They fantasize that these supposed policies caused the Great Depression, which was rectified by their savior, Franklin Roosevelt. Well, they’re wrong on both counts. I don’t know any conservative or libertarian who defends Hoover, and the reason is that they agree that he caused the depression. The nutty part is that he did it with statist policies, not just by signing Smoot-Hawley and raising taxes, but by indulging in devastating pro-labor interference in the market:
“These findings suggest that the recession was three times worse — at a minimum — than it would otherwise have been, because of Hoover,” said Lee E. Ohanian, a UCLA professor of economics.
The policies, which included both propping up wages and encouraging job-sharing, also accounted for more than two-thirds of the precipitous decline in hours worked in the manufacturing sector, which was much harder hit initially than the agricultural sector, according to Ohanian.
“By keeping industrial wages too high, Hoover sharply depressed employment beyond where it otherwise would have been, and that act drove down the overall gross national product,” Ohanian said. “His policy was the single most important event in precipitating the Great Depression.”
Expect the leftist myths to continue, though. They have decades of intellectual and emotional investment in them.
What confuses people is that the right wing at the time really supported Hoover and hated FDR.
They certainly hated FDR, but where’s the evidence they supported Hoover? That’s like saying the “right” “supported” John McCain because they didn’t want Barack Obama to be elected.
The Republican party nominated him for President in 1932 with 98% of the delegate vote. (For some reason I can’t paste a link here – google “1932 election” if you doubt me.) That certainly looks like “support” to me – especially since he was facing a primary challenge from former President Coolidge.
That just means that they thought they had a better chance with an incumbent. It’s very difficult, and very unusual to knock off an incumbent, even a unpopular one (see, for example, Kennedy/Carter). It was even harder back then, when popular vote wasn’t as important. Very few delegates were chosen in primaries back then, and Hoover controlled the party. That didn’t mean that they were thrilled about him ideologically.
Good thing they just raised the minimum wage. And that every move by this administration has involved some sort of handout to unions.
Chris, without doubt the conservatives (what you probably mean by “right wing”) would have backed Coolidge over Hoover. Hoover was never as popular with them as was Coolidge himself, or his Secretary of the Treasury (Andrew Mellon). Hoover and FDR were far more alike than is popularly supposed. Both were Mr. Fixit “progressive” men, who felt that rational management of national affairs from Washington was the wave of the future, the way to get stuff done. The true 19th century liberals (a.k.a. “conservatives”) were out of fashion and out of power by 1928.
Indeed, this is a curious fact about the Great Depression. It didn’t start out of the blue, through some kind of weird internal collapse. Or rather, to the extent there was a spontaneous internal collapse, or rather readjustment of inflated expectations, it was no worse than many that had gone before.
What was unusual about the Great Depression, what made it Great, was that it came just after the nation had thoroughly drunk the Kool Aid of the modern 20th century Mr. Fixit men, who promised that a rational central decision-making mechanism could wring out the “waste” and “inefficiency” and “injustice” of the wild untrammeled free market (sound a bit familiar?).
Not surprisingly, these folks — just like their modern counterparts — didn’t actually have a fucking clue, and their meddling corresponded closely to the plan of fixing a misfiring turbojet engine by randomly throwing small tools and lubricating fluids into the intake — and with a similar end result. What started as a modest and typical market correction blew up into a full-scale meltdown of the market, as market players realized those fools in Washington were serious about remaking every rule as their whim took them. Not surprisingly, those who had wealth to risk — the only people who could create wealth — chose to sit the decade out. The process began well under Hoover, and continued under FDR.
The fact that FDR and Hoover were from different parties should not blind you to the fact that they were both cut from the same arrogant meddling non-conservative cloth.
Since the words ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’ seem to change with the passing of time in the USA I propose we use ‘statist/command’ or ‘capitalist/market’ instead.
Yeah Hoover basically screwed up the market by instituting trade tariffs. I argue though that both his, Roosevelt’s, and Eisenhower’s construction programs (dams, roads, etc) actually helped the USA through WWII and the recovery after it.
God, that’s kind of like pointing out that if I shake a gram of a mixture of rat poison and Alka Seltzer into my water and drink it off, then the Alka Seltzer portion helped my headache, although the rat poison nearly killed me.
No sane person doubts that government power directed at the right aims is the fastest and most efficient way to get important stuff done. The problem is figuring out the right aims. Like nuclear weaponry, no one has yet found a way to properly aim government power so that it only creates, and does not destroy, or even mostly creates instead of mostly destroying.
Probably it needs a more intelligent species than us. Or perhaps a more insect-like. Bees and ants have no trouble setting up perfect collectivist states that function with asstonishing efficiency and power.
Although why human beings should wish to become more like ants and termites I do not know.
I’m really not sure Chris doesn’t have a stronger argument here, especially considering what “conservative” meant politically in the 1930s. The problem is that it was the conservatism now seen only in bureaucracies, both corporate and governmental — and that’s why Chris’ stronger argument about the 1930s tends, ironically, to undermine his arguments about the here and now.
Well, Mr. Pham, I’m not sure. I spend a lot of time (at business school) studying the effects of management structures and compensation and things like that. Just because there’s a lot of power doesn’t mean that it is possible to be directed in a purely creative way. It’s entirely possible that by the defining feature of being a assuredly non-competitive institution that it’s role should be directed at regulation and rule enforcement and a “do no harm” role, rather than being possibly creative. I’m not saying it’s certain, but it’s possible.
Also, I question your assessment of insects. Ant colonies and bee hives have no central direction or management. They are dictated wholly by individual actions and relations. It would be more accurate to say that hive creatures are actually the perfect market-driven creatures, that humans are actually hive creatures already and are driven by prices the way that ants are driven by smells.
The best description of what really went on in the Great Depression (including how we got into it and how we got out of it and just how similar Hoover and FDR were) is Amity Shlaes’ The Forgotten Man. She lays out, in fascinating detail, just what happened. Of particular note is “the Depression within the Depression” – 1937 and 1938, which is where all of the problems with the CCC and WPA etc. all came home to roost.
And yes, FDR was very similar to Hoover – a lot of the first 100 days was straight out of Hoover’s proposals.
This all sounds a bit revisionistic to me. If Hoover was statist then Roosevelt must have been a big ol’ commie.
“Prior to the start of the Great Depression, Hoover’s first Treasury Secretary, Andrew Mellon, proposed and saw enacted, numerous tax cuts, which cut the top income tax rate from 73% to 24%.”
-wikipedia
Besides, I seen and read speeches where he espouses his “laisse faire” ideology of letting the market work it out. This is FACT. This is why people didn’t like him and blamed him for “hoovervilles”…because they felt he wasn’t doing anything to prevent them.
Hoover was not like FDR either. The encyclopedia Britannica says “Hoover himself granted that his proposals would mean ” the abandonment of 90 percent of the so-called new deal”
Duckdive, that quote from wikipedia is misleading. Hoover was not President when those tax rates were cut. (He just had the same treasury secretary as his predecessor) Hoover only ever raised taxes, from a top rate of 25% to 63%.
Another important point: tax rates had been increased from a top marginal rate of 7% to 77% in order to pay for WWI. Those tax “cuts” really just represented the (partial) repeal of war time tax increase.
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/02inpetr.pdf