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Republican Herbert Hoover was president when the stock market crashed on 29 October 1929. This crash on Wall Street in New York was part of a series of events — a sort of chain reaction — in which unemployment, credit contraction, deflation, depressed agricultural prices, and international problems all played parts. With the economy spiraling downward, the pressing question became what, if anything, government should do. President Hoover's first response to the onset of the Depression was to allow traditional market forces to make correctives with a minimum of government intervention. In this view the overheated economy would self-adjust if given time. As Andrew Mellon, Hoover's secretary of the treasury, declared, it was necessary to "purge the rottenness out of the system" by allowing the downturn to run its expected course. Hoover himself asserted that "Economic depression cannot be cured by legislative action or executive pronouncements. Economic wounds...
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This section contains 308 words (approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page) |
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