Aug. 10 is Herbert Hoover Day, marked annually on Hoover’s birthday to remember the legacy of America’s 31st president. This year the day is especially notable as it also marks the controversial president’s 150th birthday.
To most Americans, Hoover’s presidency is remembered as one of the most disastrous in American history for his mishandling of the worst economic disasters of the 20th century, the Great Depression. It’s not uncommon to hear New Deal historians or progressives argue that it was the failure of capitalism that led to the Great Depression. They argue Hoover had fully embraced a “laissez-faire” mentality that exacerbated the crisis. By extension, they insist that it was Hoover’s successor, FDR, with his economic interventionism, that saved America from the brink. (WATCH: The Spectacle Ep. 133: Thinking of the Roman Empire: Is the US Following In Its Footsteps?)
But is this an accurate portrayal of Herbert Hoover, what he believed, and who he was? Was he truly the fatally neglectful laissez-faire supporter that New Deal historians make him out to be?
In reality, the progressive narrative of Hoover being a stalwart supporter of the free market could not have been further from the truth. What the progressive narrative completely fails to recognize was that it was not Hoover’s support of the free market that made him a failure, but rather, his disdain for free enterprise. It was the latter that hurt the country’s economy and tarnished his record and legacy.
Hoover the Humanitarian
Herbert Hoover was a big government manager. Understanding his support for government intervention requires going back to his Quaker upbringing and eagerness to use science to further humanity. The Herbert Hoover Presidential Library notes, “He held fast the Quaker tenets: the power of the individual, the importance of freedom, and the value of charity. Hoover’s beliefs were also shaped by his training as a geologist—that scientific expertise properly employed leads to human progress. He strongly believed in public service.”
One could easily be misled to believe that Hoover’s Quaker values would align well with the self-reliant, laissez-faire crowd of his time, making him the defender of the free market that New Deal deal historians make him out to be. However, his engineering background led Hoover to believe the economy and government could be tinkered with. As economist Steven Horowitz put it, “Hoover, a very successful mining engineer, thought that the engineer’s focus on efficiency could enable government to play a larger and more constructive role in the economy.” (READ MORE: College Kids Without Civics and History)
As World War I broke out in Europe in 1914, Hoover was approached by U.S. Ambassador to Britain Walter Hines Page to help lead the Commission for Relief in Belgium to assist the thousands of starving civilians in Belgium obtain food, clothing, and other items.
Hoover’s actions as Chairman of the Commission for Relief in Belgium eventually got him noticed by members of Congress, particularly President Woodrow Wilson’s confidant, Edward House. This allowed for Hoover’s elevation to the status of Director of the Food and Drug Administration within the Wilson administration. With this appointment, Hoover began focusing on increasing farming production through market manipulation. He twisted market prices via heavy government purchasing of agricultural products. At the same time, he also asked American citizens to voluntarily reduce their own consumption. It wasn’t long before Hoover’s name was a household name, a pejorative: “to Hooverize.” Hooverizing meant to “economize” on food by adopting “Meatless Mondays” and “Wheatless Wednesdays.”
After the war, Hoover became a member of the Supreme Economic Council and the head of the American Relief Administration, which sought to organize food shipments to Central and Eastern Europe, which was experiencing major food shortages and famine. Hoover also extended food shipments to Bolshevik Russia during Vladimir Lenin’s “collective system of agriculture,” which was the real culprit for Russia’s famine.
These kinds of efforts made Hoover an international rockstar. He was known worldwide as “The Great Humanitarian.” But perhaps most importantly, Hoover eventually applied his centralized approach to the world to his own nation when it found itself in an economic crisis. As he did so, he pushed America away from its free-market roots.
The Rise of Secretary Hoover
Upon returning home from Europe, Hoover began to turn his sights toward centralizing America’s economy. He proposed a “Reconstruction Program” for America aimed at centralizing the economy and addressing the “waste” brought on by the free market. Austrian Economist Murray Rothbard noted:
There was to be national planning through “voluntary” cooperation among businesses and groups under “central direction.” The Federal Reserve System was to allocate capital to essential industries and thereby eliminate the industrial “waste” of free markets. Hoover’s plan also included the creation of public dams, the improvement of waterways, a federal home-loan banking system, the promotion of unions and collective bargaining, and governmental regulation of the stock market to eliminate “vicious speculation.”
Hoover’s proposals garnered extensive approval from Progressive Republicans and Democrats. When Democrats were looking for a candidate to run for president in 1920, FDR actually approached Hoover and encouraged him to run as a Democrat. Hoover declined. Following pressure from the progressive wing of the Republican Party, President Harding appointed Hoover as secretary of commerce. It didn’t take long for Hoover to begin (as he told Professor Wesley Mitchell) to “reconstruct America.” (READ MORE: A New Kind of Revolution)
During the 1921 Conference on Unemployment, where Hoover sought ways to foster “cooperation” between the government and private sector, particularly via public works projects to facilitate employment. For much of the 1920s, Hoover looked to find ways to promote his proposals to centralize or cartelize America’s industries. This was a sort of “business progressivism.”
Rise to Fall
Following President Calvin Coolidge’s decision to not run again in the 1928 election, Hoover had his chance to ascend to the nation’s highest position. He won in a landslide against Gov. Al Smith. Immediately following his victory, he began to implement the “Hoover Plan,” which sought to expand public works and garnered the support of progressives and labor leaders, including William Green, president of the American Federation of Labor.
Then, came the Stock Market Crash of 1929. Rather than letting the market take its course, the former engineer was swift to manufacture his own “New Deal” program to deal with the growing crisis. In 1930, he signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, dramatically raising import tariffs on goods abroad, which only worsened the trade situation.
Despite Hoover’s optimism, it was not long before he began to realize that government intervention was not doing anything to resolve the crisis. If anything, it was making matters worse. Unemployment rose to astonishing levels. Nearly 25 percent of the country (or 6.4 million Americans) was unemployed, real GDP fell by more than 25 percent, and quality of life decreased significantly.
By the time Hoover realized that his efforts at central planning had failed, it was too late to save face. Historian Burton Folsom Jr., in his work New Deal or Raw Deal, states: “President Hoover tried a variety of programs but none seemed to work. His presidency was in shambles.”
Hoover’s failure soon became Democrat Franklin Roosevelt’s golden chance to usurp his former colleague’s position. During the 1932 campaign, Roosevelt and his running mate John Nance Garner criticized Hoover’s actions as giving too much authority to the federal government (yes, you read that right). Roosevelt condemned Hoover for “reckless and extravagant” spending and criticized his administration as “the greatest spending administration in peacetime in all of history.” Garner stated that Hoover’s actions were “leading the country down the path of socialism.”
Despite his campaign rhetoric, Roosevelt later copied and ballooned Hoover’s approach with his own New Deal. Ever since progressives have exclaimed that FDR’s New Deal was a great triumph over the failures of Hoover’s “laissez-faire capitalism.”
Hoover’s Legacy
Of course, this narrative created by progressive historians has taken root in mainstream consciousness. Why have they so vigorously promoted this fallacious narrative of history? Well, it is quite clear that progressives needed a fall guy for the Great Depression when they realized that their own programs to end it were a failure. But, Herbert Hoover, like FDR and the progressive movement, was all about big-government management. FDR did the same thing that Hoover did, just more aggressively.
While Herbert Hoover’s legacy has been tarnished by Progressives for their own purposes, the truth is that Hoover’s progressivism was at the very heart of his tarnished legacy, not the free market. A laissez-faire president? Not at all.