Herbert Hoover & Herbert Lehman President Negatives Famous Photographer

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Seller: memorabilia111 ✉️ (808) 100%, Location: Ann Arbor, Michigan, US, Ships to: US & many other countries, Item: 176277815894 HERBERT HOOVER & HERBERT LEHMAN PRESIDENT NEGATIVES FAMOUS PHOTOGRAPHER. 1942  EX-PRESIDENT HERBERT HOOVER & HERBERT LEHMAN NEGATIVES 3 VINTAGE ORIGINAL 4X5 INCH NEGATIVES FROM  12/3/42 TAKEN BY FAMED PHOTOGRAPHER JOHN DE  WITH ORIBIASE WITH ORIGINAL NEGATIVE ENVELOPE  Herbert Henry Lehman (March 28, 1878 – December 5, 1963) was an American Democratic Party politician from New York. He served from 1933 until 1942 as the 45th governor of New York and represented New York State in the U.S. Senate from 1949 until 1957.
Before serving as America’s 31st President from 1929 to 1933, Herbert Hoover had achieved international success as a mining engineer and worldwide gratitude as “The Great Humanitarian” who fed war-torn Europe during and after World War I. Son of a Quaker blacksmith, Herbert Clark Hoover brought to the Presidency an unparalleled reputation for public service as an engineer, administrator, and humanitarian. Born in an Iowa village in 1874, he grew up in Oregon. He enrolled at Stanford University when it opened in 1891, graduating as a mining engineer. He married his Stanford sweetheart, Lou Henry, and they went to China, where he worked for a private corporation as China’s leading engineer. In June 1900 the Boxer Rebellion caught the Hoovers in Tientsin. For almost a month the settlement was under heavy fire. While his wife worked in the hospitals, Hoover directed the building of barricades, and once risked his life rescuing Chinese children. One week before Hoover celebrated his 40th birthday in London, Germany declared war on France, and the American Consul General asked his help in getting stranded tourists home. In six weeks his committee helped 120,000 Americans return to the United States. Next Hoover turned to a far more difficult task, to feed Belgium, which had been overrun by the German army. After the United States entered the war, President Wilson appointed Hoover head of the Food Administration. He succeeded in cutting consumption of foods needed overseas and avoided rationing at home, yet kept the Allies fed. After the Armistice, Hoover, a member of the Supreme Economic Council and head of the American Relief Administration, organized shipments of food for starving millions in central Europe. He extended aid to famine-stricken Soviet Russia in 1921. When a critic inquired if he was not thus helping Bolshevism, Hoover retorted, “Twenty million people are starving. Whatever their politics, they shall be fed!” After capably serving as Secretary of Commerce under Presidents Harding and Coolidge, Hoover became the Republican Presidential nominee in 1928. He said then: “We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land.” His election seemed to ensure prosperity. Yet within months the stock market crashed, and the Nation spiraled downward into depression. After the crash Hoover announced that while he would keep the Federal budget balanced, he would cut taxes and expand public works spending. In 1931 repercussions from Europe deepened the crisis, even though the President presented to Congress a program asking for creation of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to aid business, additional help for farmers facing mortgage foreclosures, banking reform, a loan to states for feeding the unemployed, expansion of public works, and drastic governmental economy. At the same time he reiterated his view that while people must not suffer from hunger and cold, caring for them must be primarily a local and voluntary responsibility. His opponents in Congress, who he felt were sabotaging his program for their own political gain, unfairly painted him as a callous and cruel President. Hoover became the scapegoat for the Depression and was badly defeated in 1932. In the 1930’s he became a powerful critic of the New Deal, warning against tendencies toward statism. In 1947 President Truman appointed Hoover to a commission, which elected him chairman, to reorganize the Executive Departments. He was appointed chairman of a similar commission by President Eisenhower in 1953. Many economies resulted from both commissions’ recommendations. Over the years, Hoover wrote many articles and books, one of which he was working on when he died at 90 in New York City on October 20, 1964. The Presidential biographies on WhiteHouse.gov are from “The Presidents of the United States of America,” by Frank Freidel and Hugh Sidey. Copyright 2006 by the White House Historical Association. For more information about President Hoover, please visit Herbert Hoover Library and Museum Herbert Clark Hoover (August 10, 1874 – October 20, 1964) was an American politician and engineer who served as the 31st president of the United States from 1929 to 1933 and a member of the Republican Party, holding office during the onset of the Great Depression. Before serving as president, Hoover led the Commission for Relief in Belgium, served as the director of the U.S. Food Administration, and served as the third U.S. secretary of commerce. Hoover was born to a Quaker family in West Branch, Iowa, but he grew up in Oregon.[1] He took a position with a London-based mining company after graduating from Stanford University in 1895. After the outbreak of World War I, he became the head of the Commission for Relief in Belgium, an international relief organization that provided food to occupied Belgium. When the U.S. entered the war, President Woodrow Wilson appointed Hoover to lead the Food Administration, and Hoover became known as the country's "food czar". After the war, Hoover led the American Relief Administration, which provided food to the inhabitants of Central and Eastern Europe. Hoover's wartime service made him a favorite of many progressives, and he unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination in the 1920 presidential election. President Warren G. Harding appointed Hoover as Secretary of Commerce in 1920, and he continued to serve under President Calvin Coolidge after Harding died in 1923. Hoover was an unusually active and visible Cabinet member, becoming known as "Secretary of Commerce and Under-Secretary of all other departments". He was influential in the development of air travel and radio. He led the federal response to the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. Hoover won the Republican nomination in the 1928 presidential election, and defeated Democratic candidate Al Smith in a landslide. In 1929 Hoover assumed the presidency during a period of widespread economic stability. However, during his first year in office, the stock market crashed, signaling the onset of the Great Depression. The Great Depression dominated Hoover's presidency and he responded by pursuing a series of economic policies in an attempt to lift the economy. Hoover staunchly opposed any intervention from the federal government in the U.S. economy. Hoover scapegoated Mexicans for the Depression, instituting policies and sponsoring programs of repatriation and deportation to Mexico. In the midst of the economic crisis, Hoover was decisively defeated by Democratic nominee Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1932 presidential election. Hoover's retirement was over 31 years long, one of the longest presidential retirements. He authored numerous works and became increasingly conservative in retirement. He strongly criticized Roosevelt's foreign policy and New Deal domestic agenda. In the 1940s and 1950s, public opinion of Hoover improved largely due to his service in various assignments for presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower, including chairing the influential Hoover Commission. Critical assessment of his presidency by historians and political scientists ranks him as one of the worst presidents in U.S. history.[2][3] Despite being regarded as a below-average U.S. president, Hoover has received praise for his actions as a humanitarian and public official.[4] Contents 1 Early life 2 Mining engineer 2.1 Bewick, Moreing 2.2 Sole proprietor 3 Marriage and family 4 World War I and aftermath 4.1 Relief in Europe 4.2 U.S. Food Administration 4.3 Post-war relief in Europe 4.4 1920 election 5 Secretary of Commerce (1921–1928) 5.1 Radio regulation and air travel 5.2 Hoover's image building 5.3 Other initiatives 5.4 Mississippi flood 5.5 Presidential election of 1928 6 Presidency (1929–1933) 6.1 Great Depression 6.1.1 Early policies 6.1.2 Later policies 6.2 Budget policy 6.3 Civil rights and Mexican Repatriation 6.4 Prohibition 6.5 Foreign relations 6.6 Bonus Army 6.7 1932 re-election campaign 7 Post-presidency (1933–1964) 7.1 Roosevelt administration 7.1.1 Opposition to New Deal 7.1.2 World War II 7.2 Post–World War II 7.3 Death 8 Legacy 8.1 Historical reputation 8.2 Views of race 8.3 Memorials 8.4 Other honors 9 See also 10 Notes 11 References 11.1 Citations 11.2 Works cited 12 Further reading 12.1 Biographies 12.2 Scholarly studies 12.3 Primary sources 13 External links Early life Hoover in 1877 Herbert Clark Hoover was born on August 10, 1874, in West Branch, Iowa.[a] His father, Jesse Hoover, was a blacksmith and farm implement store owner of German, Swiss, and English ancestry.[5] Hoover's mother, Hulda Randall Minthorn, was raised in Norwich, Ontario, Canada, before moving to Iowa in 1859. Like most other citizens of West Branch, Jesse and Hulda were Quakers.[6] Around age two "Bertie", as he was called during that time, contracted a serious bout of croup, and was momentarily thought to have died until resuscitated by his uncle, John Minthorn.[7] As a young child he was often referred to by his father as "my little stick in the mud" when he repeatedly got trapped in the mud crossing the unpaved street.[8] Herbert's family figured prominently in the town's public prayer life, due almost entirely to mother Hulda's role in the church.[9] As a child, Hoover consistently attended schools, but he did little reading on his own aside from the Bible.[10] Hoover's father, noted by the local paper for his "pleasant, sunshiny disposition", died in 1880 at the age of 34 of a sudden heart attack.[11] Hoover's mother died in 1884 of typhoid, leaving Hoover, his older brother, Theodore, and his younger sister, May, as orphans.[12] Hoover lived the next 18 months with his uncle Allen Hoover at a nearby farm.[13][14] Hoover's birthplace cottage in West Branch, Iowa In November 1885, Hoover was sent to Newberg, Oregon, to live with his uncle John Minthorn, a Quaker physician and businessman whose own son had died the year before.[15] The Minthorn household was considered cultured and educational, and imparted a strong work ethic.[16] Much like West Branch, Newberg was a frontier town settled largely by Midwestern Quakers.[17] Minthorn ensured that Hoover received an education, but Hoover disliked the many chores assigned to him and often resented Minthorn. One observer described Hoover as "an orphan [who] seemed to be neglected in many ways".[18] Hoover attended Friends Pacific Academy (now George Fox University), but dropped out at the age of thirteen to become an office assistant for his uncle's real estate office (Oregon Land Company)[19] in Salem, Oregon. Though he did not attend high school, Hoover learned bookkeeping, typing, and mathematics at a night school.[20] Hoover was a member of the inaugural "Pioneer Class" of Stanford University, entering in 1891 despite failing all the entrance exams except mathematics.[21][b] During his freshman year, he switched his major from mechanical engineering to geology after working for John Casper Branner, the chair of Stanford's geology department. During his sophomore year, to reduce his costs, Hoover co-founded the first student housing cooperative at Stanford, "Romero Hall".[23] Hoover was a mediocre student, and he spent much of his time working in various part-time jobs or participating in campus activities.[24] Though he was initially shy among fellow students, Hoover won election as student treasurer and became known for his distaste for fraternities and sororities.[25] He served as student manager of both the baseball and football teams, and helped organize the inaugural Big Game versus the University of California.[26] During the summers before and after his senior year, Hoover interned under economic geologist Waldemar Lindgren of the United States Geological Survey; these experiences convinced Hoover to pursue a career as a mining geologist.[27] Mining engineer Bewick, Moreing Hoover, aged 23; taken in Perth, Western Australia, in 1898 When Hoover graduated from Stanford in 1895, the country was in the midst of the Panic of 1893, and he initially struggled to find a job.[25] He worked in various low-level mining jobs in the Sierra Nevada Mountains until he convinced prominent mining engineer Louis Janin to hire him.[28] After working as a mine scout for a year, Hoover was hired by Bewick, Moreing & Co., a London-based company that operated gold mines in Western Australia.[29] Hoover first went to Coolgardie, then the center of the Eastern Goldfields. Though Hoover received a $5,000 salary (equivalent to $162,860 in 2021), conditions were harsh in the goldfields.[30] Hoover described the Coolgardie and Murchison rangelands on the edge of the Great Victoria Desert as a land of "black flies, red dust and white heat".[31] Hoover traveled constantly across the Outback to evaluate and manage the company's mines.[32] He convinced Bewick, Moreing to purchase the Sons of Gwalia gold mine, which proved to be one of the most successful mines in the region.[33] Partly due to Hoover's efforts, the company eventually controlled approximately 50 percent of gold production in Western Australia.[34] Hoover brought in many Italian immigrants to cut costs and counter the labour movement of the Australian miners.[35][36] During his time with the mining company, Hoover became opposed to measures such as a minimum wage and workers' compensation, feeling that they were unfair to owners. Hoover's work impressed his employers, and in 1898 he was promoted to junior partner.[37] An open feud developed between Hoover and his boss, Ernest Williams, but company leaders defused the situation by offering Hoover a compelling position in China.[38] Lou Henry, age 17, on a burro and rifle-ready at Acton, California on August 22, 1891 Upon arriving in China, Hoover developed gold mines near Tianjin on behalf of Bewick, Moreing, and the Chinese-owned Chinese Engineering and Mining Company.[39] He became deeply interested in Chinese history, but gave up on learning the language to a fluent level. He publicly warned that Chinese workers were inefficient and racially inferior.[40] He made recommendations to improve the lot of the Chinese worker, seeking to end the practice of imposing long-term servitude contracts and to institute reforms for workers based on merit.[41] The Boxer Rebellion broke out shortly after Hoover arrived in China, trapping the Hoovers and numerous other foreign nationals until a multi-national military force defeated Boxer forces in the Battle of Tientsin. Fearing the imminent collapse of the Chinese government, the director of the Chinese Engineering and Mining Company agreed to establish a new Sino-British venture with Bewick, Moreing. After Hoover and Bewick, Moreing established effective control over the new Chinese mining company, Hoover became the operating partner of Bewick, Moreing in late 1901.[42] As operating partner, Hoover continually traveled the world on behalf of Bewick, Moreing, visiting mines operated by the company on different continents. Beginning in December 1902, the company faced mounting legal and financial issues after one of the partners admitted to having fraudulently sold stock in a mine. More issues arose in 1904 after the British government formed two separate royal commissions to investigate Bewick, Moreing's labor practices, and financial dealings in Western Australia. After the company lost a suit Hoover began looking for a way to get out of the partnership, and he sold his shares in mid-1908.[43] Sole proprietor Hoover in 1917 while a mining engineer After leaving Bewick, Moreing, Hoover worked as a London-based independent mining consultant and financier. Though he had risen to prominence as a geologist and mine operator, Hoover focused much of his attention on raising money, restructuring corporate organizations, and financing new ventures.[44] He specialized in rejuvenating troubled mining operations, taking a share of the profits in exchange for his technical and financial expertise.[45] Hoover thought of himself and his associates as "engineering doctors to sick concerns", and he earned a reputation as a "doctor of sick mines".[46] He made investments on every continent and had offices in San Francisco; London; New York City; Paris; Petrograd; and Mandalay, British Burma.[47] By 1914, Hoover was a very wealthy man, with an estimated personal fortune of $4 million (equivalent to $108.21 million in 2021).[48] He co-founded the Zinc Corporation to extract zinc near the Australian city of Broken Hill, New South Wales.[49] The Zinc Corporation developed the froth flotation process to extract zinc from lead-silver ore[50] and operated the world's first selective ore differential flotation plant.[51] Hoover worked with the Burma Corporation, a British firm that produced silver, lead, and zinc in large quantities at the Namtu Bawdwin Mine.[52]: 90–96, 101–102 [53] He also helped increase copper production in Kyshtym, Russia, through the use of pyritic smelting. He also agreed to manage a separate mine in the Altai Mountains that, according to Hoover, "developed probably the greatest and richest single body of ore known in the world".[52]: 102–108 [54] In his spare time, Hoover wrote. His lectures at Columbia and Stanford universities were published in 1909 as Principles of Mining, which became a standard textbook. The book reflects his move towards progressive ideals, as Hoover came to endorse eight-hour workdays and organized labor.[55] Hoover became deeply interested in the history of science, and he was especially drawn to the De re metallica, an influential 16th century work on mining and metallurgy by Georgius Agricola. In 1912, Hoover and his wife published the first English translation of De re metallica.[56] Hoover also joined the board of trustees at Stanford, and led a successful campaign to appoint John Branner as the university's president.[57] Marriage and family The Lou Henry Hoover House in Palo Alto, California, the couple's first and only permanent residence During his senior year at Stanford, Hoover became smitten with a classmate named Lou Henry, though his financial situation precluded marriage at that time.[25] The daughter of a banker from Monterey, California, Lou Henry decided to study geology at Stanford after attending a lecture delivered by John Branner.[58] Immediately after earning a promotion in 1898, Hoover cabled Lou Henry, asking her to marry him. After she cabled back her acceptance of the proposal, Hoover briefly returned to the United States for their wedding.[37] They would remain married until Lou Henry Hoover's death in 1944.[59] Though his Quaker upbringing strongly influenced his career, Hoover rarely attended Quaker meetings during his adult life.[60][61] Hoover and his wife had two children: Herbert Hoover Jr. (born in 1903) and Allan Henry Hoover (born in 1907).[37] The Hoover family began living in London in 1902, though they frequently traveled as part of Hoover's career.[62] After 1916, the Hoovers began living in the United States, maintaining homes in Palo Alto, California, and Washington, D.C.[63] World War I and aftermath Relief in Europe Further information: Presidency of Woodrow Wilson Main article: Commission for Relief in Belgium Hoover with his son Allan (left) and his grandson Andrew (above), 1950 World War I broke out in August 1914, pitting Germany and its allies against France and its allies. The German plan was a quick victory by marching through neutral Belgium to envelop the French Army east of Paris. That failed but the Germans did control nearly all of Belgium for the entire war. Hoover and other London-based American businessmen established a committee to organize the return of the roughly 100,000 Americans stranded in Europe. Hoover was appointed as the committee's chair and, with the assent of Congress and the Wilson administration, took charge of the distribution of relief to Americans in Europe.[64] Hoover later stated, "I did not realize it at the moment, but on August 3, 1914, my career was over forever. I was on the slippery road of public life."[65] By early October 1914, Hoover's organization had distributed relief to at least 40,000 Americans.[66] The German invasion of Belgium in August 1914 set off a food crisis in Belgium, which relied heavily on food imports. The Germans refused to take responsibility for feeding Belgian citizens in captured territory, and the British refused to lift their blockade of German-occupied Belgium unless the U.S. government-supervised Belgian food imports as a neutral party in the war.[67] With the cooperation of the Wilson administration and the CNSA, a Belgian relief organization, Hoover established the Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB).[68] The CRB obtained and imported millions of tons of foodstuffs for the CNSA to distribute, and helped ensure that the German army did not appropriate the food. Private donations and government grants supplied the majority of its $11-million-a-month budget, and the CRB became a veritable independent republic of relief, with its own flag, navy, factories, mills, and railroads.[69] [70] Hoover worked 14-hour days from London, administering the distribution of over two million tons of food to nine million war victims. In an early form of shuttle diplomacy, he crossed the North Sea forty times to meet with German authorities and persuade them to allow food shipments.[71] He also convinced British Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George to allow individuals to send money to the people of Belgium, thereby lessening workload of the CRB.[72] At the request of the French government, the CRB began delivering supplies to the people of German-occupied Northern France in 1915.[73] American diplomat Walter Page described Hoover as "probably the only man living who has privately (i.e., without holding office) negotiated understandings with the British, French, German, Dutch, and Belgian governments".[74][75] U.S. Food Administration Main article: United States Food Administration U.S. Food Administration poster War upon Germany was declared in April 1917 and American food was essential to Allied victory. With the U.S. mobilizing for war, President Wilson appointed Hoover to head the U.S. Food Administration, which was charged with ensuring the nation's food needs during the war.[76] Hoover had hoped to join the administration in some capacity since at least 1916, and he obtained the position after lobbying several members of Congress and Wilson's confidant, Edward M. House.[77] Earning the appellation of "food czar", Hoover recruited a volunteer force of hundreds of thousands of women and deployed propaganda in movie theaters, schools, and churches.[78] He carefully selected men to assist in the agency leadership—Alonzo Taylor (technical abilities), Robert Taft (political associations), Gifford Pinchot (agricultural influence), and Julius Barnes (business acumen).[79] World War I had created a global food crisis that dramatically increased food prices and caused food riots and starvation in the countries at war. Hoover's chief goal as food czar was to provide supplies to the Allied Powers, but he also sought to stabilize domestic prices and to prevent domestic shortages.[80] Under the broad powers granted by the Food and Fuel Control Act, the Food Administration supervised food production throughout the United States, and the administration made use of its authority to buy, import, store, and sell food.[81] Determined to avoid rationing, Hoover established set days for people to avoid eating specified foods and save them for soldiers' rations: meatless Mondays, wheatless Wednesdays, and "when in doubt, eat potatoes". These policies were dubbed "Hooverizing" by government publicists, in spite of Hoover's continual orders that publicity should not mention him by name.[82] The Food Administration shipped 23 million metric tons of food to the Allied Powers, preventing their collapse and earning Hoover great acclaim.[83] As head of the Food Administration, Hoover gained a following in the United States, especially among progressives who saw in Hoover an expert administrator and symbol of efficiency.[84] Post-war relief in Europe Main article: American Relief Administration World War I came to an end in November 1918, but Europe continued to face a critical food situation; Hoover estimated that as many as 400 million people faced the possibility of starvation.[85] The United States Food Administration became the American Relief Administration (ARA), and Hoover was charged with providing food to Central and Eastern Europe.[86] In addition to providing relief, the ARA rebuilt infrastructure in an effort to rejuvenate the economy of Europe.[87] Throughout the Paris Peace Conference, Hoover served as a close adviser to President Wilson, and he largely shared Wilson's goals of establishing the League of Nations, settling borders on the basis of self-determination, and refraining from inflicting a harsh punishment on the defeated Central Powers.[88] The following year, famed British economist John Maynard Keynes wrote in The Economic Consequences of the Peace that if Hoover's realism, "knowledge, magnanimity and disinterestedness" had found wider play in the councils of Paris, the world would have had "the Good Peace".[89] After U.S. government funding for the ARA expired in mid-1919, Hoover transformed the ARA into a private organization, raising millions of dollars from private donors.[86] He also established the European Children's Fund, which provided relief to fifteen million children across fourteen countries.[90] Despite the opposition of Senator Henry Cabot Lodge and other Republicans, Hoover provided aid to the defeated German nation after the war, as well as relief to famine-stricken Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.[86] Hoover condemned the Bolsheviks, but warned President Wilson against an intervention in the Russian Civil War, as he viewed the White Russian forces as little better than the Bolsheviks and feared the possibility of a protracted U.S. involvement.[91] The Russian famine of 1921–22 claimed six million people, but the intervention of the ARA likely saved millions of lives.[92] When asked if he was not helping Bolshevism by providing relief, Hoover stated, "twenty million people are starving. Whatever their politics, they shall be fed!"[86] Reflecting the gratitude of many Europeans, in July 1922, Soviet author Maxim Gorky told Hoover that "your help will enter history as a unique, gigantic achievement, worthy of the greatest glory, which will long remain in the memory of millions of Russians whom you have saved from death".[93] In 1919, Hoover established the Hoover War Collection at Stanford University. He donated all the files of the Commission for Relief in Belgium, the U.S. Food Administration, and the American Relief Administration, and pledged $50,000 as an endowment (equivalent to $781,478 in 2021). Scholars were sent to Europe to collect pamphlets, society publications, government documents, newspapers, posters, proclamations, and other ephemeral materials related to the war and the revolutions that followed it. The collection was renamed the Hoover War Library in 1922 and is now known as the Hoover Institution Library and Archives.[94] During the post-war period, Hoover also served as the president of the Federated American Engineering Societies.[95][96] 1920 election Further information: 1920 United States presidential election Hoover had been little known among the American public before 1914, but his service in the Wilson administration established him as a contender in the 1920 presidential election. Hoover's wartime push for higher taxes, criticism of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer's actions during the First Red Scare, and his advocacy for measures such as the minimum wage, forty-eight-hour workweek, and elimination of child labor made him appealing to progressives of both parties.[97] Despite his service in the Democratic administration of Woodrow Wilson, Hoover had never been closely affiliated with either the Democrats or the Republicans. He initially sought to avoid committing to any party in the 1920 election, hoping that either of the two major parties would draft him for president at their national conventions.[98] In March 1920, he changed strategy and declared himself a Republican; he was motivated in large part by the belief that the Democrats had little chance of winning.[99] Despite his national renown, Hoover's service in the Wilson administration had alienated farmers and the conservative Old Guard of the GOP, and his presidential candidacy fizzled out after his defeat in the California primary by favorite son Hiram Johnson. At the 1920 Republican National Convention, Warren G. Harding emerged as a compromise candidate after the convention became deadlocked between supporters of Johnson, Leonard Wood, and Frank Orren Lowden.[97] Hoover backed Harding's successful campaign in the general election, and he began laying the groundwork for a future presidential run by building a base of strong supporters in the Republican Party.[100] Secretary of Commerce (1921–1928) Further information: Presidency of Warren G. Harding and Presidency of Calvin Coolidge Assistants William McCracken (left) and Walter Drake (right) with Secretary Hoover (center) After his election as president in 1920, Harding rewarded Hoover for his support, offering to appoint him as either Secretary of the Interior or Secretary of Commerce. Secretary of Commerce was considered a minor Cabinet post, with limited and vaguely defined responsibilities, but Hoover decided to accept the position.[101] Hoover's progressive stances, continuing support for the League of Nations, and recent conversion to the Republican Party aroused opposition to his appointment from many Senate Republicans.[102] To overcome this opposition, Harding paired Hoover's nomination with that of conservative favorite Andrew Mellon as Secretary of the Treasury, and the nominations of both Hoover and Mellon were confirmed by the Senate. Hoover would serve as Secretary of Commerce from 1921 to 1929, serving under Harding and, after Harding's death in 1923, President Calvin Coolidge.[101] While some of the most prominent members of the Harding administration, including Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty and Secretary of Interior Albert B. Fall, were implicated in major scandals, Hoover emerged largely unscathed from investigations into the Harding administration.[103] Hoover envisioned the Commerce Department as the hub of the nation's growth and stability.[104] His experience mobilizing the war-time economy convinced him that the federal government could promote efficiency by eliminating waste, increasing production, encouraging the adoption of data-based practices, investing in infrastructure, and conserving natural resources. Contemporaries described Hoover's approach as a "third alternative" between "unrestrained capitalism" and socialism, which was becoming increasingly popular in Europe.[105] Hoover sought to foster a balance among labor, capital, and the government, and for this, he has been variously labeled a corporatist or an associationalist.[106] A high priority was economic diplomacy, including promoting the growth of exports, as well as protection against monopolistic practices of foreign governments, especially regarding rubber and coffee.[107] Hoover demanded and received, authority to coordinate economic affairs throughout the government. He created many sub-departments and committees, overseeing and regulating everything from manufacturing statistics to air travel. In some instances he "seized" control of responsibilities from other Cabinet departments when he deemed that they were not carrying out their responsibilities well; some began referring to him as the "Secretary of Commerce and Under-Secretary of all other departments".[104] In response to the Depression of 1920–21, he convinced Harding to assemble a presidential commission on unemployment, which encouraged local governments to engage in countercyclical infrastructure spending.[108] He endorsed much of Mellon's tax reduction program, but favored a more progressive tax system and opposed the treasury secretary's efforts to eliminate the estate tax.[109] Radio regulation and air travel Main article: Regulation of radio broadcast in the United States Hoover listening to a radio receiver Between 1923 and 1929, the number of families with radios grew from 300,000 to 10 million,[110] and Hoover's tenure as Secretary of Commerce heavily influenced radio use in the United States. In the early and mid-1920s, Hoover's radio conferences played a key role in the organization, development, and regulation of radio broadcasting. Hoover also helped pass the Radio Act of 1927, which allowed the government to intervene and abolish radio stations that were deemed "non-useful" to the public. Hoover's attempts at regulating radio were not supported by all congressmen, and he received much opposition from the Senate and from radio station owners.[111][112][113] Hoover was also influential in the early development of air travel, and he sought to create a thriving private industry boosted by indirect government subsidies. He encouraged the development of emergency landing fields, required all runways to be equipped with lights and radio beams, and encouraged farmers to make use of planes for crop dusting.[114] He also established the federal government's power to inspect planes and license pilots, setting a precedent for the later Federal Aviation Administration.[115] As Commerce Secretary, Hoover hosted national conferences on street traffic collectively known as the National Conference on Street and Highway Safety. Hoover's chief objective was to address the growing casualty toll of traffic accidents, but the scope of the conferences grew and soon embraced motor vehicle standards, rules of the road, and urban traffic control. He left the invited interest groups to negotiate agreements among themselves, which were then presented for adoption by states and localities. Because automotive trade associations were the best organized, many of the positions taken by the conferences reflected their interests. The conferences issued a model Uniform Vehicle Code for adoption by the states and a Model Municipal Traffic Ordinance for adoption by cities. Both were widely influential, promoting greater uniformity between jurisdictions and tending to promote the automobile's priority in city streets.[116] Hoover's image building Phillips Payson O'Brien argues that Hoover had a Britain problem. He had spent so many years living in Britain and Australia, as an employee of British companies, there was a risk that he would be labeled a British tool. There were three solutions, all of which he tried in close collaboration with the media, which greatly admired him.[117] First came the image of the dispassionate scientist, emotionally uninvolved but always committed to finding and implementing the best possible solution. The second solution was to gain the reputation of a humanitarian, deeply concerned with the world's troubles, such as famine in Belgium, as well as specific American problems which he had solved as food commissioner during the world war. The third solution to was to fall back on that old tactic of twisting the British tail. He employed that solution in 1925–1926 in the worldwide rubber crisis. The American auto industry consumed 70% of the world's output, but British investors controlled much of the supply. Their plan was to drastically cut back on output from British Malaya, which had the effect of tripling rubber prices. Hoover energetically gave a series of speeches and interviews denouncing the monopolistic practice, and demanding that it be ended. The American State Department wanted no such crisis and compromised the issue in 1926. By then Hoover had solved his image problem, and during his 1928 campaign he successfully squelched attacks that alleged he was too close to British interests.[118] Other initiatives Hoover (left) with President Warren Harding at a baseball game, 1921 With the goal of encouraging wise business investments, Hoover made the Commerce Department a clearinghouse of information. He recruited numerous academics from various fields and tasked them with publishing reports on different aspects of the economy, including steel production and films. To eliminate waste, he encouraged standardization of products like automobile tires and baby bottle nipples.[119] Other efforts at eliminating waste included reducing labor losses from trade disputes and seasonal fluctuations, reducing industrial losses from accident and injury, and reducing the amount of crude oil spilled during extraction and shipping. He promoted international trade by opening overseas offices to advise businessmen. Hoover was especially eager to promote Hollywood films overseas.[120] His "Own Your Own Home" campaign was a collaboration to promote ownership of single-family dwellings, with groups such as the Better Houses in America movement, the Architects' Small House Service Bureau, and the Home Modernizing Bureau. He worked with bankers and the savings and loan industry to promote the new long-term home mortgage, which dramatically stimulated home construction.[121] Other accomplishments included winning the agreement of U.S. Steel to adopt an eight-hour workday, and the fostering of the Colorado River Compact, a water rights compact among Southwestern states.[122] Mississippi flood The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 broke the banks and levees of the lower Mississippi River in early 1927, resulting in the flooding of millions of acres and leaving 1.5 million people displaced from their homes. Although disaster response did not fall under the duties of the Commerce Department, the governors of six states along the Mississippi River specifically asked President Coolidge to appoint Hoover to coordinate the response to the flood.[123] Believing that disaster response was not the domain of the federal government, Coolidge initially refused to become involved, but he eventually acceded to political pressure and appointed Hoover to chair a special committee to help the region.[124] Hoover established over one hundred tent cities and a fleet of more than six hundred vessels, and raised $17 million (equivalent to $265.19 million in 2021). In large part due to his leadership during the flood crisis, by 1928, Hoover had begun to overshadow President Coolidge himself.[123] Though Hoover received wide acclaim for his role in the crisis, he ordered the suppression of reports of mistreatment of African Americans in refugee camps.[125] He did so with the cooperation of African-American leader Robert Russa Moton, who was promised unprecedented influence once Hoover became president.[126] Presidential election of 1928 Main article: 1928 United States presidential election Hoover quietly built up support for a future presidential bid throughout the 1920s, but he carefully avoided alienating Coolidge, who was eligible to run for another term in the 1928 presidential election.[127] Along with the rest of the nation, he was surprised when Coolidge announced in August 1927 that he would not seek another term. With the impending retirement of Coolidge, Hoover immediately emerged as the front-runner for the 1928 Republican nomination, and he quickly put together a strong campaign team led by Hubert Work, Will H. Hays, and Reed Smoot.[128] Coolidge was unwilling to anoint Hoover as his successor; on one occasion he remarked that, "for six years that man has given me unsolicited advice—all of it bad".[129] Despite his lukewarm feelings towards Hoover, Coolidge had no desire to split the party by publicly opposing the popular Commerce Secretary's candidacy.[130] Many wary Republican leaders cast about for an alternative candidate, such as Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon or former secretary of state Charles Evans Hughes.[131] However, Hughes and Mellon declined to run, and other potential contenders like Frank Orren Lowden and Vice President Charles G. Dawes failed to garner widespread support.[132] Hoover won the presidential nomination on the first ballot of the 1928 Republican National Convention. Convention delegates considered re-nominating Vice President Charles Dawes to be Hoover's running mate, but Coolidge, who hated Dawes, remarked that this would be "a personal affront" to him. The convention instead selected Senator Charles Curtis of Kansas.[133] Hoover accepted the nomination at Stanford Stadium, telling a huge crowd that he would continue the policies of the Harding and Coolidge administrations.[134] The Democrats nominated New York governor Al Smith, who became the first Catholic major party nominee for president.[135] 1928 electoral vote results Hoover centered his campaign around the Republican record of peace and prosperity, as well as his own reputation as a successful engineer and public official. Averse to giving political speeches, Hoover largely stayed out of the fray and left the campaigning to Curtis and other Republicans.[136] Smith was more charismatic and gregarious than Hoover, but his campaign was damaged by anti-Catholicism and his overt opposition to Prohibition. Hoover had never been a strong proponent of Prohibition, but he accepted the Republican Party's plank in favor of it and issued an ambivalent statement calling Prohibition "a great social and economic experiment, noble in motive and far-reaching in purpose".[137] In the South, Hoover and the national party pursued a "lily-white" strategy, removing black Republicans from leadership positions in an attempt to curry favor with white Southerners.[138] Hoover maintained polling leads throughout the 1928 campaign, and he decisively defeated Smith on election day, taking 58 percent of the popular vote and 444 of the 531 electoral votes.[139] Historians agree that Hoover's national reputation and the booming economy, combined with deep splits in the Democratic Party over religion and Prohibition, guaranteed his landslide victory.[140] Hoover's appeal to Southern white voters succeeded in cracking the "Solid South", and he won five Southern states.[141] Hoover's victory was positively received by newspapers; one wrote that Hoover would "drive so forcefully at the tasks now before the nation that the end of his eight years as president will find us looking back on an era of prodigious achievement".[142] Hoover's detractors wondered why he did not do anything to reapportion congress after the 1920 United States Census which saw an increase in urban and immigrant populations. The 1920 Census was the first and only Decennial Census where the results were not used to reapportion Congress, which ultimately influenced the 1928 Electoral College and impacted the Presidential Election.[143][144] Presidency (1929–1933) Main article: Presidency of Herbert Hoover Hoover's inauguration Hoover saw the presidency as a vehicle for improving the conditions of all Americans by encouraging public-private cooperation—what he termed "volunteerism". He tended to oppose governmental coercion or intervention, as he thought they infringed on American ideals of individualism and self-reliance.[145] The first major bill that he signed, the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1929, established the Federal Farm Board in order to stabilize farm prices.[146] Hoover made extensive use of commissions to study issues and propose solutions, and many of those commissions were sponsored by private donors rather than by the government. One of the commissions started by Hoover, the Research Committee on Social Trends, was tasked with surveying the entirety of American society.[147] He appointed a Cabinet consisting largely of wealthy, business-oriented conservatives,[148] including Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon.[149] Lou Henry Hoover was an activist First Lady. She typified the new woman of the post–World War I era: intelligent, robust, and aware of multiple female possibilities.[150] Great Depression See also: Great Depression in the United States Inaugural parade ticket On taking office, Hoover said that "given the chance to go forward with the policies of the last eight years, we shall soon with the help of God, be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this nation".[151] Having seen the fruits of prosperity brought by technological progress, many shared Hoover's optimism, and the already bullish stock market climbed even higher on Hoover's accession.[152] This optimism concealed several threats to sustained U.S. economic growth, including a persistent farm crisis, a saturation of consumer goods like automobiles, and growing income inequality.[153] Most dangerous of all to the economy was excessive speculation that had raised stock prices far beyond their value.[154] Some regulators and bankers had warned Coolidge and Hoover that a failure to curb speculation would lead to "one of the greatest financial catastrophes that this country has ever seen," but both presidents were reluctant to become involved with the workings of the Federal Reserve System, which regulated banks.[155] In late October 1929, the Stock Market Crash of 1929 occurred, and the worldwide economy began to spiral downward into the Great Depression.[156] The causes of the Great Depression remain a matter of debate,[157] but Hoover viewed a lack of confidence in the financial system as the fundamental economic problem facing the nation.[158] He sought to avoid direct federal intervention, believing that the best way to bolster the economy was through the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads. He also feared that allowing individuals on the "dole" would permanently weaken the country.[159] Instead, Hoover strongly believed that local governments and private giving should address the needs of individuals.[160] Early policies Hoover congratulates the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce on the completion of Cleveland Union Terminal, June 14, 1930. Though he attempted to put a positive spin on Black Tuesday, Hoover moved quickly to address the stock market collapse.[161] In the days following Black Tuesday, Hoover gathered business and labor leaders, asking them to avoid wage cuts and work stoppages while the country faced what he believed would be a short recession similar to the Depression of 1920–21.[162] Hoover also convinced railroads and public utilities to increase spending on construction and maintenance, and the Federal Reserve announced that it would cut interest rates.[163] In early 1930, Hoover acquired from Congress an additional $100 million to continue the Federal Farm Board lending and purchasing policies.[164] These actions were collectively designed to prevent a cycle of deflation and provide a fiscal stimulus.[163] At the same time, Hoover opposed congressional proposals to provide federal relief to the unemployed, as he believed that such programs were the responsibility of state and local governments and philanthropic organizations.[165] Hoover had taken office hoping to raise agricultural tariffs in order to help farmers reeling from the farm crisis of the 1920s, but his attempt to raise agricultural tariffs became connected with a bill that broadly raised tariffs.[166] Hoover refused to become closely involved in the congressional debate over the tariff, and Congress produced a tariff bill that raised rates for many goods.[167] Despite the widespread unpopularity of the bill, Hoover felt that he could not reject the main legislative accomplishment of the Republican-controlled 71st Congress. Over the objection of many economists, Hoover signed the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act into law in June 1930.[168] Canada, France, and other nations retaliated by raising tariffs, resulting in a contraction of international trade and a worsening of the economy.[169] Progressive Republicans such as Senator William E. Borah of Idaho were outraged when Hoover signed the tariff act, and Hoover's relations with that wing of the party never recovered.[170] Later policies Hoover in the Oval Office with Ted Joslin, 1932 By the end of 1930, the national unemployment rate had reached 11.9 percent, but it was not yet clear to most Americans that the economic downturn would be worse than the Depression of 1920–21.[171] A series of bank failures in late 1930 heralded a larger collapse of the economy in 1931.[172] While other countries left the gold standard, Hoover refused to abandon it;[173] he derided any other monetary system as "collectivism".[174] Hoover viewed the weak European economy as a major cause of economic troubles in the United States.[175] In response to the collapse of the German economy, Hoover marshaled congressional support behind a one-year moratorium on European war debts.[176] The Hoover Moratorium was warmly received in Europe and the United States, but Germany remained on the brink of defaulting on its loans.[177] As the worldwide economy worsened, democratic governments fell; in Germany, Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler assumed power and dismantled the Weimar Republic.[178] By mid-1931, the unemployment rate had reached 15 percent, giving rise to growing fears that the country was experiencing a depression far worse than recent economic downturns.[179] A reserved man with a fear of public speaking, Hoover allowed his opponents in the Democratic Party to define him as cold, incompetent, reactionary, and out-of-touch.[180] Hoover's opponents developed defamatory epithets to discredit him, such as "Hooverville" (the shanty towns and homeless encampments), "Hoover leather" (cardboard used to cover holes in the soles of shoes), and "Hoover blanket" (old newspaper used to cover oneself from the cold).[181] While Hoover continued to resist direct federal relief efforts, Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt of New York launched the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration to provide aid to the unemployed. Democrats positioned the program as a kinder alternative to Hoover's alleged apathy towards the unemployed, despite Hoover's belief that such programs were the responsibility of state and local governments.[182] The economy continued to worsen, with unemployment rates nearing 23 percent in early 1932,[183] and Hoover finally heeded calls for more direct federal intervention.[184] In January 1932, he convinced Congress to authorize the establishment of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC), which would provide government-secured loans to financial institutions, railroads, and local governments.[185] The RFC saved numerous businesses from failure, but it failed to stimulate commercial lending as much as Hoover had hoped, partly because it was run by conservative bankers unwilling to make riskier loans.[186] The same month the RFC was established, Hoover signed the Federal Home Loan Bank Act, establishing 12 district banks overseen by a Federal Home Loan Bank Board in a manner similar to the Federal Reserve System.[187] He also helped arrange passage of the Glass–Steagall Act of 1932, emergency banking legislation designed to expand banking credit by expanding the collateral on which Federal Reserve banks were authorized to lend.[188] As these measures failed to stem the economic crisis, Hoover signed the Emergency Relief and Construction Act, a $2 billion public works bill, in July 1932.[183] Budget policy National debt as a fraction of GNP up from 20% to 40% under Hoover. From Historical Statistics US (1976). After a decade of budget surpluses, the federal government experienced a budget deficit in 1931.[189] Though some economists, like William Trufant Foster, favored deficit spending to address the Great Depression, most politicians and economists believed in the necessity of keeping a balanced budget.[190] In late 1931, Hoover proposed a tax plan to increase tax revenue by 30 percent, resulting in the passage of the Revenue Act of 1932.[191] The act increased taxes across the board, rolling back much of the tax cut reduction program Mellon had presided over during the 1920s. Top earners were taxed at 63 percent on their net income, the highest rate since the early 1920s. The act also doubled the top estate tax rate, cut personal income tax exemptions, eliminated the corporate income tax exemption, and raised corporate tax rates.[192] Despite the passage of the Revenue Act, the federal government continued to run a budget deficit.[193] Civil rights and Mexican Repatriation Further information: Lily-white movement and Mexican Repatriation Herbert and Lou Henry Hoover aboard a train in Illinois Hoover seldom mentioned civil rights while he was president. He believed that African Americans and other races could improve themselves with education and individual initiative.[194][page needed] Hoover appointed more African Americans to federal positions than Harding and Coolidge had combined, but many African-American leaders condemned various aspects of the Hoover administration, including Hoover's unwillingness to push for a federal anti-lynching law.[195] Hoover also continued to pursue the lily-white strategy, removing African Americans from positions of leadership in the Republican Party in an attempt to end the Democratic Party's dominance in the South.[196] Though Robert Moton and some other black leaders accepted the lily-white strategy as a temporary measure, most African-American leaders were outraged.[197] Hoover further alienated black leaders by nominating conservative Southern judge John J. Parker to the Supreme Court; Parker's nomination ultimately failed in the Senate due to opposition from the NAACP and organized labor.[198] Many black voters switched to the Democratic Party in the 1932 election, and African Americans would later become an important part of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal coalition.[199] As part of his efforts to limit unemployment, Hoover sought to cut immigration to the United States, and in 1930 he promulgated an executive order requiring individuals to have employment before migrating to the United States.[200] The Hoover Administration began a campaign to prosecute illegal immigrants in the United States, which most strongly affected Mexicans, especially those living in Southern California.[201][202] During the 1930s, between 355,000 and one million Mexicans and Mexican Americans were repatriated or deported to Mexico; an estimated forty to sixty percent of whom were birthright citizens - overwhelmingly children.[203][204] Some scholars contend that the unprecedented number of repatriations between 1929 and 1933 were part of an “explicit Hoover administration policy".[203] While supported and encouraged by the federal government, most deportations and repatriations were organized by local and state governments, often with support from local private entities. Voluntary repatriation was far more common than formal deportation, with 34,000 people deported to Mexico by the federal government between 1930 and 1933.[203][205] According to legal professor Kevin R. Johnson, the repatriation campaigns were a form of  ethnic cleansing against an ethnic minority.[206] He reorganized the Bureau of Indian Affairs to limit exploitation of Native Americans.[207] Prohibition On taking office, Hoover urged Americans to obey the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act, which had established Prohibition across the United States.[208] To make public policy recommendations regarding Prohibition, he created the Wickersham Commission.[209] Hoover had hoped that the commission's public report would buttress his stance in favor of Prohibition, but the report criticized the enforcement of the Volstead Act and noted the growing public opposition to Prohibition. After the Wickersham Report was published in 1931, Hoover rejected the advice of some of his closest allies and refused to endorse any revision of the Volstead Act or the Eighteenth Amendment, as he feared doing so would undermine his support among Prohibition advocates.[210] As public opinion increasingly turned against Prohibition, more and more people flouted the law, and a grassroots movement began working in earnest for Prohibition's repeal.[211] In January 1933, a constitutional amendment repealing the Eighteenth Amendment was approved by Congress and submitted to the states for ratification. By December 1933, it had been ratified by the requisite number of states to become the Twenty-first Amendment.[212] Foreign relations According to Leuchtenburg, Hoover was "the last American president to take office with no conspicuous need to pay attention to the rest of the world". Nevertheless, during Hoover's term, the world order established in the immediate aftermath of World War I began to crumble.[213] As president, Hoover largely made good on his pledge made prior to assuming office not to interfere in Latin America's internal affairs. In 1930, he released the Clark Memorandum, a rejection of the Roosevelt Corollary and a move towards non-interventionism in Latin America. Hoover did not completely refrain from the use of the military in Latin American affairs; he thrice threatened intervention in the Dominican Republic, and he sent warships to El Salvador to support the government against a left-wing revolution.[214] Notwithstanding those actions, he wound down the Banana Wars, ending the occupation of Nicaragua and nearly bringing an end to the occupation of Haiti.[215] Hoover placed a priority on disarmament, which he hoped would allow the United States to shift money from the military to domestic needs.[216] Hoover and Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson focused on extending the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty, which sought to prevent a naval arms race.[217] As a result of Hoover's efforts, the United States and other major naval powers signed the 1930 London Naval Treaty.[218] The treaty represented the first time that the naval powers had agreed to cap their tonnage of auxiliary vessels, as previous agreements had only affected capital ships.[219] At the 1932 World Disarmament Conference, Hoover urged further cutbacks in armaments and the outlawing of tanks and bombers, but his proposals were not adopted.[219] In 1931, Japan invaded Manchuria, defeating the Republic of China's National Revolutionary Army and establishing Manchukuo, a puppet state. The Hoover administration deplored the invasion, but also sought to avoid antagonizing the Japanese, fearing that taking too strong a stand would weaken the moderate forces in the Japanese government and alienate a potential ally against the Soviet Union, which he saw as a much greater threat.[220] In response to the Japanese invasion, Hoover and Secretary of State Stimson outlined the Stimson Doctrine, which held that the United States would not recognize territories gained by force.[221] Bonus Army Main article: Bonus Army Thousands of World War I veterans and their families demonstrated and camped out in Washington, DC, during June 1932, calling for immediate payment of bonuses that had been promised by the World War Adjusted Compensation Act in 1924; the terms of the act called for payment of the bonuses in 1945. Although offered money by Congress to return home, some members of the "Bonus Army" remained. Washington police attempted to disperse the demonstrators, but they were outnumbered and unsuccessful. Shots were fired by the police in a futile attempt to attain order, and two protesters were killed while many officers were injured. Hoover sent U.S. Army forces led by General Douglas MacArthur to the protests. MacArthur, believing he was fighting a Communist revolution, chose to clear out the camp with military force. Though Hoover had not ordered MacArthur's clearing out of the protesters, he endorsed it after the fact.[222] The incident proved embarrassing for the Hoover administration and hurt his bid for re-election.[223] 1932 re-election campaign Main article: 1932 United States presidential election Hoover addresses a large crowd in his 1932 campaign. By mid-1931 few observers thought that Hoover had much hope of winning a second term in the midst of the ongoing economic crisis.[224] The Republican expectations were so bleak that Hoover faced no serious opposition for re-nomination at the 1932 Republican National Convention. Coolidge and other prominent Republicans all passed on the opportunity to challenge Hoover.[225] Franklin D. Roosevelt won the presidential nomination on the fourth ballot of the 1932 Democratic National Convention, defeating the 1928 Democratic nominee, Al Smith. The Democrats attacked Hoover as the cause of the Great Depression, and for being indifferent to the suffering of millions.[226] As Governor of New York, Roosevelt had called on the New York legislature to provide aid for the needy, establishing Roosevelt's reputation for being more favorable toward government interventionism during the economic crisis.[227] The Democratic Party, including Al Smith and other national leaders, coalesced behind Roosevelt, while progressive Republicans like George Norris and Robert La Follette Jr. deserted Hoover.[228] Prohibition was increasingly unpopular and wets offered the argument that states and localities needed the tax money. Hoover proposed a new constitutional amendment that was vague on particulars. Roosevelt's platform promised repeal of the 18th Amendment.[229][230] 1932 electoral vote results Hoover originally planned to make only one or two major speeches and to leave the rest of the campaigning to proxies, as sitting presidents had traditionally done. However, encouraged by Republican pleas and outraged by Democratic claims, Hoover entered the public fray. In his nine major radio addresses Hoover primarily defended his administration and his philosophy of government, urging voters to hold to the "foundations of experience" and reject the notion that government interventionism could save the country from the Depression.[231] In his campaign trips around the country, Hoover was faced with perhaps the most hostile crowds ever seen by a sitting president. Besides having his train and motorcades pelted with eggs and rotten fruit, he was often heckled while speaking, and on several occasions, the Secret Service halted attempts to hurt Hoover, including capturing one man nearing Hoover carrying sticks of dynamite, and another already having removed several spikes from the rails in front of the president's train.[232] Hoover's attempts to vindicate his administration fell on deaf ears, as much of the public blamed his administration for the depression.[233] In the electoral vote, Hoover lost 59–472, carrying six states.[234] Hoover won 39.7 percent of the popular vote, a plunge of 26 percentage points from his result in the 1928 election.[235] Post-presidency (1933–1964) Roosevelt administration Opposition to New Deal Further information: Presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, first and second terms Hoover with Franklin D. Roosevelt, March 4, 1933 Hoover departed from Washington in March 1933, bitter at his election loss and continuing unpopularity.[236] As Coolidge, Harding, Wilson, and Taft had all died during the 1920s or early 1930s and Roosevelt died in office, Hoover was the sole living ex-president from 1933 to 1953. He and his wife lived in Palo Alto until her death in 1944, at which point Hoover began to live permanently at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York City.[237] During the 1930s, Hoover increasingly self-identified as a conservative.[238] He closely followed national events after leaving public office, becoming a constant critic of Franklin Roosevelt. In response to continued attacks on his character and presidency, Hoover wrote more than two dozen books, including The Challenge to Liberty (1934), which harshly criticized Roosevelt's New Deal. Hoover described the New Deal's National Recovery Administration and Agricultural Adjustment Administration as "fascistic", and he called the 1933 Banking Act a "move to gigantic socialism".[239] Only 58 when he left office, Hoover held out hope for another term as president throughout the 1930s. At the 1936 Republican National Convention, Hoover's speech attacking the New Deal was well received, but the nomination went to Kansas Governor Alf Landon.[240] In the general election, Hoover delivered numerous well-publicized speeches on behalf of Landon, but Landon was defeated by Roosevelt.[241] Though Hoover was eager to oppose Roosevelt at every turn, Senator Arthur Vandenberg and other Republicans urged the still-unpopular Hoover to remain out of the fray during the debate over Roosevelt's proposed Judiciary Reorganization Bill of 1937. At the 1940 Republican National Convention, he again hoped for the presidential nomination, but it went to the internationalist Wendell Willkie, who lost to Roosevelt in the general election.[242] World War II Further information: Presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, third and fourth terms During a 1938 trip to Europe, Hoover met with Adolf Hitler and stayed at Hermann Göring's hunting lodge.[243] He expressed dismay at the persecution of Jews in Germany and believed that Hitler was mad, but did not present a threat to the U.S. Instead, Hoover believed that Roosevelt posed the biggest threat to peace, holding that Roosevelt's policies provoked Japan and discouraged France and the United Kingdom from reaching an "accommodation" with Germany.[244] After the September 1939 invasion of Poland by Germany, Hoover opposed U.S. involvement in World War II, including the Lend-Lease policy.[245] He was active in the isolationist America First Committee.[246] He rejected Roosevelt's offers to help coordinate relief in Europe,[247] but, with the help of old friends from the CRB, helped establish the Commission for Polish Relief.[248] After the beginning of the occupation of Belgium in 1940, Hoover provided aid for Belgian civilians, though this aid was described as unnecessary by German broadcasts.[249][250] In December 1939, sympathetic Americans led by Hoover formed the Finnish Relief Fund to donate money to aid Finnish civilians and refugees after the Soviet Union had started the Winter War by attacking Finland, which had outraged Americans.[251] By the end of January, it had already sent more than two million dollars to the Finns.[252] During a radio broadcast on June 29, 1941, one week after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, Hoover disparaged any "tacit alliance" between the U.S. and the USSR, stating, "if we join the war and Stalin wins, we have aided him to impose more communism on Europe and the world... War alongside Stalin to impose freedom is more than a travesty. It is a tragedy."[253] Much to his frustration, Hoover was not called upon to serve after the United States entered World War II due to his differences with Roosevelt and his continuing unpopularity.[237] He did not pursue the presidential nomination at the 1944 Republican National Convention, and, at the request of Republican nominee Thomas E. Dewey, refrained from campaigning during the general election.[254] In 1945, Hoover advised President Harry S. Truman to drop the United States' demand for the unconditional surrender of Japan because of the high projected casualties of the planned invasion of Japan, although Hoover was unaware of the Manhattan Project and the atomic bomb.[255] Post–World War II Further information: Presidency of Harry S. Truman and Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower Hoover's official White House portrait by Elmer Wesley Greene Following World War II, Hoover befriended President Harry S. Truman despite their ideological differences.[256] Because of Hoover's experience with Germany at the end of World War I, in 1946 Truman selected the former president to tour Allied-occupied Germany and Rome, Italy to ascertain the food needs of the occupied nations. After touring Germany, Hoover produced a number of reports critical of U.S. occupation policy.[257] He stated in one report that "there is the illusion that the New Germany left after the annexations can be reduced to a 'pastoral state.' It cannot be done unless we exterminate or move 25,000,000 people out of it."[258] On Hoover's initiative, a school meals program in the American and British occupation zones of Germany was begun on April 14, 1947; the program served 3,500,000 children.[259] External audio audio icon National Press Club Luncheon Speakers, Herbert Hoover, March 10, 1954, 37:23, Hoover speaks starting at 7:25 about the second reorganization commission, Library of Congress[260] Even more important, in 1947 Truman appointed Hoover to lead the Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government a new high level study. Truman accepted some of the recommendations of the "Hoover Commission" for eliminating waste, fraud, and inefficiency, consolidating agencies, and strengthening White House control of policy.[261][262] Though Hoover had opposed Roosevelt's concentration of power in the 1930s, he believed that a stronger presidency was required with the advent of the Atomic Age.[263] During the 1948 presidential election, Hoover supported Republican nominee Thomas Dewey's unsuccessful campaign against Truman, but he remained on good terms with Truman.[264] Hoover favored the United Nations in principle, but he opposed granting membership to the Soviet Union and other Communist states. He viewed the Soviet Union to be as morally repugnant as Nazi Germany and supported the efforts of Richard Nixon and others to expose Communists in the United States.[265] In 1949, New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey offered Hoover the Senate seat vacated by Robert F. Wagner. It was a matter of being senator for only two months and he declined.[266] A photograph of Hoover in 1958 Hoover backed conservative leader Robert A. Taft at the 1952 Republican National Convention, but the party's presidential nomination instead went to Dwight D. Eisenhower, who went on to win the 1952 election.[267] Though Eisenhower appointed Hoover to another presidential commission, Hoover disliked Eisenhower, faulting the latter's failure to roll back the New Deal.[263] Hoover's public work helped to rehabilitate his reputation, as did his use of self-deprecating humor; he occasionally remarked that "I am the only person of distinction who's ever had a depression named after him."[268] In 1958, Congress passed the Former Presidents Act, offering a $25,000 yearly pension (equivalent to $234,804 in 2021) to each former president.[269] Hoover took the pension even though he did not need the money, possibly to avoid embarrassing Truman, whose precarious financial status played a role in the law's enactment.[270] In the early 1960s, President John F. Kennedy offered Hoover various positions; Hoover declined the offers but defended Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs invasion and was personally distraught by Kennedy's assassination in 1963.[271] Hoover wrote several books during his retirement, including The Ordeal of Woodrow Wilson, in which he strongly defended Wilson's actions at the Paris Peace Conference.[272] In 1944, he began working on Freedom Betrayed, which he often referred to as his "magnum opus". In Freedom Betrayed, Hoover strongly critiques Roosevelt's foreign policy, especially Roosevelt's decision to recognize the Soviet Union in order to provide aid to that country during World War II.[273] The book was published in 2012 after being edited by historian George H. Nash.[274] Death Hoover faced three major illnesses during the last two years of his life, including an August 1962 operation in which a growth on his large intestine was removed.[275][276] He died on October 20, 1964, in New York City following massive internal bleeding.[277] Though Hoover's last spoken words are unknown, his last known written words were a get well message to his friend Harry Truman, six days before his death, after he heard that Truman had sustained injuries from slipping in a bathroom: "Bathtubs are a menace to ex-presidents for as you may recall a bathtub rose up and fractured my vertebrae when I was in Venezuela on your world famine mission in 1946. My warmest sympathy and best wishes for your recovery."[278] Two months earlier, on August 10, Hoover reached the age of 90, only the second U.S. president (after John Adams) to do so. When asked how he felt on reaching the milestone, Hoover replied, "Too old."[276] At the time of his death, Hoover had been out of office for over 31 years (11,553 days all together). This was the longest retirement in presidential history until Jimmy Carter broke that record in September 2012.[279] Hoover was honored with a state funeral in which he lay in state in the United States Capitol rotunda.[280] President Lyndon Johnson and First Lady Ladybird Johnson attended, along with former presidents Truman and Eisenhower. Then, on October 25, he was buried in West Branch, Iowa, near his presidential library and birthplace on the grounds of the Herbert Hoover National Historic Site. Afterwards, Hoover's wife, Lou Henry Hoover, who had been buried in Palo Alto, California, following her death in 1944, was re-interred beside him.[281] Hoover was the last surviving member of the Harding and Coolidge Cabinets. John Nance Garner (he was Speaker of the House during the second half of Hoover's term) was the only person in Hoover's United States presidential line of succession he did not outlive. Legacy Historical reputation Hoover was extremely unpopular when he left office after the 1932 election, and his historical reputation would not begin to recover until the 1970s. According to Professor David E. Hamilton, historians have credited Hoover for his genuine belief in voluntarism and cooperation, as well as the innovation of some of his programs. However, Hamilton also notes that Hoover was politically inept and failed to recognize the severity of the Great Depression.[282] Nicholas Lemann writes that Hoover has been remembered "as the man who was too rigidly conservative to react adeptly to the Depression, as the hapless foil to the great Franklin Roosevelt, and as the politician who managed to turn a Republican country into a Democratic one".[4] Polls of historians and political scientists have generally ranked Hoover in the bottom third of presidents. A 2018 poll of the American Political Science Association's Presidents and Executive Politics section ranked Hoover as the 36th best president.[283] A 2017 C-SPAN poll of historians also ranked Hoover as the 36th best president.[284] Although Hoover is generally regarded as having had a failed presidency, he has also received praise for his actions as a humanitarian and public official.[4] Biographer Glen Jeansonne writes that Hoover was "one of the most extraordinary Americans of modern times," adding that Hoover "led a life that was a prototypical Horatio Alger story, except that Horatio Alger stories stop at the pinnacle of success".[285] Biographer Kenneth Whyte writes that, "the question of where Hoover belongs in the American political tradition remains a loaded one to this day. While he clearly played important roles in the development of both the progressive and conservative traditions, neither side will embrace him for fear of contamination with the other."[286] Views of race Racist remarks and racial humor was common at the time, but Hoover never indulged in them while President and deliberate discrimination was anathema to him; he thought of himself as a friend to blacks and an advocate for their progress.[287] W. E. B. Du Bois described him as an "undemocratic racist who saw blacks as a species of 'sub-men'".[288] Memorials The Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum is located in West Branch, Iowa next to the Herbert Hoover National Historic Site. The library is one of thirteen presidential libraries run by the National Archives and Records Administration. The Hoover–Minthorn House, where Hoover lived from 1885 to 1891, is located in Newberg, Oregon. His Rapidan fishing camp in Virginia, which he donated to the government in 1933, is now a National Historic Landmark within the Shenandoah National Park. The Lou Henry and Herbert Hoover House, built in 1919 in Stanford, California, is now the official residence of the president of Stanford University, and a National Historic Landmark. Also located at Stanford is the Hoover Institution, a think tank and research institution started by Hoover. Hoover has been memorialized in the names of several things, including the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River and numerous elementary, middle, and high schools across the United States. Two minor planets, 932 Hooveria[289] and 1363 Herberta, are named in his honor.[290] The Polish capital of Warsaw has a square named after Hoover,[291] and the historic townsite of Gwalia, Western Australia contains the Hoover House Bed and Breakfast, where Hoover resided while managing and visiting the mine during the first decade of the twentieth century.[292] A medicine ball game known as Hooverball is named for Hoover; it was invented by White House physician Admiral Joel T. Boone to help Hoover keep fit while serving as president.[293] Hoover Presidential Library located in West Branch, Iowa Hoover Presidential Library located in West Branch, Iowa   A plaque in Poznań honoring Hoover A plaque in Poznań honoring Hoover   Medal depicting Hoover, by Devreese Godefroi Medal depicting Hoover, by Devreese Godefroi Other honors Hoover was inducted into the National Mining Hall of Fame in 1988 (inaugural class).[294] His wife was inducted into the hall in 1990.[295] Hoover was inducted into the Australian Prospectors and Miners' Hall of Fame in the category Directors and Management.[296] Hoover was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Charles University in Prague and University of Helsinki in March 1938.[297][298][299] The ceremonial sword is today on display in the lobby of the Hoover tower. See also Great Depression in the United States List of presidents of the United States Progressive Era Roaring Twenties Notes  Hoover later became the first president born west of the Mississippi River, and remains the only president born in Iowa.[5]  Hoover later claimed to be the first student at Stanford, by virtue of having been the first person in the first class to sleep in the dormitory.[22] In the United States, the Great Depression began with the Wall Street Crash of October 1929 and then spread worldwide. The nadir came in 1931–1933, and recovery came in 1940. The stock market crash marked the beginning of a decade of high unemployment, poverty, low profits, deflation, plunging farm incomes, and lost opportunities for economic growth as well as for personal advancement. Altogether, there was a general loss of confidence in the economic future.[1] The usual explanations include numerous factors, especially high consumer debt, ill-regulated markets that permitted overoptimistic loans by banks and investors, and the lack of high-growth new industries. These all interacted to create a downward economic spiral of reduced spending, falling confidence and lowered production.[2] Industries that suffered the most included construction, shipping, mining, logging, and agriculture. Also hard hit was the manufacturing of durable goods like automobiles and appliances, whose purchase consumers could postpone. The economy hit bottom in the winter of 1932–1933; then came four years of growth until the recession of 1937–1938 brought back high levels of unemployment.[3] US annual real GDP from 1910 to 1960, with the years of the Great Depression (1929–1939) highlighted Unemployment rate in the US 1910–60, with the years of the Great Depression (1929–39) highlighted; accurate data begins in 1939, represented by a blue line. The Depression caused major political changes in America. Three years into the depression, President Herbert Hoover, widely blamed for not doing enough to combat the crisis, lost the election of 1932 to Franklin Delano Roosevelt by a landslide. Roosevelt's economic recovery plan, the New Deal, instituted unprecedented programs for relief, recovery and reform, and brought about a major realignment of politics with liberalism dominant and conservatism in retreat until 1938. There were mass migrations of people from badly hit areas in the Great Plains (the Okies) and the South to places such as California and the cities of the North (the Great Migration).[4][5] Racial tensions also increased during this time. The memory of the Depression also shaped modern theories of government and economics and resulted in many changes in how the government dealt with economic downturns, such as the use of stimulus packages, Keynesian economics, and Social Security. It also shaped modern American literature, resulting in famous novels such as John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men. Contents 1 Causes 1.1 Monetary interpretations 1.2 Stock market crash 1.3 Banking failures 1.3.1 Unregulated banking growth 1.4 Contagion 2 Social & political impacts 3 Global comparison of severity 3.1 Europe 3.2 Canada and the Caribbean 3.3 Asia 3.4 Australia and New Zealand 4 Tight monetary policy 4.1 Hoover Administration and the gold standard 4.2 Roosevelt Administration and the gold standard 5 Political responses of the depression era 5.1 Hoover's response 5.2 Roosevelt's New Deal 6 Recession of 1937–1938 7 Afterward 8 Facts and figures 9 See also 10 References 11 Further reading 11.1 Historiography 11.2 Primary sources 12 External links Causes Monetary interpretations Examining the causes of the Great Depression raises multiple issues: what factors set off the first downturn in 1929; what structural weaknesses and specific events turned it into a major depression; how the downturn spread from country to country; and why the economic recovery was so prolonged.[6] Many rural banks began to fail in October 1930 when farmers defaulted on loans. There was no federal deposit insurance during that time as bank failures were considered a normal part of economic life. Worried depositors started to withdraw savings, so the money multiplier worked in reverse. Banks were forced to liquidate assets (such as calling in loans rather than creating new loans).[7] This caused the money supply to shrink and the economy to contract (the Great Contraction), resulting in a significant decline in aggregate investment. The decreased money supply further aggravated price deflation, putting more pressure on already struggling businesses. A $10 US gold certificate. The U.S. used the gold standard until 1934 and controlled nearly half of the global gold supply during the inter-war period. The U.S. Government's commitment to the gold standard prevented it from engaging in expansionary monetary policy.[clarification needed] High interest rates needed to be maintained in order to attract international investors who bought foreign assets with gold. However, the high interest also inhibited domestic business borrowing.[citation needed] The U.S. interest rates were also affected by France's decision to raise their interest rates to attract gold to their vaults. In theory, the U.S. would have two potential responses to that: allow the exchange rate to adjust, or increase their own interest rates to maintain the gold standard. At the time, the U.S. was pegged to the gold standard. Therefore, Americans converted their dollars into francs to buy more French assets, the demand for the U.S. dollar fell, and the exchange rate increased. One of the only things the U.S. could do to get back into equilibrium was increase interest rates.[citation needed] In the late 20th century, Winner of the Swedish Central Bank Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences economist Milton Friedman and his fellow monetarist Anna Schwartz argued that the Federal Reserve could have stemmed the severity of the Depression, but failed to exercise its role of managing the monetary system and ameliorating banking panics, resulting in a Great Contraction of the economy from 1929 until the New Deal began in 1933.[8] This view was endorsed by Fed Governor Ben Bernanke who in 2002 said in a speech honoring Friedman and Schwartz: Let me end my talk by abusing slightly my status as an official representative of the Federal Reserve. I would like to say to Milton and Anna: Regarding the Great Depression, you're right. We did it. We're very sorry. But thanks to you, we won't do it again.[9][8] — Ben S. Bernanke Stock market crash The Wall Street Crash of 1929 is often cited as the beginning of the Great Depression. It began on October 24, 1929, and kept going down until March 1933. It was the longest and most devastating stock market crash in the history of the United States. Much of the stock market crash can be attributed to exuberance and false expectations. In the years leading up to 1929, the rising stock market prices had created vast sums of wealth in relation to amounts invested, in turn encouraging borrowing to buy more stock. However, on October 24 (Black Thursday), share prices began to fall and panic selling caused prices to fall sharply. On October 29 (Black Tuesday), share prices fell by $14 billion in a single day, more than $30 billion in the week.[10] The value that evaporated that week was ten times more than the entire federal budget and more than all of what the U.S. had spent on World War I. By 1930 the value of shares had fallen by 90%.[11] Since many banks had also invested their clients' savings in the stock market, these banks were forced to close when the stock market crashed. After the stock market crash and the bank closures, people were afraid of losing more money. Because of their fears of further economic challenge, individuals from all classes stopped purchasing and consuming. Thousands of individual investors who believed they could get rich by investing on margin lost everything they had. The stock market crash severely impacted the American economy. Banking failures A large contribution was the closure and suspension of thousands of banks across the country. Financial institutions failed for several reasons, including unregulated lending procedures, confidence in the gold standard, consumer confidence in future economics, and agricultural defaults on outstanding loans. With these compounding issues the banking system struggled to keep up with the public's increasing demand for cash withdrawals. This overall decreased the money supply and forced the banks to resort to short or liquidate existing loans.[7] In the race to liquidate assets the banking system began to fail on a wide scale. In November 1930 the first major banking crisis began with over 800 banks closing their doors by January 1931. By October 1931 over 2100 banks were suspended with the highest suspension rate recorded in the St. Louis Federal Reserve District, with 2 out of every 5 banks suspended.[12] The economy as a whole experienced a massive reduction in banking footholds across the country amounting to more than nine thousand closed banks by 1933. People outside a closed bank after 1929 stock market crash. The closures resulted in a massive withdrawal of deposits by millions of Americans estimated at near $6.8 billion ($121 billion in 2021 dollars). During this time the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) was not in place resulting in a loss of roughly $1.36 billion (or 20%) of the total $6.8 billion accounted for within the failed banks. These losses came directly from everyday individuals' savings, investments and bank accounts. As a result, GDP fell from the high seven-hundreds in 1929 to the low to mid six-hundreds in 1933 before seeing any recovery for the first time in nearly 4 years.[13] Federal leadership intervention is highly debated on its effectiveness and overall participation. The Federal Reserve Act could not effectively tackle the banking crisis as state bank and trust companies were not compelled to be a member, paper eligible discount member banks heavily restricted access to the Federal Reserve, power between the twelve Federal Reserve banks was decentralized and federal level leadership was ineffective, inexperienced, and weak. Unregulated banking growth Throughout the early 1900s banking regulations were extremely lax if not non-existent. The Currency Act of 1900 lowered the required capital of investors from 50,000 to 25,000 to create a national bank. As a result of this change nearly two thirds of the banks formed over the next ten years were quite small, averaging just above the 25,000 in required capital.[14] The number of banks would nearly double (number of banks divided by Real GDP) from 1890 to 1920 due to the lack of oversight and qualification when banking charters were being issued in the first two decades of the 1900s.[15] The unregulated growth of small rural banking institutions can be partially attributed to the rising cost of agriculture especially in the Corn Belt and Cotton Belt. Throughout the corn and cotton belts real estate increases drove the demand for more local funding to continue to supply rising agricultural economics. The rural banking structures would supply the needed capital to meet the farm commodity market, however, this came with a price of reliability and low risk lending. Economic growth was promising from 1887 to 1920 with an average of 6 percent growth in GDP. In particular, the participation in World War I drove a booming agricultural market that drove optimism at the consumer and lending level which, in turn, resulted in a more lax approach in the lending process. Over banked conditions existed which pressured struggling banks to increase their services (specifically to the agricultural customers) without any additional regulatory oversight or qualifications. This dilemma introduced several high-risk and marginal business returns to the banking market.[16] Banking growth would continue through the first two decades well outside of previous trends disregarding the current economic and population standards. Banking profitability and loan standards begin to deteriorate as early as 1900 as a result. Approaching dust storm near Stratford, Texas. April 18, 1935. Crop failures beginning in 1921 began to impact this poorly regulated system, the expansion areas of corn and cotton suffered the largest due to the dust bowl era resulting in real estate value reductions. In addition, the year 1921 was the peak for banking expansion with roughly 31,000 banks in activity, however, with the failures at the agricultural level 505 banks would close between 1921 and 1930 marking the largest banking system failure on record. Regulatory questions began to hit the debating table around banking qualifications as a result; discussions would continue into the Great Depression as not only were banks failing but some would disappear altogether with no rhyme or reason.[17] The panic of financial crisis would increase in the Great Depression due to the lack of confidence in the regulatory and recovery displayed during the 1920s, this ultimately drove a nation of doubts, uneasiness, and lack of consumer confidence in the banking system. Contagion With a lack of consumer confidence in the economic direction given by the federal government panic started to spread across the country shortly after the Wall Street Crash of 1929. President Hoover retained the Gold Standard as the country's currency gauge throughout the following years. As a result, the American shareholders with the majority of the gold reserves began to grow wary of the value of gold in the near future. Europe's decision to move away from the Gold Standard caused individuals to start to withdraw gold shares and move the investments out of the country or began to hoard gold for future investment. The market continued to suffer due to these reactions, and as a result caused several of the everyday individuals to speculate on the economy in the coming months. Rumors of market stability and banking conditions began to spread, consumer confidence continued to drop and panic began to set in. Contagion spread like wildfire pushing Americans all over the country to withdraw their deposits en masse. This idea would continue from 1929 to 1933 causing the greatest financial crisis ever seen at the banking level pushing the economic recovery efforts further from resolution. An increase in the currency-deposit ratio and a money stock determinant forced money stock to fall and income to decline. This panic-induced banking failure took a mild recession to a major recession.[18] Whether this caused the Great Depression is still heavily debated due to many other attributing factors. However, it is evident that the banking system suffered massive reductions across the country due to the lack of consumer confidence. As withdraw requests would exceed cash availability banks began conducting steed discount sales such as fire sales and short sales. Due to the inability to immediately determine current value worth these fire sales and short sales would result in massive losses when recuperating any possible revenue for outstanding and defaulted loans. This would allow healthy banks to take advantage of the struggling units forcing additional losses resulting in banks not being able to deliver on depositor demands and creating a failing cycle that would become widespread.[19] Investment would continue to stay low through the next half-decade as the private sector would hoard savings due to uncertainty of the future. The federal government would run additional policy changes such as the Check tax, monetary restrictions (including reduction of money supply by burning), High Wage Policy, and the New Deal through the Hoover and Roosevelt administration. Social & political impacts Huts and unemployed men in New York City, 1935 One visible effect of the depression was the advent of Hoovervilles, which were ramshackle assemblages on vacant lots of cardboard boxes, tents, and small rickety wooden sheds built by homeless people. Residents lived in the shacks and begged for food or went to soup kitchens. The term was coined by Charles Michelson, publicity chief of the Democratic National Committee, to refer sardonically to President Herbert Hoover whose policies Michelson blamed for the depression.[20] The government did not calculate unemployment rates in the 1930s. The most widely accepted estimates of unemployment rates for the Great Depression are those by Stanley Lebergott from the 1950s. He estimated that unemployment reached 24.9 percent in the worst days of 1933. Another commonly cited estimate is by Michael Darby in 1976. He put the unemployment rate at a peak of 22.5 percent in 1932.[21] Job losses were less severe among women, workers in non durable industries (such as food and clothing), services and sales workers, and those employed by the government. Unskilled inner city men had much higher unemployment rates. Age also played a factor. Young people had a hard time getting their first job. Men over the age of 45, if they lost their job, would rarely find another one because employers had their choice of younger men. Millions were hired in the Great Depression, but men with weaker credentials were not, and they fell into a long-term unemployment trap. The migration in the 1920s that brought millions of farmers and townspeople to the bigger cities suddenly reversed itself. Unemployment made the cities unattractive, and the network of kinfolk and more ample food supplies made it wise for many to go back.[22] City governments in 1930–31 tried to meet the depression by expanding public works projects, as President Herbert Hoover strongly encouraged. However, tax revenues were plunging, and the cities as well as private relief agencies were totally overwhelmed by 1931; no one was able to provide significant additional relief. People fell back on the cheapest possible relief, including soup kitchens providing free meals to anyone who showed up.[23] After 1933, new sales taxes and infusions of federal money helped relieve the fiscal distress of the cities, but the budgets did not fully recover until 1941. The federal programs launched by Hoover and greatly expanded by President Roosevelt's New Deal used massive construction projects to try to jump-start the economy and solve the unemployment crisis. The alphabet agencies CCC, FERA, WPA and PWA built and repaired the public infrastructure in dramatic fashion, but did little to foster the recovery of the private sector. FERA, CCC and especially WPA focused on providing unskilled jobs for long-term unemployed men. Industry, a 1934 painting by Arthur Durston The Democrats won easy landslide victories in 1932 and 1934, and an even bigger one in 1936; the hapless Republican Party seemed doomed. The Democrats capitalized on the magnetic appeal of Roosevelt to urban America. The key groups were low-skilled and Catholics, Jews, and Blacks were especially impacted. The Democrats promised and delivered in terms of political recognition, labor union membership, and relief jobs. The cities' political machines were stronger than ever, for they mobilized their precinct workers to help families who needed help the most navigate the bureaucracy and get on relief. FDR won the vote of practically every demographic in 1936, including taxpayers, small business and the middle class. However, the Protestant middle-class voters turned sharply against him after the recession of 1937–38 undermined repeated promises that recovery was at hand. Historically, local political machines were primarily interested in controlling their wards and citywide elections; the smaller the turnout on election day, the easier it was to control the system. However, for Roosevelt to win the presidency in 1936 and 1940, he needed to carry the electoral college and that meant he needed the largest possible majorities in the cities to overwhelm rural voters. The machines came through for him.[24] The 3.5 million voters on relief payrolls during the 1936 election cast 82% percent of their ballots for Roosevelt. The rapidly growing, energetic labor unions, chiefly based in the cities, turned out 80% for FDR, as did Irish, Italian and Jewish communities. In all, the nation's 106 cities over 100,000 population voted 70% for FDR in 1936, compared to his 59% elsewhere. Roosevelt worked very well with the big city machines, with the one exception of his old nemesis, Tammany Hall in Manhattan. There he supported the complicated coalition built around the nominal Republican Fiorello La Guardia, and based on Jewish and Italian voters mobilized by labor unions.[25] In the 1938 United States elections the Republicans made an unexpected comeback, and Roosevelt's efforts to purge the Democratic Party of his political opponents backfired badly. The conservative coalition of Northern Republicans and Southern Democrats took control of Congress, outvoted the urban liberals, and halted the expansion of New Deal ideas. Roosevelt survived in 1940 thanks to his margin in the Solid South and in the cities. In the North the cities over 100,000 gave Roosevelt 60% of their votes, while the rest of the North favored Willkie 52–48%.[26] With the start of full-scale war mobilization in the summer of 1940, the economies of the cities rebounded. Even before Pearl Harbor, Washington pumped massive investments into new factories and funded round-the-clock munitions production, guaranteeing a job to anyone who showed up at the factory gate.[27] The war brought a restoration of prosperity and hopeful expectations for the future across the nation. It had the greatest impact on the cities of the West Coast, especially Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle.[28] Economic historians led by Price Fishback have examined the impact of New Deal spending on improving health conditions in the 114 largest cities, 1929–1937. They estimated that every additional $153,000 in relief spending (in 1935 dollars, or $1.95 million in year 2000 dollars) was associated with a reduction of one infant death, one suicide, and 2.4 deaths from infectious disease.[29][30] Global comparison of severity Main articles: Great Depression and Great Depression in Canada The Great Depression began in the United States of America and quickly spread worldwide.[31] It had severe effects in countries both rich and poor. Personal income, consumption, industrial output, tax revenue, profits and prices dropped, while international trade plunged by more than 50%. Unemployment in the U.S. rose to 25%, and in some countries rose as high as 33%.[32] Cities all around the world were hit hard, especially those dependent on heavy industry. Construction was virtually halted in many countries. Farming and rural areas suffered as crop prices fell by approximately 60%.[33][34] Facing plummeting demand with few alternate sources of jobs, areas dependent on primary sector industries such as grain farming, mining and logging, as well as construction, suffered the most.[35] Most economies started to recover by 1933–34. However, in the U.S. and some others the negative economic impact often lasted until the beginning of World War II, when war industries stimulated recovery.[36] There is little agreement on what caused the Great Depression, and the topic has become highly politicized. At the time the great majority of economists around the world recommended the "orthodox" solution of cutting government spending and raising taxes. However, British economist John Maynard Keynes advocated large-scale government deficit spending to make up for the failure of private investment. No major nation adopted his policies in the 1930s.[37] Europe Europe as a whole was badly hit, in both rural and industrial areas. Democracy was discredited was ended in most countries.[38] As the Great Depression in the United Kingdom worsened, there were no programs in Britain comparable to the New Deal. In France, the "Popular Front" government of Socialists with some Communist support, was in power 1936–1938. It briefly tried major programs favoring labor and the working class, but engendered stiff opposition. Germany during the Weimar Republic (1919–1933) fully recovered and was prosperous in the late 1920s. The Great Depression hit in 1929 and was severe. The political system descended into violence and the Nazi Party led by Adolf Hitler came to power through a series of elections in the early 1930s. Economic recovery was pursued through autarky, pressure on economic partners, wage controls, price controls, and spending programs such as public works and, especially, military spending. Spain was a poor rural nation that saw mounting political crises that led in 1936–1939 to the Spanish Civil War. Damage was great. 1939 saw the takeover of the country by Francisco Franco's Nationalist faction. In Benito Mussolini's Italy, the economic controls of his corporate state were tightened. The economy was never prosperous. Canada and the Caribbean In Canada, Between 1929 and 1939, the gross national product dropped 40%, compared to 37% in the U.S. Unemployment reached 28% at the depth of the Depression in 1929 and 1930,[39] while wages bottomed out in 1933.[40] Many businesses closed, as corporate profits of Can$396 million in 1929 turned into losses of $98 million in 1933. Exports shrank by 50% from 1929 to 1933. The worst hit were areas dependent on primary industries such as farming, mining and logging, as prices fell and there were few alternative jobs. Some families saw most or all of their assets disappear and their debts became heavier as prices fell. Local and provincial government set up relief programs but there was no nationwide New Deal-like program. The Conservative government of Prime Minister R. B. Bennett retaliated against the American high tariff act of 1930. It raised tariffs on U.S. goods and lowered them on British Empire goods. Nevertheless, the Canadian economy suffered. In 1935, Bennett proposed a series of programs that resembled the New Deal; but was defeated in the elections of that year and no such programs were passed.[41] Cuba and the Caribbean saw their greatest unemployment during the 1930s because of a decline in exports to the U.S., and a fall in export prices.[citation needed] Asia Japan's economy expanded at the rate of 5% of GDP per year after the years of modernization. Manufacturing and mining came to account for more than 30% of GDP, more than twice the value for the agricultural sector. Most industrial growth, however, was geared toward expanding the nation's military power. Beginning in 1937 much of Japan's energy was focused on a large-scale war and occupation of China. China's severe depression was worsened by the Second Sino-Japanese War during most of the 1930s, in addition to internal struggles between Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang and Mao Zedong's Communist Party. Australia and New Zealand In Australia, 1930s conservative and Labor-led governments concentrated on cutting spending and reducing the national debt.[citation needed] In New Zealand, a series of economic and social policies similar to the New Deal were adopted after the election of its First Labor Government in the 1935 general election.[42] Tight monetary policy The stock market crash in 1929 not only affected the business community and the public's economic confidence, but it also led to the banking system soon after the turmoil. The boom of the US economy in the 1920s was based on high indebtedness, and the rupture of the debt chain caused by the collapse of the bank had produced widespread and far-reaching adverse effects. It is precisely because of the shaky banking system, the United States was using monetary policy to save the economy that had been severely constrained. The American economist Charles P. Kindleberger of long-term studying of the Great Depression pointed out that in the 1929, before and after the collapse of the stock market, the Fed lowered interest rates, tried to expand the money supply and eased the financial market tensions for several times; however, they were not successful. The fundamental reason was that the relationship between various credit institutions and the community was in a drastic adjustment process, the normal supply channels for money supply were blocked.[43] Later, some economists argued that the Fed should do a large-scale opening market business at that time, but the essence of the statement was that the US government should be quick to implement measures to expand fiscal spending and fiscal deficits. Hoover Administration and the gold standard Between the 1920s and 1930s, The United States began to try the tight money policy to promote economic growth. In terms of the fiscal policy, the US government failed to reach a consensus on the fiscal issue. President Hoover began to expand federal spending, setting up the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to provide emergency assistance to banks and financial institutions that were on the verge of bankruptcy. Hoover's fiscal policy had accelerated the recession. In December 1929, as means of showing government confidence in the economy, Hoover reduced all income tax rates by 1% in 1929 due to the continuing budget surplus. By 1930, the surplus had turned into a fast-growing deficit of economic contraction. In 1931, the US federal fiscal revenue and expenditure changed from the financial surplus to a deficit for the first time (the deficit was less than 2.8% of GDP). By the end of 1931, Hoover had decided to recommend a large increase in taxes to balance the budget; in addition, Congress approved the tax increase in 1932, a substantial reduction in personal immunity to increase the number of taxpayers, and the interest rates had risen sharply, the lowest marginal rate rose from 25% on taxable income in excess of $100,000 to 63% on taxable income in excess of $1 million as the rates were made much more progressive. Hoover changed his approach to fighting the Depression. He justified his call for more federal assistance by noting that "We used such emergency powers to win the war; we can use them to fight the Depression, the misery, and suffering from which are equally great." This new approach embraced a number of initiatives. Unfortunately for the President, none proved especially effective. Just as important, with the presidential election approaching, the political heat generated by the Great Depression and the failure of Hoover's policies grew only more withering.[44] In terms of the financial reform, since the recession, Hoover had been trying to repair the economy. He founded government agencies to encourage labor harmony and support local public works aid which promoted cooperation of government and business, stabilize prices, and strive to balance the budget. His work focused on indirect relief from state governments and the private sector, which was reflected in the letter emphasizing "more effective supporting for each national committee" and volunteer service -" appealing for funding" from outside the government.[45] The commitment to maintain the gold standard system prevented the Federal Reserve expanded its money supply operations in 1930 and 1931, and it promoted Hoover's destructive balancing budgetary action to avoid the gold standard system overwhelming the dollar. As the Great Depression became worse, the call raised for increasing in federal intervention and spending. But Hoover refused to allow the federal government to force fixed prices, control the value of the business or manipulate the currency, in contrast, he started to control the dollar price. For official dollar prices, he expanded the credit base through free market operations in federal reserve system to ensure the domestic value of the dollar. He also tended to provide indirect aid to banks or local public works projects, refused to use federal funds to give aid to citizens directly, which he believed would lower public morale. Instead, he focused on volunteer fundraising to raise money for relief of the needy.[45] Even though Hoover was a philanthropist before becoming president, his opponents regarded him as unconcerned about the plight of impoverished citizens. During the administration of Hoover, the US economic policies had moved to activism and interventionism. In his re-election campaign, Hoover tried to persuade Americans that direct monetary relief from the federal government would be devastating to the economy in the long run. However, this message was highly unpopular, and consequently Hoover was defeated by Franklin Roosevelt in the presidential election of 1932.[citation needed] Roosevelt Administration and the gold standard At the beginning of 1933, during the last few weeks of Hoover's term, the American financial system was paralyzed. The Great Depression had been extended by the interventionist policy for four years. The bank crisis caused serious deflationary pressures. In fact, the worst period of 1932 – the Great Depression had passed, but the recovery was slow and weak. Roosevelt understood that traditional political and financial policy was not an adequate response to the crisis, and his administration chose to pursue the more radical measures of the New Deal. During the financial crisis of 1933 culminating in the banking holiday of March 1933, gold had flowed out from the Fed in large quantities, to individuals and companies in the United States worried about bank failures, and to foreign entities worried about the depreciation of the dollar.[46] In the spring and summer of 1933, the Roosevelt administration and the Congress took several actions that effectively suspended the gold standard. Roosevelt took office on March 4, 1933, and thirty-six hours later, he declared a nationwide bank moratorium in order to prevent a run on the banks by consumers lacking confidence in the economy. He also forbade banks to pay out gold or to export it. On March 9, Congress passed the Emergency Banking Act, giving the President the power to control international and domestic gold exports. It also gave the treasury secretary the power to surrender of gold coins and certificates. On April 5, Roosevelt ordered all gold coins and gold certificates in denominations of more than $100 turned in for other money. It required all persons to deliver all gold coin, gold bullion and gold certificates owned by them to the Federal Reserve by May 1 for the set price of $20.67 per ounce. By May 10, the government had taken in $300 million of gold coin and $470 million of gold certificates. On April 20, President Roosevelt issued a formal proclamation prohibiting gold exports and prohibiting the conversion of money and deposits into gold coins and ingots. On May 12, the United States weakened the monetary connection with gold further when FDR signed the Agricultural Adjustment Act. Title III of this act, also known as the Thomas amendment, gave the President power to reduce the dollar's gold content by as much as 50%. President Roosevelt also used the silver standard instead of gold to exchange dollars, it determined by the price of the bank.[46] On June 5, Congress enacted a joint resolution nullifying the clauses in many public and private obligations that permitted creditors to demand repayment in gold. In 1934, the government price of gold was increased to $35 per ounce, effectively increasing the gold on the Federal Reserve's balance sheets by 69 percent. This increase in assets allowed the Federal Reserve to further inflate the money supply. The abandonment of the gold standard made the Wall Street stock prices quickly increase; Wall Street's stock trading was exceptionally active. Political responses of the depression era Hoover's response Herbert Hoover The Hoover Administration attempted to correct the economic situation quickly, but was unsuccessful. Throughout Hoover's presidency, businesses were encouraged to keep wage rates high.[47] President Hoover and many academics believed that high wage rates would maintain a steady level of purchasing power, keeping the economy turning. In December 1929, after the beginning phases of the depression had begun, President Hoover continued to promote high wages. It wasn't until 1931 that business owners began reducing wages in order to stay afloat. Later that year, The Hoover Administration created the Check Tax[48] to generate extra government funding. The tax added a two-cent tax to the purchase of all bank checks, directly affecting the common man. This additional cost pushed people away from using checks, so instead, the majority of the population increased their usage of cash. Banks had already closed due to cash shortage, but this reaction to the Check Tax rapidly increased the pace. Roosevelt's New Deal In the "First New Deal" of 1933–34, a wide variety of programs were targeted toward the depression and agriculture in rural areas, in the banking industry, and for the economy as a whole. Relief programs were set up for the long-term unemployed who are routinely passed over whenever new jobs did open up.[49][50] The most popular program was the Civilian Conservation Corps that put young men to work in construction jobs, especially in rural areas. Prohibition was repealed, fulfilling a campaign pledge and generating new tax revenues for local and state governments. A series of relief programs were designed to provide jobs, in cooperation with local governments. The National Recovery Administration (NRA) sought to stimulate demand and provide work and relief through increased government spending. To end deflation the gold standard was suspended and a series of panels comprising business leaders in each industry set regulations that ended what was called "cut-throat competition," believed to be responsible for forcing down prices and profits nationwide.[51] Several Hoover agencies were continued, most notably the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which provided large-scale financial aid to banks, railroads, and other agencies.[52] Reforms that had never been enacted in the 1920s now took center stage, such as the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) designed to electrify and modernize a very poor, mountainous region in Appalachia. Top left: the Tennessee Valley Authority, part of the New Deal, being signed into law in 1933. Top right: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was responsible for initiatives and programs are collectively known as the New Deal. Bottom: a public mural from one of the artists employed by the New Deal. In 1934–36 came the much more controversial "Second New Deal." It featured Social Security; the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a very large relief agency for the unemployed run by the federal government; and the National Labor Relations Board, which operated as a strong stimulus to the growth of labor unions. Unemployment fell by ⅔ in Roosevelt's first term (from 25% to 9%, 1933–1937). The second set of reforms launched by the Roosevelt Administration during the same period included the Social Security Act of 1935. Insurance and poor relief ("public assistance" or "welfare") are constituent parts of the legislation, which provided pensions to the aged, benefit payments to dependent mothers, crippled children and blind people, and unemployment insurance.[53] The Social Security Act still plays a significant role of the American health and human service system so far. Much of the economy had recovered by 1936, but persistent, long-term unemployment lasted until rearmament began for World War II in 1940.[54] The New Deal was, and still is, sharply debated.[55] The business community, with considerable support from such conservative Democrats as Al Smith, launched a crusade against the New Deal, warning that a dangerous man had seized control of the economy and threatened America's conservative traditions.[56] Scholars remain divided as well. When asked whether "as a whole, government policies of the New Deal served to lengthen and deepen the Great Depression," 74% of American university professors specializing in economic history disagreed, 21% agreed with provisos, and 6% fully agreed. Among respondents who taught or studied economic theory, 51% disagreed, 22% agreed with provisos, and 22% fully agreed.[57] Recession of 1937–1938 Main article: Recession of 1937–1938 A homeless family of seven walks along U.S. 99, bound for San Diego, where the father hoped to enroll in welfare because he once lived there. They walked from Phoenix, Arizona, where they picked cotton, 1939. By 1936, all the main economic indicators had regained the levels of the late 1920s, except for unemployment, which remained high. In 1937, the American economy unexpectedly fell, lasting through most of 1938. Production declined sharply, as did profits and employment. Unemployment jumped from 14.3% in 1937 to 19.0% in 1938.[58] A contributing factor to the Recession of 1937 was a tightening of monetary policy by the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve doubled reserve requirements between August 1936 and May 1937[59] leading to a contraction in the money supply. The Roosevelt Administration reacted by launching a rhetorical campaign against monopoly power, which was cast as the cause of the depression, and appointing Thurman Arnold to break up large trusts; Arnold was not effective, and the campaign ended once World War II began and corporate energies had to be directed to winning the war.[60] By 1939, the effects of the 1937 recession had disappeared. Employment in the private sector recovered to the level of the 1936 and continued to increase until the war came and manufacturing employment leaped from 11 million in 1940 to 18 million in 1943.[61] Another response to the 1937 deepening of the Great Depression had more tangible results. Ignoring the pleas of the Treasury Department, Roosevelt embarked on an antidote to the depression, reluctantly abandoning his efforts to balance the budget and launching a $5 billion spending program in the spring of 1938 in an effort to increase mass purchasing power. Total employment numbers in the United States from 1920 to 1940, excluding farms and WPA Business-oriented observers explained the recession and recovery in very different terms from the Keynesian economists. They argued the New Deal had been very hostile to business expansion in 1935–37. They said it had encouraged massive strikes which had a negative impact on major industries and had threatened anti-trust attacks on big corporations. But all those threats diminished sharply after 1938. For example, the antitrust efforts fizzled out without major cases. The CIO and AFL unions started battling each other more than corporations, and tax policy became more favorable to long-term growth.[62] On the other hand, according to economist Robert Higgs, when looking only at the supply of consumer goods, significant GDP growth only resumed in 1946. (Higgs does not estimate the value to consumers of collective goods like victory in war.[63]) To Keynesians, the war economy showed just how large the fiscal stimulus required to end the downturn of the Depression was, and it led, at the time, to fears that as soon as America demobilized, it would return to Depression conditions and industrial output would fall to its pre-war levels. The incorrect prediction by Alvin Hansen and other Keynesians that a new depression would start after the war failed to take account of pent-up consumer demand as a result of the Depression and World War.[64] Afterward A woman working in a military aircraft factory in Fort Worth, Texas in 1942. Millions of American women found work in the defense industry during the Second World War. The government began heavy military spending in 1940, and started drafting millions of young men that year.[65] By 1945, 17 million had entered service to their country, but that was not enough to absorb all the unemployed. During the war, the government subsidized wages through cost-plus contracts. Government contractors were paid in full for their costs, plus a certain percentage profit margin. That meant the more wages a person was paid the higher the company profits since the government would cover them plus a percentage.[66] Using these cost-plus contracts in 1941–1943, factories hired hundreds of thousands of unskilled workers and trained them, at government expense. The military's own training programs concentrated on teaching technical skills involving machinery, engines, electronics and radio, preparing soldiers and sailors for the post-war economy.[67] Structural walls were lowered dramatically during the war, especially informal policies against hiring women, minorities, and workers over 45 or under 18. In 1941, Executive Order 8802 banned racial discrimination in war-related employment, and set up the Fair Employment Practices Commission to enforce this. Strikes (except in coal mining) were sharply reduced as unions pushed their members to work harder. Tens of thousands of new factories and shipyards were built, with new bus services and nursery care for children making them more accessible. Wages soared for workers, making it quite expensive to sit at home. Employers retooled so that unskilled new workers could handle jobs that previously required skills that were now in short supply. The combination of all these factors drove unemployment below 2% in 1943.[68] Roosevelt's declining popularity in 1938 was evident throughout the US in the business community, the press, and the Senate and House. Many were labeling the recession the "Roosevelt Recession". In late December 1938, Roosevelt looked to gain popularity with the American people, and try to regain the nation's confidence in the economy. His decision that December to name Harry Hopkins as Secretary of Commerce was an attempt to achieve the confidence he so badly needed. The appointment came as a surprise to most because of Hopkins' lack of business experience, but proved to be vastly important in shaping the years following the recession.[69] Hopkins made it his mission to strengthen ties between the Roosevelt administration and the business community. While Roosevelt believed in complete reform through the New Deal, Hopkins took a more administrative position;[clarification needed] he felt that recovery was imperative and that The New Deal would continue to hinder recovery. With support from Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace and Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr, popular support for recovery, rather than reform, swept the nation. By the end of 1938 reform had been struck down, as no new reform laws were passed.[69] The economy in America was now beginning to show signs of recovery and the unemployment rate was lowering following the abysmal year of 1938. The biggest shift towards recovery, however, came with the decision of Germany to invade France in May 1940. After France had been defeated in June, the U.S. economy would skyrocket in the months following. France's defeat meant that Britain and other allies would look to the U.S. for large supplies of materials for the war.[70] The need for these war materials created a huge spurt in production, thus leading to a promising level of employment in America. Moreover, Britain chose to pay for their materials in gold. This stimulated the gold inflow and raised the monetary base, which in turn, stimulated the American economy to its highest point since the summer of 1929 when the depression began.[70] By the end of 1941, before American entry into the war, defense spending and military mobilization had started one of the greatest booms in American history thus ending the last traces of unemployment.[70] Facts and figures Fireside Chat 1 On the Banking Crisis 13:09 Roosevelt's first Fireside Chat on the Banking Crisis (March 12, 1933) Effects of depression in the U.S.:[71] 13 million people became unemployed. In 1932, 34 million people belonged to families with no regular full-time wage earner.[72] Industrial production fell by nearly 45% between 1929 and 1932. Homebuilding dropped by 80% between the years 1929 and 1932. In the 1920s, the banking system in the U.S. was about $50 billion, which was about 50% of GDP.[73] From 1929 to 1932, about 5,000 banks went out of business. By 1933, 11,000 of US 25,000 banks had failed.[74] Between 1929 and 1933, U.S. GDP fell around 30%; the stock market lost almost 90% of its value.[75] In 1929, the unemployment rate averaged 3%.[76] In Cleveland, the unemployment rate was[when?] 50%; in Toledo, Ohio, 80%.[72] One Soviet trading corporation in New York averaged 350 applications a day from Americans seeking jobs in the Soviet Union.[77] Over one million families lost their farms between 1930 and 1934.[72] Corporate profits dropped from $10 billion in 1929 to $1 billion in 1932.[72] Between 1929 and 1932, the income of the average American family was reduced by 40%.[78] Nine million savings accounts were wiped out between 1930 and 1933.[72] 273,000 families were evicted from their homes in 1932.[72] There were two million homeless people migrating around the country.[72] Over 60% of Americans were categorized as poor by the federal government in 1933.[72] In the last prosperous year (1929), there were 279,678 immigrants recorded, but in 1933 only 23,068 came to the U.S.[79][80] In the early 1930s, more people emigrated from the United States than immigrated to it.[81] With little economic activity there was scant demand for new coinage. No nickels or dimes were minted in 1932–33, no quarter dollars in 1931 or 1933, no half dollars from 1930 to 1932, and no silver dollars in the years 1929–33. In 1932 deflation was 10.7 percent and real interest rate was 11.49 percent.[82] The U.S. government sponsored a Mexican Repatriation program which was intended to encourage people to voluntarily move to Mexico, but thousands, including many U.S. citizens, were deported against their will. Altogether about 400,000 Mexicans were repatriated.[83] New York social workers reported that 25% of all schoolchildren were malnourished. In the mining counties of West Virginia, Illinois, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania, the proportion of malnourished children was perhaps as high as 90%.[72] Many people became ill with diseases such as tuberculosis (TB).[72] The 1930 U.S. Census determined the U.S. population to be 122,775,046. About 40% of the population was under 20 years old.[84] Suicide rates increased, however life expectancy increased from about 57 years in 1929 to 63 in 1933.[85] See also Causes of the Great Depression New Deal coalition Entertainment during the Great Depression Great Contraction Penny auction (foreclosure) Timeline of the Great Depression Ham and Eggs Movement, California pension plan, 1938–40 Great Depression in Washington State Project General: Herbert Hoover, in full Herbert Clark Hoover, (born August 10, 1874, West Branch, Iowa, U.S.—died October 20, 1964, New York, New York), 31st president of the United States (1929–33). Hoover’s reputation as a humanitarian—earned during and after World War I as he rescued millions of Europeans from starvation—faded from public consciousness when his administration proved unable to alleviate widespread joblessness, homelessness, and hunger in his own country during the early years of the Great Depression. Hoover, Herbert Hoover, Herbert Hoover was the son of Jesse and Hulda Hoover. His father was a hardworking blacksmith and farm-implement dealer and his mother an extremely pious woman who eventually adopted Quakerism. Amid the streams, woodlands, and rolling hills around West Branch, Iowa, the young Hoover enjoyed an almost idyllic childhood—until age six, when his father died from heart disease; his mother died of pneumonia three years later. The orphaned Herbert then left Iowa for Oregon, where he grew up in the home of John and Laura Minthorn, his maternal uncle and aunt. His parents’ character and religiosity and the trauma of his early childhood left an indelible mark on the young Herbert, instilling in him the self-reliance, industriousness, and moral concern for the needy, abandoned, and downtrodden that would characterize him for the rest of his life (his favourite book was David Copperfield). In classic Quaker fashion, his speech, dress, and demeanour were unadorned. Hoover was a member of the first class at Stanford University (1895). He graduated with a degree in geology and became a mining engineer, working on a wide variety of projects on four continents and displaying exceptional business acumen. Within two decades of leaving Stanford, he had amassed a personal net worth of about $4 million. Playing cards featuring Gore and Clinton BRITANNICA QUIZ Weird U.S. Presidents Quiz What animal did Calvin Coolidge grant a presidential pardon to? Whose chair did John Adams and Thomas Jefferson vandalize to get souvenirs? Out of all the facts about presidents of the United States, these are some of the weirdest—how many do you know? Hoover, Herbert Hoover, Herbert Caught in China during the Boxer Rebellion (1900), Hoover displayed his gift for humanitarian rescue by organizing relief for trapped foreigners. He drew on his China experience in 1914, when he helped Americans stranded in Europe at the outbreak of World War I. For the next three years, he headed the Commission for Relief in Belgium, overseeing what he called “the greatest charity the world has ever seen” and exhibiting impressive executive ability in helping to procure food for some nine million people whose country had been overrun by the German army. So skilled was Hoover’s performance that Pres. Woodrow Wilson appointed him U.S. food administrator for the duration of the war. Relying primarily on voluntary cooperation by the American public, Hoover won wide support for “wheatless” and “meatless” days so that as much of the nation’s agricultural output as possible could be sent to soldiers at the front. Recognized by war’s end as the “Great Engineer” who could organize resources and personnel to accomplish extraordinary acts of benevolence, Hoover was the natural choice to head the American Relief Administration. The ARA sent shiploads of food and other life-sustaining supplies to war-ravaged Europe—including Germany and Bolshevik Russia during the famine in that country in 1921–23. The outreach to Soviet Russia garnered Hoover much criticism, but he defended his actions on humanitarian grounds, saying, “Twenty million people are starving. Whatever their politics, they shall be fed.” In 1921 President-elect Warren G. Harding chose Hoover to serve as secretary of commerce. In the Harding cabinet Hoover proved to be one of the few progressive voices in a Republican administration that generally saw little role for government other than assisting the growth of business. Hoover alienated many Old Guard Republican leaders as he vigorously supported U.S. membership in the League of Nations, collective bargaining rights for labour, and government regulation of such new industries as radio broadcasting and commercial aviation. Continuing as commerce secretary under Pres. Calvin Coolidge, Hoover spearheaded efforts that ultimately led to construction of Hoover Dam and the St. Lawrence Seaway. He illustrated his continuing dedication to humanitarian rescue when he supervised relief efforts during and after the Mississippi River flood of 1927. When President Coolidge decided not to run for another term in 1928, Hoover received the Republican presidential nomination, despite the objections of conservatives opposed to his departure from the party’s traditional laissez-faire philosophy. In the ensuing campaign, Hoover and running mate Charles Curtis ran against New York Gov. Alfred E. Smith and vice presidential candidate Joseph T. Robinson in a contest that focused on Prohibition and religion. Smith opposed Prohibition, while Hoover remained equivocal, calling it an “experiment noble in motive.” Smith’s Roman Catholicism proved a liability, especially in the South, but the election outcome chiefly reflected the close identification in the public mind of the Republican Party with the enormous prosperity of the 1920s. Hoover captured more than 21 million popular votes to Smith’s approximately 15 million, and he received 444 electoral votes to his Democratic opponent’s 87. (See primary source document: Inaugural Address. See also Cabinet of President Herbert Hoover and United States presidential election of 1928.) Cabinet of President Herbert Hoover March 4, 1929–March 3, 1933 State Henry Lewis Stimson Treasury Andrew W. Mellon Ogden Livingston Mills (from February 13, 1932) War James William Good Patrick Jay Hurley (from December 9, 1929) Navy Charles Francis Adams Attorney General William De Witt Mitchell Interior Ray Lyman Wilbur Agriculture Arthur Mastick Hyde Commerce Robert Patterson Lamont Roy Dikeman Chapin (from December 14, 1932) Labor James John Davis William Nuckles Doak (from December 9, 1930) Inauguration of Herbert Hoover, centre, flanked by portraits of Hoover and Vice President Charles Curtis. During the 1928 presidential campaign, Hoover said, “We are nearer today to the ideal of the abolition of poverty and fear from the lives of men and women than ever before in any land.” One year later the stock market cash of 1929 plunged the country into the worst economic collapse in its history. President Hoover parted ways with those leaders of the Republican Party—including Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon—who believed there was nothing for the government to do but wait for the next phase of the business cycle. Hoover took prompt action. He called business leaders to the White House to urge them not to lay off workers or cut wages. He urged state and local governments to join private charities in caring for Americans made destitute by the Depression. He asked Congress to appropriate money for public-works projects to expand government employment. In 1931 he backed creation of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC, established 1932), a large-scale lending institution intended to help banks and industries and thereby promote a general recovery. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Subscribe Now A shanytown (“Hooverville”) in Seattle, c. 1932–37. The nation’s economy failed to respond to Hoover’s initiatives. As the Depression worsened, banks and other businesses collapsed and poverty stalked the land, and the American people began to blame Hoover for the calamity. The homeless began calling their shantytowns “Hoovervilles.” Demands rose for greater government action, especially direct relief payments to the most impoverished of the millions of unemployed. Believing that a dole would prove addictive, sapping the will of Americans to provide for themselves, Hoover adamantly opposed direct federal relief payments to individuals. He was also a firm believer in a balanced budget, unwilling to plunge the federal government into massive debt through a welfare program. This is not to say that Hoover opposed assistance to those in need. For example, expenditures for American Indian schools and health care doubled during his administration, and this earned him accolades as the first president to recognize some basic Indian rights. Hoover also furthered the long-held Quaker interest in prison reform, alleviating prison overcrowding by building new penitentiaries and work camps, expanding educational opportunities for prisoners, and increasing the number of prisoners placed on parole. He also supported RFC loans to states for relief purposes, though this modest program did little to alleviate suffering or to stimulate economic recovery. Also largely ineffective—but sincerely pursued—was Hoover’s attempt to defuse international tensions by promoting disarmament negotiations at the London Naval Conference of 1930. Quaker pacifism undoubtedly spurred Hoover’s interest in the arms race and international disarmament, but, like his relief schemes on the home front that could hardly suppress or contain the Depression, these efforts failed to reduce world tensions or to prevent Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in 1931. Bonus Army Bonus Army Hoover also made some critical mistakes in his handling of the Depression. In 1930, for example, he signed into law (against the advice of many leading economists) the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which raised many import duties so high that foreign countries could not sell goods in the United States; as a result, those countries could not—or would not—purchase American goods at a time when the need for sales abroad had never been greater. More problems arose in 1932, when Hoover authorized General Douglas MacArthur to evict from Washington, D.C., the Bonus Army, a group of World War I veterans who had camped in the nation’s capital to pressure Congress into awarding a promised bonus many years in advance of the scheduled payout date. MacArthur greatly exceeded Hoover’s orders in using military force against the unemployed former soldiers. The result was a public relations nightmare for the president. Hoover’s silence regarding MacArthur’s excesses led the public to think that the president had been responsible for the brutality. The man who had enjoyed a worldwide reputation as a humanitarian now appeared heartless and cruel. By the 1932 presidential campaign, Hoover was blaming the Depression on events abroad and predicting that election of his Democratic challenger, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, would only intensify the disaster. The electorate obviously thought differently, as Roosevelt captured nearly 23 million votes (and 472 electoral votes) to Hoover’s slightly less than 16 million (59 electoral votes). During the months between the election and the inauguration, Hoover attempted unsuccessfully to gain Roosevelt’s commitment to sustaining his policies. When he left the White House on March 4, 1933, Hoover was a defeated and embittered man. Hoover and his wife—the former Lou Henry (Lou Hoover), also a Stanford-trained geologist—moved first to Palo Alto, California, and then to New York City, where they took up residence at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. For the next 30 years, Hoover was closely identified with the most conservative elements in the Republican Party, condemning what he regarded as the radicalism of the New Deal and opposing Roosevelt’s attempts to take a more active role against German and Japanese aggression. He believed fascism lay at the root of government programs like the New Deal and argued so in The Challenge to Liberty (1934) and the eight-volume Addresses upon the American Road (1936–61). An ardent anticommunist and foe of international crusades, he opposed American entry into World War II (until the attack on Pearl Harbor) and denounced American involvement in the Korean and Vietnam wars. His last major activity was heading the Hoover Commission, under Presidents Harry Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower, which aimed at streamlining the federal bureaucracy. The research-oriented Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University—founded in 1919 as the Hoover War Collection, a library on World War I—is named in his honour. The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica This article was most recently revised and updated by Adam Augustyn. George Washington Introduction & Top Questions Childhood and youth Prerevolutionary military and political career Revolutionary leadership Presidency Cabinet of Pres. George Washington Fast Facts 2-Min Summary Timeline Achievements Top Questions Facts & Related Content Quizzes Quotes Media Videos Images More More Articles On This Topic Additional Reading Contributors Article History Related Biographies Samuel Adams Samuel Adams American politician Alexander Hamilton Alexander Hamilton United States statesman Benjamin Franklin Benjamin Franklin American author, scientist, and statesman Nathanael Greene Nathanael Greene United States general See All Home Politics, Law & Government World Leaders Presidents & Heads of States George Washington president of United States      Alternate titles: Father of His Country By Henry Graff See All • Edit History George Washington George Washington See all media Born: February 22, 1732 Virginia Died: December 14, 1799 (aged 67) Mount Vernon Virginia Title / Office: presidency of the United States of America (1789-1797), United States Continental Congress (1774-1775), United States Political Affiliation: Federalist Party Awards And Honors: Hall of Fame (1900) Top Questions What is George Washington known for? What political party did George Washington belong to? Did George Washington own slaves? How did George Washington die? Did George Washington chop down his father’s cherry tree? Summary Read a brief summary of this topic Follow George Washington's life through the American Revolution and retirement to Mount Vernon Follow George Washington's life through the American Revolution and retirement to Mount VernonSee all videos for this article George Washington: timeline George Washington: timeline George Washington, also called Father of His Country, (born February 22 [February 11, Old Style], 1732, Westmoreland county, Virginia [U.S.]—died December 14, 1799, Mount Vernon, Virginia, U.S.), American general and commander in chief of the colonial armies in the American Revolution (1775–83) and subsequently first president of the United States (1789–97). Washington’s father, Augustine Washington, had gone to school in England, tasted seafaring life, and then settled down to manage his growing Virginia estates. His mother was Mary Ball, whom Augustine, a widower, had married early the previous year. Washington’s paternal lineage had some distinction; an early forebear was described as a “gentleman,” Henry VIII later gave the family lands, and its members held various offices. But family fortunes fell with the Puritan revolution in England, and John Washington, grandfather of Augustine, migrated in 1657 to Virginia. The ancestral home at Sulgrave, Northamptonshire, is maintained as a Washington memorial. Little definite information exists on any of the line until Augustine. He was an energetic, ambitious man who acquired much land, built mills, took an interest in opening iron mines, and sent his two eldest sons to England for schooling. By his first wife, Jane Butler, he had four children. By his second wife, Mary Ball, he had six. Augustine died April 12, 1743. Childhood and youth George Washington George Washington George Washington: map George Washington: map Little is known of George Washington’s early childhood, spent largely on the Ferry Farm on the Rappahannock River, opposite Fredericksburg, Virginia. Mason L. Weems’s stories of the hatchet and cherry tree and of young Washington’s repugnance to fighting are apocryphal efforts to fill a manifest gap. He attended school irregularly from his 7th to his 15th year, first with the local church sexton and later with a schoolmaster named Williams. Some of his schoolboy papers survive. He was fairly well trained in practical mathematics—gauging, several types of mensuration, and such trigonometry as was useful in surveying. He studied geography, possibly had a little Latin, and certainly read some of The Spectator and other English classics. The copybook in which he transcribed at 14 a set of moral precepts, or Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation, was carefully preserved. His best training, however, was given him by practical men and outdoor occupations, not by books. He mastered tobacco growing and stock raising, and early in his teens he was sufficiently familiar with surveying to plot the fields about him. At his father’s death, the 11-year-old boy became the ward of his half brother Lawrence, a man of fine character who gave him wise and affectionate care. Lawrence inherited the beautiful estate of Little Hunting Creek, which had been granted to the original settler, John Washington, and which Augustine had done much since 1738 to develop. Lawrence married Anne (Nancy) Fairfax, daughter of Col. William Fairfax, a cousin and agent of Lord Fairfax and one of the chief proprietors of the region. Lawrence also built a house and named the 2,500-acre (1,000-hectare) holding Mount Vernon in honour of the admiral under whom he had served in the siege of Cartagena. Living there chiefly with Lawrence (though he spent some time near Fredericksburg with his other half brother, Augustine, called Austin), George entered a more spacious and polite world. Anne Fairfax Washington was a woman of charm, grace, and culture; Lawrence had brought from his English school and naval service much knowledge and experience. A valued neighbour and relative, George William Fairfax, whose large estate, Belvoir, was about 4 miles (6 km) distant, and other relatives by marriage, the Carlyles of Alexandria, helped form George’s mind and manners. Betsy Ross Flag BRITANNICA QUIZ The American Revolution Spurred by Great Britain’s taxation without fair representation, this political uprising led to the formation of the United States of America. Test your knowledge of the thirteen colonies’ quest for independence in this quiz. The youth turned first to surveying as a profession. Lord Fairfax, a middle-aged bachelor who owned more than 5,000,000 acres (2,000,000 hectares) in northern Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley, came to America in 1746 to live with his cousin George William at Belvoir and to look after his properties. Two years later he sent to the Shenandoah Valley a party to survey and plot his lands to make regular tenants of the squatters moving in from Pennsylvania. With the official surveyor of Prince William county in charge, Washington went along as assistant. The 16-year-old lad kept a disjointed diary of the trip, which shows skill in observation. He describes the discomfort of sleeping under “one thread Bear blanket with double its Weight of Vermin such as Lice Fleas & c”; an encounter with an Indian war party bearing a scalp; the Pennsylvania-German emigrants, “as ignorant a set of people as the Indians they would never speak English but when spoken to they speak all Dutch”; and the serving of roast wild turkey on “a Large Chip,” for “as for dishes we had none.” The following year (1749), aided by Lord Fairfax, Washington received an appointment as official surveyor of Culpeper county, and for more than two years he was kept almost constantly busy. Surveying not only in Culpeper but also in Frederick and Augusta counties, he made journeys far beyond the Tidewater region into the western wilderness. The experience taught him resourcefulness and endurance and toughened him in both body and mind. Coupled with Lawrence’s ventures in land, it also gave him an interest in western development that endured throughout his life. He was always disposed to speculate in western holdings and to view favourably projects for colonizing the West, and he greatly resented the limitations that the crown in time laid on the westward movement. In 1752 Lord Fairfax determined to take up his final residence in the Shenandoah Valley and settled there in a log hunting lodge, which he called Greenway Court after a Kentish manor of his family’s. There Washington was sometimes entertained and had access to a small library that Fairfax had begun accumulating at Oxford. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Subscribe Now Mount Vernon Mount Vernon The years 1751–52 marked a turning point in Washington’s life, for they placed him in control of Mount Vernon. Lawrence, stricken by tuberculosis, went to Barbados in 1751 for his health, taking George along. From this sole journey beyond the present borders of the United States, Washington returned with the light scars of an attack of smallpox. In July of the next year, Lawrence died, making George executor and residuary heir of his estate should his daughter, Sarah, die without issue. As she died within two months, Washington at age 20 became head of one of the best Virginia estates. He always thought farming the “most delectable” of pursuits. “It is honorable,” he wrote, “it is amusing, and, with superior judgment, it is profitable.” And, of all the spots for farming, he thought Mount Vernon the best. “No estate in United America,” he assured an English correspondent, “is more pleasantly situated than this.” His greatest pride in later days was to be regarded as the first farmer of the land. He gradually increased the estate until it exceeded 8,000 acres (3,000 hectares). He enlarged the house in 1760 and made further enlargements and improvements on the house and its landscaping in 1784–86. He also tried to keep abreast of the latest scientific advances. The Farmer, George Washington The Farmer, George Washington For the next 20 years the main background of Washington’s life was the work and society of Mount Vernon. He gave assiduous attention to the rotation of crops, fertilization of the soil, and the management of livestock. He had to manage the 18 slaves that came with the estate and others he bought later; by 1760 he had paid taxes on 49 slaves—though he strongly disapproved of the institution and hoped for some mode of abolishing it. At the time of his death, more than 300 slaves were housed in the quarters on his property. He had been unwilling to sell slaves lest families be broken up, even though the increase in their numbers placed a burden on him for their upkeep and gave him a larger force of workers than he required, especially after he gave up the cultivation of tobacco. In his will, he bequeathed the slaves in his possession to his wife and ordered that upon her death they be set free, declaring also that the young, the aged, and the infirm among them “shall be comfortably cloathed & fed by my heirs.” Still, this accounted for only about half the slaves on his property. The other half, owned by his wife, were entailed to the Custis estate, so that on her death they were destined to pass to her heirs. However, she freed all the slaves in 1800 after his death. For diversion Washington was fond of riding, fox hunting, and dancing, of such theatrical performances as he could reach, and of duck hunting and sturgeon fishing. He liked billiards and cards and not only subscribed to racing associations but also ran his own horses in races. In all outdoor pursuits, from wrestling to colt breaking, he excelled. A friend of the 1750s describes him as “straight as an Indian, measuring six feet two inches in his stockings”; as very muscular and broad-shouldered but, though large-boned, weighing only 175 pounds; and as having long arms and legs. His penetrating blue-gray eyes were overhung by heavy brows, his nose was large and straight, and his mouth was large and firmly closed. “His movements and gestures are graceful, his walk majestic, and he is a splendid horseman.” He soon became prominent in community affairs, was an active member and later vestryman of the Episcopal church, and as early as 1755 expressed a desire to stand for the Virginia House of Burgesses. Prerevolutionary military and political career of George Washington Early military career Traditions of John Washington’s feats as Indian fighter and Lawrence Washington’s talk of service days helped imbue George with military ambition. Just after Lawrence’s death, Lieut. Gov. Robert Dinwiddie appointed George adjutant for the southern district of Virginia at £100 a year (November 1752). In 1753 he became adjutant of the Northern Neck and Eastern Shore. Later that year, Dinwiddie found it necessary to warn the French to desist from their encroachments on Ohio Valley lands claimed by the crown. After sending one messenger who failed to reach the goal, he determined to dispatch Washington. On the day he received his orders, October 31, 1753, Washington set out for the French posts. His party consisted of a Dutchman to serve as interpreter, the expert scout Christopher Gist as guide, and four others, two of them experienced traders with the Indians. Theoretically, Great Britain and France were at peace. Actually, war impended, and Dinwiddie’s message was an ultimatum: the French must get out or be put out. George Washington: sketch map George Washington: sketch map The journey proved rough, perilous, and futile. Washington’s party left what is now Cumberland, Maryland, in the middle of November and, despite wintry weather and impediments of the wilderness, reached Fort LeBoeuf, at what is now Waterford, Pennsylvania, 20 miles (32 km) south of Lake Erie, without delay. The French commander was courteous but adamant. As Washington reported, his officers “told me, That it was their absolute Design to take possession of the Ohio, and by God they would do it.” Eager to carry this alarming news back, Washington pushed off hurriedly with Gist. He was lucky to have gotten back alive. An Indian fired at them at 15 paces but missed. When they crossed the Allegheny River on a raft, Washington was jerked into the ice-filled stream but saved himself by catching one of the timbers. That night he almost froze in his wet clothing. He reached Williamsburg, Virginia, on January 16, 1754, where he hastily penned a record of the journey. Dinwiddie, who was labouring to convince the crown of the seriousness of the French threat, had it printed, and when he sent it to London, it was reprinted in three different forms. The enterprising governor forthwith planned an expedition to hold the Ohio country. He made Joshua Fry colonel of a provincial regiment, appointed Washington lieutenant colonel, and set them to recruiting troops. Two agents of the Ohio Company, which Lawrence Washington and others had formed to develop lands on the upper Potomac and Ohio rivers, had begun building a fort at what later became Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Dinwiddie, ready to launch into his own war, sent Washington with two companies to reinforce this post. In April 1754 the lieutenant colonel set out from Alexandria with about 160 men at his back. He marched to Cumberland only to learn that the French had anticipated the British blow; they had taken possession of the fort of the Ohio Company and had renamed it Fort Duquesne. Happily, the Indians of the area offered support. Washington therefore struggled cautiously forward to within about 40 miles (60 km) of the French position and erected his own post at Great Meadows, near what is now Confluence, Pennsylvania. From this base, he made a surprise attack (May 28, 1754) upon an advance detachment of 30 French, killing the commander, Coulon de Jumonville, and nine others and taking the rest prisoners. The French and Indian War had begun. Washington at once received promotion to a full colonelcy and was reinforced, commanding a considerable body of Virginia and North Carolina troops, with Indian auxiliaries. But his attack soon brought the whole French force down upon him. They drove his 350 men into the Great Meadows fort (Fort Necessity) on July 3, besieged it with 700 men, and, after an all-day fight, compelled him to surrender. The construction of the fort had been a blunder, for it lay in a waterlogged creek bottom, was commanded on three sides by forested elevations approaching it closely, and was too far from Washington’s supports. The French agreed to let the disarmed colonials march back to Virginia with the honours of war, but they compelled Washington to promise that Virginia would not build another fort on the Ohio for a year and to sign a paper acknowledging responsibility for “l’assassinat” of de Jumonville, a word that Washington later explained he did not rightly understand. He returned to Virginia, chagrined but proud, to receive the thanks of the House of Burgesses and to find that his name had been mentioned in the London gazettes. His remark in a letter to his brother that “I have heard the bullets whistle; and believe me, there is something charming in the sound” was commented on humorously by the author Horace Walpole and sarcastically by King George II. The arrival of Gen. Edward Braddock and his army in Virginia in February 1755, as part of the triple plan of campaign that called for his advance on Fort Duquesne and in New York Gov. William Shirley’s capture of Fort Niagara and Sir William Johnson’s capture of Crown Point, brought Washington new opportunities and responsibilities. He had resigned his commission in October 1754 in resentment of the slighting treatment and underpayment of colonial officers and particularly because of an untactful order of the British war office that provincial officers of whatever rank would be subordinate to any officer holding the king’s commission. But he ardently desired a part in the war; “my inclinations,” he wrote a friend, “are strongly bent to arms.” When Braddock showed appreciation of his merits and invited him to join the expedition as personal aide-de-camp, with the courtesy title of colonel, he therefore accepted. His self-reliance, decision, and masterfulness soon became apparent. At table he had frequent disputes with Braddock, who, when contractors failed to deliver their supplies, attacked the colonials as supine and dishonest while Washington defended them warmly. His freedom of utterance is proof of Braddock’s esteem. Braddock accepted Washington’s unwise advice that he divide his army, leaving half of it to come up with the slow wagons and cattle train and taking the other half forward against Fort Duquesne at a rapid pace. Washington was ill with fever during June but joined the advance guard in a covered wagon on July 8, begged to lead the march on Fort Duquesne with his Virginians and Indian allies, and was by Braddock’s side when on July 9 the army was ambushed and bloodily defeated. In this defeat Washington displayed the combination of coolness and determination, the alliance of unconquerable energy with complete poise, that was the secret of so many of his successes. So ill that he had to use a pillow instead of a saddle and that Braddock ordered his body servant to keep special watch over him, Washington was, nevertheless, everywhere at once. At first he followed Braddock as the general bravely tried to rally his men to push either forward or backward, the wisest course the circumstances permitted. Then he rode back to bring up the Virginians from the rear and rallied them with effect on the flank. To him was largely due the escape of the force. His exposure of his person was as reckless as Braddock’s, who was fatally wounded on his fifth horse; Washington had two horses shot out from under him and his clothes cut by four bullets without being hurt. He was at Braddock’s deathbed, helped bring the troops back, and was repaid by being appointed, in August 1755, while still only 23 years old, commander of all Virginia troops. But no part of his later service was conspicuous. Finding that a Maryland captain who held a royal commission would not obey him, he rode north in February 1756 to Boston to have the question settled by the commander in chief in America, Governor Shirley, and, bearing a letter from Dinwiddie, had no difficulty in carrying his point. On his return he plunged into a multitude of vexations. He had to protect a weak, thinly settled frontier nearly 400 miles (650 km) in length with only some 700 ill-disciplined colonial troops, to cope with a legislature unwilling to support him, to meet attacks on the drunkenness and inefficiency of the soldiers, and to endure constant wilderness hardships. It is not strange that in 1757 his health failed and in the closing weeks of that year he was so ill of a “bloody flux” (dysentery) that his physician ordered him home to Mount Vernon. In the spring of 1758 he had recovered sufficiently to return to duty as colonel in command of all Virginia troops. As part of the grand sweep of several armies organized by British statesman William Pitt the Elder, Gen. John Forbes led a new advance upon Fort Duquesne. Forbes resolved not to use Braddock’s road but to cut a new one west from Raystown, Pennsylvania. Washington disapproved of the route but played an important part in the movement. Late in the autumn the French evacuated and burned Fort Duquesne, and Forbes reared Fort Pitt on the site. Washington, who had just been elected to the House of Burgesses, was able to resign with the honorary rank of brigadier general. Although his officers expressed regret at the “loss of such an excellent Commander, such a sincere Friend, and so affable a Companion,” he quit the service with a sense of frustration. He had thought the war excessively slow. The Virginia legislature had been niggardly in voting money; the Virginia recruits had come forward reluctantly and had proved of poor quality—Washington had hanged a few deserters and flogged others heavily. Virginia gave him less pay than other colonies offered their troops. Desiring a regular commission such as his half brother Lawrence had held, he applied in vain to the British commander in North America, Lord Loudoun, to make good a promise that Braddock had given him. Ambitious for both rank and honour, he showed a somewhat strident vigour in asserting his desires and in complaining when they were denied. He returned to Mount Vernon somewhat disillusioned. Marriage and plantation life of George Washington George Washington: wedding to Martha Dandridge Custis George Washington: wedding to Martha Dandridge Custis Learn about George Washington's hobbies before becoming the first president of the United States of America Learn about George Washington's hobbies before becoming the first president of the United States of AmericaSee all videos for this article George Washington: Mount Vernon map George Washington: Mount Vernon map Immediately on resigning his commission, Washington was married (January 6, 1759) to Martha Dandridge, the widow of Daniel Parke Custis. She was a few months older than he, was the mother of two children living and two dead, and possessed one of the considerable fortunes of Virginia. Washington had met her the previous March and had asked for her hand before his campaign with Forbes. Though it does not seem to have been a romantic love match, the marriage united two harmonious temperaments and proved happy. Martha was a good housewife, an amiable companion, and a dignified hostess. Like many wellborn women of the era, she had little formal schooling, and Washington often helped her compose important letters. George Washington: family George Washington: family Some estimates of the property brought to him by this marriage have been exaggerated, but it did include a number of slaves and about 15,000 acres (6,000 hectares), much of it valuable for its proximity to Williamsburg. More important to Washington were the two stepchildren, John Parke (“Jacky”) and Martha Parke (“Patsy”) Custis, who at the time of the marriage were six and four, respectively. He lavished great affection and care upon them, worried greatly over Jacky’s waywardness, and was overcome with grief when Patsy died just before the Revolution. Jacky died during the war, leaving four children. Washington adopted two of them, a boy and a girl, and even signed his letters to the boy as “your papa.” Himself childless, he thus had a real family. From the time of his marriage Washington added to the care of Mount Vernon the supervision of the Custis estate at the White House on the York River. As his holdings expanded, they were divided into farms, each under its own overseer; but he minutely inspected operations every day and according to one visitor often pulled off his coat and performed ordinary labour. As he once wrote, “middling land under a man’s own eyes, is more profitable than rich land at a distance.” Until the eve of the Revolution he devoted himself to the duties and pleasures of a great landholder, varied by several weeks’ attendance every year in the House of Burgesses in Williamsburg. During 1760–74 he was also a justice of the peace for Fairfax county, sitting in court in Alexandria. In no light does Washington appear more characteristically than as one of the richest, largest, and most industrious of Virginia planters. For six days a week he rose early and worked hard; on Sundays he irregularly attended Pohick Church (16 times in 1760), entertained company, wrote letters, made purchases and sales, and sometimes went fox hunting. In these years he took snuff and smoked a pipe; throughout life he liked Madeira wine and punch. Although wheat and tobacco were his staples, he practiced crop rotation on a three-year or five-year plan. He had his own water-powered flour mill, blacksmith shop, brick and charcoal kilns, carpenters, and masons. His fishery supplied shad, bass, herring, and other catches, salted as food for his slaves. Coopers, weavers, and his own shoemaker turned out barrels, cotton, linen, and woollen goods, and brogans for all needs. In short, his estates, in accordance with his orders to overseers to “buy nothing you can make yourselves,” were largely self-sufficient communities. But he did send large orders to England for farm implements, tools, paint, fine textiles, hardware, and agricultural books and hence was painfully aware of British commercial restrictions. Encyclopaedia Britannica thistle graphic to be used with a Mendel/Consumer quiz in place of a photograph. BRITANNICA QUIZ 43 Questions About Politics (Mostly in the United States) Compiled from Britannica’s Quizzes This quiz gathers together questions from Britannica’s quizzes about politics, law, and government. It includes a lot of questions about the United States, but look out for a few about Australia too. Washington was an innovative farmer and a responsible landowner. He experimented at breeding cattle, acquired at least one buffalo, with the hope of proving its utility as a meat animal, and kept stallions at stud. He also took pride in a peach and apple orchard. His care of slaves was exemplary. He carefully clothed and fed them, engaged a doctor for them by the year, generally refused to sell them—“I am principled against this kind of traffic in the human species”—and administered correction mildly. They showed so much attachment that few ran away. He meanwhile played a prominent role in the social life of the Tidewater region. The members of the council and House of Burgesses, a roster of influential Virginians, were all friends. He visited the Byrds of Westover, the Lees of Stratford, the Carters of Shirley and Sabine Hall, and the Lewises of Warner Hall; Mount Vernon often was busy with guests in return. He liked house parties and afternoon tea on the Mount Vernon porch overlooking the grand Potomac; he was fond of picnics, barbecues, and clambakes; and throughout life he enjoyed dancing, frequently going to Alexandria for balls. Cards were a steady diversion, and his accounts record sums lost at them, the largest reaching nearly £10. His diary sometimes states that in bad weather he was “at home all day, over cards.” Billiards was a rival amusement. Not only the theatre, when available, but also concerts, cockfights, circuses, puppet shows, and exhibitions of animals received his patronage. He insisted on the best clothes—coats, laced waistcoats, hats, coloured silk hose—bought in London. The Virginia of the Randolphs, Corbins, Harrisons, Tylers, Nicholases, and other prominent families had an aristocratic quality, and Washington liked to do things in a large way. It has been computed that in the seven years prior to 1775, Mount Vernon had 2,000 guests, most of whom stayed to dinner if not overnight. Prerevolutionary politics George Washington: painting George Washington: painting Washington’s contented life was interrupted by the rising storm in imperial affairs. The British ministry, facing a heavy postwar debt, high home taxes, and continued military costs in America, decided in 1764 to obtain revenue from the colonies. Up to that time, Washington, though regarded by associates, in Col. John L. Peyton’s words, as “a young man of an extraordinary and exalted character,” had shown no signs of personal greatness and few signs of interest in state affairs. The Proclamation of 1763 interdicting settlement beyond the Alleghenies irked him, for he was interested in the Ohio Company, the Mississippi Company, and other speculative western ventures. He nevertheless played a silent part in the House of Burgesses and was a thoroughly loyal subject. But he was present when Patrick Henry introduced his resolutions against the Stamp Act in May 1765 and shortly thereafter gave token of his adherence to the cause of the colonial Whigs against the Tory ministries of England. In 1768 he told George Mason at Mount Vernon that he would take his musket on his shoulder whenever his country called him. The next spring, on April 4, 1769, he sent Mason the Philadelphia nonimportation resolutions with a letter declaring that it was necessary to resist the strokes of “our lordly masters” in England; that, courteous remonstrances to Parliament having failed, he wholly endorsed the resort to commercial warfare; and that as a last resort no man should scruple to use arms in defense of liberty. When, the following month, the royal governor of Virginia dissolved the House of Burgesses, he shared in the gathering, at the Raleigh Tavern in Williamsburg, that drew up nonimportation resolutions, and he went further than most of his neighbours in adhering to them. At that time and later he believed with most Americans that peace need not be broken. Late in 1770 he paid a land-hunting visit to Fort Pitt, where George Croghan was maturing his plans for the proposed 14th colony of Vandalia. Washington directed his agent to locate and survey 10,000 acres adjoining the Vandalia tract, and at one time he wished to share in certain of Croghan’s schemes. But the Boston Tea Party of December 1773 and the bursting of the Vandalia bubble at about the same time turned his eyes back to the East and the threatening state of Anglo-American relations. He was not a member of the Virginia committee of correspondence formed in 1773 to communicate with other colonies, but when the Virginia legislators, meeting irregularly again at the Raleigh Tavern in May 1774, called for a Continental Congress, he was present and signed the resolutions. Moreover, he was a leading member of the first provincial convention or revolutionary legislature late that summer, and to that body he made a speech that was much praised for its pithy eloquence, declaring that “I will raise one thousand men, subsist them at my own expense, and march myself at their head for the relief of Boston.” The Virginia provincial convention promptly elected Washington one of the seven delegates to the first Continental Congress. He was by this time known as a radical rather than a moderate, and in several letters of the time he opposed a continuance of petitions to the British crown, declaring that they would inevitably meet with a humiliating rejection. “Shall we after this whine and cry for relief when we have already tried it in vain?” he wrote. When the Congress met in Philadelphia on September 5, 1774, he was in his seat in full uniform, and his participation in its councils marks the beginning of his national career. His letters of the period show that, while still utterly opposed to the idea of independence, he was determined never to submit “to the loss of those valuable rights and privileges, which are essential to the happiness of every free State, and without which life, liberty, and property are rendered totally insecure.” If the ministry pushed matters to an extremity, he wrote, “more blood will be spilled on this occasion than ever before in American history.” Though he served on none of the committees, he was a useful member, his advice being sought on military matters and weight being attached to his advocacy of a nonexportation as well as nonimportation agreement. He also helped to secure approval of the Suffolk Resolves, which looked toward armed resistance as a last resort and did much to harden the king’s heart against America. Returning to Virginia in November, he took command of the volunteer companies drilling there and served as chairman of the Committee of Safety in Fairfax county. Although the province contained many experienced officers and Col. William Byrd of Westover had succeeded Washington as commander in chief, the unanimity with which the Virginia troops turned to Washington was a tribute to his reputation and personality; it was understood that Virginia expected him to be its general. He was elected to the second Continental Congress at the March 1775 session of the legislature and again set out for Philadelphia. Revolutionary leadership of George Washington Head of the colonial forces The choice of Washington as commander in chief of the military forces of all the colonies followed immediately upon the first fighting, though it was by no means inevitable and was the product of partly artificial forces. The Virginia delegates differed upon his appointment. Edmund Pendleton was, according to John Adams, “very full and clear against it,” and Washington himself recommended Gen. Andrew Lewis for the post. It was chiefly the fruit of a political bargain by which New England offered Virginia the chief command as its price for the adoption and support of the New England army. This army had gathered hastily and in force about Boston immediately after the clash of British troops and American minutemen at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. When the second Continental Congress met in Philadelphia on May 10, one of its first tasks was to find a permanent leadership for this force. On June 15, Washington, whose military counsel had already proved invaluable on two committees, was nominated and chosen by unanimous vote. Beyond the considerations noted, he owed being chosen to the facts that Virginia stood with Massachusetts as one of the most powerful colonies; that his appointment would augment the zeal of the Southern people; that he had gained an enduring reputation in the Braddock campaign; and that his poise, sense, and resolution had impressed all the delegates. The scene of his election, with Washington darting modestly into an adjoining room and John Hancock flushing with jealous mortification, will always impress the historical imagination; so also will the scene of July 3, 1775, when, wheeling his horse under an elm in front of the troops paraded on Cambridge common, he drew his sword and took command of the army investing Boston. News of Bunker Hill had reached him before he was a day’s journey from Philadelphia, and he had expressed confidence of victory when told how the militia had fought. In accepting the command, he refused any payment beyond his expenses and called upon “every gentleman in the room” to bear witness that he disclaimed fitness for it. At once he showed characteristic decision and energy in organizing the raw volunteers, collecting provisions and munitions, and rallying Congress and the colonies to his support. George Washington George Washington The first phase of Washington’s command covered the period from July 1775 to the British evacuation of Boston in March 1776. In those eight months he imparted discipline to the army, which at maximum strength slightly exceeded 20,000; he dealt with subordinates who, as John Adams said, quarrelled “like cats and dogs”; and he kept the siege vigorously alive. Having himself planned an invasion of Canada by Lake Champlain, to be entrusted to Gen. Philip Schuyler, he heartily approved of Benedict Arnold’s proposal to march north along the Kennebec River in Maine and take Quebec. Giving Arnold 1,100 men, he instructed him to do everything possible to conciliate the Canadians. He was equally active in encouraging privateers to attack British commerce. As fast as means offered, he strengthened his army with ammunition and siege guns, having heavy artillery brought from Fort Ticonderoga, New York, over the frozen roads early in 1776. His position was at first precarious, for the Charles River pierced the centre of his lines investing Boston. If the British general, Sir William Howe, had moved his 20 veteran regiments boldly up the stream, he might have pierced Washington’s army and rolled either wing back to destruction. But all the generalship was on Washington’s side. Seeing that Dorchester Heights, just south of Boston, commanded the city and harbour and that Howe had unaccountably failed to occupy it, he seized it on the night of March 4, 1776, placing his Ticonderoga guns in position. The British naval commander declared that he could not remain if the Americans were not dislodged, and Howe, after a storm disrupted his plans for an assault, evacuated the city on March 17. He left 200 cannons and invaluable stores of small arms and munitions. After collecting his booty, Washington hurried south to take up the defense of New York. Charles Willson Peale: George Washington Charles Willson Peale: George Washington Washington had won the first round, but there remained five years of the war, during which the American cause was repeatedly near complete disaster. It is unquestionable that Washington’s strength of character, his ability to hold the confidence of army and people and to diffuse his own courage among them, his unremitting activity, and his strong common sense constituted the chief factors in achieving American victory. He was not a great tactician: as Jefferson said later, he often “failed in the field”; he was sometimes guilty of grave military blunders, the chief being his assumption of a position on Long Island, New York, in 1776 that exposed his entire army to capture the moment it was defeated. At the outset he was painfully inexperienced, the wilderness fighting of the French war having done nothing to teach him the strategy of maneuvering whole armies. One of his chief faults was his tendency to subordinate his own judgment to that of the generals surrounding him; at every critical juncture, before Boston, before New York, before Philadelphia, and in New Jersey, he called a council of war and in almost every instance accepted its decision. Naturally bold and dashing—as he proved at Trenton and Princeton, as well as at Germantown—he repeatedly adopted evasive and delaying tactics on the advice of his associates; however, he did succeed in keeping a strong army in existence and maintaining the flame of national spirit. When the auspicious moment arrived, he planned the rapid movements that ended the war. One element of Washington’s strength was his sternness as a disciplinarian. The army was continually dwindling and refilling, politics largely governed the selection of officers by Congress and the states, and the ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-paid forces were often half-prostrated by sickness and ripe for mutiny. Troops from each of the three sections, New England, the middle states, and the South, showed a deplorable jealousy of the others. Washington was rigorous in breaking cowardly, inefficient, and dishonest men and boasted in front of Boston that he had “made a pretty good sort of slam among such kind of officers.” Deserters and plunderers were flogged, and Washington once erected a gallows 40 feet (12 metres) high, writing, “I am determined if I can be justified in the proceeding, to hang two or three on it, as an example to others.” At the same time, the commander in chief won the devotion of many of his men by his earnestness in demanding better treatment for them from Congress. He complained of their short rations, declaring once that they were forced to “eat every kind of horse food but hay.” "George Washington before the Battle of Trenton" oil on canvas by John Trumbull, c. 1792-94; in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. READ MORE ON THIS TOPIC The Plot to Assassinate George Washington The history of the United States would not be the same... J.C. Armytage: Retreat at Long Island J.C. Armytage: Retreat at Long Island The darkest chapter in Washington’s military leadership was opened when, reaching New York in April 1776, he placed half his army, about 9,000 men, under Israel Putnam, on the perilous position of Brooklyn Heights, Long Island, where a British fleet in the East River might cut off their retreat. He spent a fortnight in May with the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, then discussing the question of independence; though no record of his utterances exists, there can be no doubt that he advocated complete separation. His return to New York preceded but slightly the arrival of the British army under Howe, which made its main encampment on Staten Island until its whole strength of nearly 30,000 could be mobilized. On August 22, 1776, Howe moved about 20,000 men across to Gravesend Bay on Long Island. Four days later, sending the fleet under command of his brother Adm. Richard Howe to make a feint against New York City, he thrust a crushing force along feebly protected roads against the American flank. The patriots were outmaneuvered, defeated, and suffered a total loss of 5,000 men, of whom 2,000 were captured. Their whole position might have been carried by storm, but, fortunately for Washington, General Howe delayed. While the enemy lingered, Washington succeeded under cover of a dense fog in ferrying the remaining force across the East River to Manhattan, where he took up a fortified position. The British, suddenly landing on the lower part of the island, drove back the Americans in a clash marked by disgraceful cowardice on the part of troops from Connecticut and others. In a series of actions, Washington was forced northward, more than once in danger of capture, until the loss of his two Hudson River forts, one of them with 2,600 men, compelled him to retreat from White Plains across the river into New Jersey. He retired toward the Delaware River while his army melted away, until it seemed that armed resistance to the British was about to expire. The Trenton-Princeton campaign of George Washington Emanuel Leutze: Washington Crossing the Delaware Emanuel Leutze: Washington Crossing the Delaware George Washington George Washington Learn about George Washington's crossing the Delaware, winter at Valley Forge, and victory at Yorktown Learn about George Washington's crossing the Delaware, winter at Valley Forge, and victory at YorktownSee all videos for this article It was at this darkest hour of the Revolution that Washington struck his brilliant blows at Trenton and Princeton in New Jersey, reviving the hopes and energies of the nation. Howe, believing that the American army soon would dissolve totally, retired to New York, leaving strong forces in Trenton and Burlington. Washington, at his camp west of the Delaware River, planned a simultaneous attack on both posts, using his whole command of 6,000 men. But his subordinates in charge of both wings failed him, and he was left on the night of December 25, 1776, to march on Trenton with about 2,400 men. With the help of Colonel John Glover’s regiment, which was comprised of fishermen and sailors from Marblehead, Massachusetts, Washington and his troops were ferried across the Delaware River. In the dead of night and amid a blinding snowstorm, they then marched 10 miles (16 km) downstream and in the early hours of the morning caught the enemy at Trenton unaware. In less than two hours and without the loss of a single man in battle, Washington’s troops defeated the Hessians, killed their commander (Johann Rall), and captured nearly 1,000 prisoners and arms and ammunition. This historic Christmas crossing proved to be a turning point in the war, and it was immortalized for posterity by Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze in his famous 1851 painting of the event. (The painting is historically inaccurate: the depicted flag is anachronistic, the boats are the wrong size and shape, and it is questionable whether Washington could have crossed the icy Delaware while standing in the manner depicted.) The immediate result of this American victory was that Gen. Charles Cornwallis hastened with about 8,000 men to Trenton, where he found Washington strongly posted behind the Assunpink Creek, skirmished with him, and decided to wait overnight “to bag the old fox.” During the night, the wind shifted, the roads froze hard, and Washington was able to steal away from camp (leaving his fires deceptively burning), march around Cornwallis’s rear, and fall at daybreak upon the three British regiments at Princeton. These were put to flight with a loss of 500 men, and Washington escaped with more captured munitions to a strong position at Morristown, New Jersey. The effect of these victories heartened all Americans, brought recruits flocking to camp in the spring, and encouraged foreign sympathizers with the American cause. Edward Percy Moran: Washington at Valley Forge Edward Percy Moran: Washington at Valley Forge Thus far the important successes had been won by Washington; then battlefield success fell to others, while he was left to face popular apathy, military cabals, and the disaffection of Congress. The year 1777 was marked by the British capture of Philadelphia and the surrender of British Gen. John Burgoyne’s invading army to Gen. Horatio Gates at Saratoga, New York, followed by intrigues to displace Washington from his command. Howe’s main British army of 18,000 left New York by sea on July 23, 1777, and landed on August 25 in Maryland, not far below Philadelphia. Washington, despite his inferiority of force—he had only 11,000 men, mostly militia and, in the marquis de Lafayette’s words, “badly armed and worse clothed”—risked a pitched battle on September 11 at the fords of Brandywine Creek, about 13 miles (21 km) north of Wilmington, Delaware. While part of the British force held the Americans engaged, General Cornwallis, with the rest, made a secret 17-mile (27-km) detour and fell with crushing effect on the American right and rear, the result being a complete defeat from which Washington was fortunate to extricate his army in fairly good order. For a time he hoped to hold the Schuylkill Fords, but the British passed them and on September 26 triumphantly marched into Philadelphia. Congress fled to the interior of Pennsylvania, and Washington, after an unsuccessful effort to repeat his stroke at Trenton against the British troops posted at Germantown, had to take up winter quarters at Valley Forge. His army, twice beaten, ill housed, and ill fed, with thousands of men “barefoot and otherwise naked,” was at the point of exhaustion; it could not keep the field, for inside of a month it would have disappeared. Under these circumstances, there is nothing that better proves the true fibre of Washington’s character and the courage of his soul than the unyielding persistence with which he held his strong position at Valley Forge through a winter of semistarvation, of justified grumbling by his men, of harsh public criticism, and of captious meddling by a Congress that was too weak to help him. In February Martha Washington arrived and helped to organize entertainment for the soldiers. Washington’s enemies seized the moment of his greatest weakness to give vent to an antagonism that had been nourished by sectional jealousies of North against South, by the ambition of small rivals, and by baseless accusations that he showed favouritism to such foreigners as Lafayette. The intrigues of Thomas Conway, an Irish adventurer who had served in the French army and had become an American general, enlisted Thomas Mifflin, Charles Lee, Benjamin Rush, and others in an attempt to displace Washington. General Gates appears to have been a tool of rather than a party to the plot, expecting that the chief command would devolve upon himself. A faction of Congress sympathized with the movement and attempted to paralyze Washington by reorganizing the board of war, a body vested with the general superintendence of operations, of which Gates became the president; his chief of staff, James Wilkinson, the secretary; and Mifflin and Timothy Pickering, members. Washington was well aware of the hostility in congress, of the slanders spread by Rush and James Lovell of Massachusetts, and of the effect of forgeries published in the American press by adroit British agents. He realized the intense jealousy of many New Englanders, which made even John Adams write his wife that he was thankful Burgoyne had not been captured by Washington, who would then “have been deified. It is bad enough as it is.” But Washington decisively crushed the cabal: after the loose tongue of Wilkinson disclosed Conway’s treachery, Washington sent the general on November 9, 1777, proof of his knowledge of the whole affair. George Washington at the Battle of Monmouth George Washington at the Battle of Monmouth With the conclusion of the French alliance in the spring of 1778, the aspect of the war was radically altered. The British army in Philadelphia, fearing that a French fleet would blockade the Delaware while the militia of New Jersey and Pennsylvania invested the city, hastily retreated upon New York City. Washington hoped to cut off part of the enemy and by a hurried march with six brigades interposed himself at the end of June between Sir Henry Clinton (who had succeeded Howe) and the New Jersey coast. The result was the Battle of Monmouth on June 28, where a shrewd strategic plan and vigorous assault were brought to naught by the treachery of Charles Lee. When Lee ruined the attack by a sudden order to retreat, Washington hurried forward, fiercely denounced him, and restored the line, but the golden opportunity had been lost. The British made good their march to Sandy Hook, and Washington took up his quarters at New Brunswick. Lee was arrested, court-martialed, and convicted on all three of the charges made against him; but instead of being shot, as he deserved, he was sentenced to a suspension from command for one year. The arrival of the French fleet under Adm. Charles-Hector Estaing on July 1778 completed the isolation of the British, and Clinton was thenceforth held to New York City and the surrounding area. Washington made his headquarters in the highlands of the Hudson and distributed his troops in cantonments around the city and in New Jersey. Surrender of Cornwallis Surrender of Cornwallis The final decisive stroke of the war, the capture of Cornwallis at Yorktown, is to be credited chiefly to Washington’s vision. With the domestic situation intensely gloomy early in 1781, he was hampered by the feebleness of Congress, the popular discouragement, and the lack of prompt and strong support by the French fleet. A French army under the comte de Rochambeau had arrived to reinforce him in 1780, and Washington had pressed Admiral de Grasse to assist in an attack upon either Cornwallis in the south or Clinton in New York. In August the French admiral sent definite word that he preferred the Chesapeake, with its large area and deep water, as the scene of his operations; and within a week, on August 19, 1781, Washington marched south with his army, leaving Gen. William Heath with 4,000 men to hold West Point. He hurried his troops through New Jersey, embarked them on transports in Delaware Bay, and landed them at Williamsburg, Virginia, where he had arrived on September 14. Cornwallis had retreated to Yorktown and entrenched his army of 7,000 British regulars. Their works were completely invested before the end of the month; the siege was pressed with vigour by the allied armies under Washington, consisting of 5,500 Continentals, 3,500 Virginia militia, and 5,000 French regulars; and on October 19 Cornwallis surrendered. By this campaign, probably the finest single display of Washington’s generalship, the war was brought to a virtual close. George Washington: resigning commission George Washington: resigning commission Currier & Ives: Washington Taking Leave of the Officers of His Army Currier & Ives: Washington Taking Leave of the Officers of His Army Washington remained during the winter of 1781–82 with the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, exhorting it to maintain its exertions for liberty and to settle the army’s claims for pay. He continued these exhortations after he joined his command at Newburgh on the Hudson in April 1782. He was astounded and angered when some loose camp suggestions found expression in a letter from Col. Lewis Nicola offering a plan by which he should use the army to make himself king. He blasted the proposal with fierce condemnation. When the discontent of his unpaid men came to a head in the circulation of the “Newburgh Address” (an anonymously written grievance) early in 1783, he issued a general order censuring the paper and at a meeting of officers on March 15 read a speech admonishing the army to obey Congress and promising his best efforts for a redress of grievances. He was present at the entrance of the American army into New York on the day of the British evacuation, November 25, 1783, and on December 4 took leave of his closest officers in an affecting scene at Fraunces Tavern. Traveling south, on December 23, in a solemn ceremonial immortalized by the pen of William Makepeace Thackeray, he resigned his commission to the Continental Congress in the state senate chamber of Maryland in Annapolis and received the thanks of the nation. His accounts of personal expenditures during his service, kept with minute exactness in his own handwriting and totalling £24,700, without charge for salary, had been given the controller of the treasury to be discharged. Washington left Annapolis at sunrise of December 24 and before nightfall was at home in Mount Vernon. In the next four years Washington found sufficient occupation in his estates, wishing to close his days as a gentleman farmer and to give to agriculture as much energy and thought as he had to the army. He enlarged the Mount Vernon house; he laid out the grounds anew, with sunken walls, or ha-has; and he embarked on experiments with mahogany, palmetto, pepper, and other foreign trees, and English grasses and grains. His farm manager during the Revolution, a distant relative named Lund Washington, retired in 1785 and was succeeded by a nephew, Maj. George Augustine Washington, who resided at Mount Vernon until his death in 1792. Washington’s losses during the war had been heavy, caused by neglect of his lands, stoppage of exportation, and depreciation of paper money, which cost him hardly less than $30,000. He then attempted successfully to repair his fortunes, his annual receipts from all his estates being from $10,000 to $15,000 a year. In 1784 he made a tour of nearly 700 miles (1,125 km) to view the wildlands he owned to the westward, Congress having made him a generous grant. As a national figure, he was constrained to offer hospitality to old army friends, visitors from other states and nations, diplomats, and Indian delegations, and he and his household seldom sat down to dinner alone. Presidency of George Washington Postrevolutionary politics Jean-Antoine Houdon: George Washington Jean-Antoine Houdon: George Washington Viewing the chaotic political condition of the United States after 1783 with frank pessimism and declaring (May 18, 1786) that “something must be done, or the fabric must fall, for it is certainly tottering,” Washington repeatedly wrote his friends urging steps toward “an indissoluble union.” At first he believed that the Articles of Confederation might be amended. Later, especially after the shock of Shays’s Rebellion, he took the view that a more radical reform was necessary but doubted as late as the end of 1786 that the time was ripe. His progress toward adoption of the idea of a federal convention was, in fact, puzzlingly slow. Although John Jay assured him in March 1786 that breakup of the nation seemed near and opinion for a constitutional convention was crystallizing, Washington remained noncommittal. But, despite long hesitations, he earnestly supported the proposal for a federal impost, warning the states that their policy must decide “whether the Revolution must ultimately be considered a blessing or a curse.” And his numerous letters to the leading men of the country assisted greatly to form a sentiment favourable to a more perfect union. Some understanding being necessary between Virginia and Maryland regarding the navigation of the Potomac, commissioners from the two states had met at Mount Vernon in the spring of 1785; from this seed sprang the federal convention. Washington approved in advance the call for a gathering of all the states to meet in Philadelphia in May 1787 to “render the Constitution of the Federal Government adequate to the exigencies of the Union.” But he was again hesitant about attending, partly because he felt tired and infirm, partly because of doubts about the outcome. Although he hoped to the last to be excused, he was chosen one of Virginia’s five delegates. Washington arrived in Philadelphia on May 13, the day before the opening of the Constitutional Convention, and as soon as a quorum was obtained he was unanimously chosen its president. For four months he presided over the convention, breaking his silence only once upon a minor question of congressional apportionment. Although he said little in debate, no one did more outside the hall to insist on stern measures. “My wish is,” he wrote, “that the convention may adopt no temporizing expedients, but probe the defects of the Constitution to the bottom, and provide a radical cure.” His weight of character did more than any other single force to bring the convention to an agreement and obtain ratification of the instrument afterward. He did not believe it perfect, though his precise criticisms of it are unknown. But his support gave it victory in Virginia, where he sent copies to Patrick Henry and other leaders with a hint that the alternative to adoption was anarchy, declaring that “it or dis-union is before us to chuse from.” He received and personally circulated copies of The Federalist. When ratification was obtained, he wrote to leaders in the various states urging that men staunchly favourable to it be elected to Congress. For a time he sincerely believed that, the new framework completed, he would be allowed to retire again to privacy. But all eyes immediately turned to him for the first president. He alone commanded the respect of both the parties engendered by the struggle over ratification, and he alone would be able to give prestige to the republic throughout Europe. In no state was any other name considered. The electors chosen in the first days of 1789 cast a unanimous vote for him, and reluctantly—for his love of peace, his distrust of his own abilities, and his fear that his motives in advocating the new government might be misconstrued all made him unwilling—he accepted. Washington delivering his inaugural address Washington delivering his inaugural address On April 16, after receiving congressional notification of the honour, he set out from Mount Vernon, reaching New York City in time to be inaugurated on April 30. His journey northward was a celebratory procession as people in every town and village through which he passed turned out to greet him, often with banners and speeches, and in some places with triumphal arches. He came across the Hudson River in a specially built barge decorated in red, white, and blue. The inaugural ceremony was performed on Wall Street, near the spot now marked by John Quincy Adams Ward’s statue of Washington. A great crowd broke into cheers as, standing on the balcony of Federal Hall, he took the oath administered by Chancellor Robert Livingston and retired indoors to read Congress his inaugural address. Washington was clad in a brown suit of American manufacture, but he wore white stockings and a sword after the fashion of European courts. Martha was as reluctant as her husband to resume public life. But a month later she came from Mount Vernon to join him. She, too, was greeted wildly on her way. And when Washington crossed the Hudson to bring her to Manhattan, guns boomed in salute. The Washingtons, to considerable public criticism, traveled about in a coach-and-four like monarchs. Moreover, during his presidency, Washington did not shake hands, and he met his guests on state occasions while standing on a raised platform and displaying a sword on his hip. Slowly, feeling his way, Washington was defining the style of the first president of a country in the history of the world. The people, too, were adjusting to a government without a king. Even the question of how to address a president had to be discussed. It was decided that in a republic the simple salutation “Mr. President” would do. The Washington administration Gilbert Stuart: portrait of George Washington Gilbert Stuart: portrait of George Washington Washington’s administration of the government in the next eight years was marked by the caution, the methodical precision, and the sober judgment that had always characterized him. He regarded himself as standing aloof from party divisions and emphasized his position as president of the whole country by touring first through the Northern states and later through the Southern. A painstaking inquiry into all the problems confronting the new nation laid the basis for a series of judicious recommendations to Congress in his first message. In selecting the four members of his first cabinet—Thomas Jefferson as secretary of state, Alexander Hamilton as secretary of treasury, Henry Knox as secretary of war, and Edmund Randolph as attorney general—Washington balanced the two parties evenly. But he leaned with especial weight upon Hamilton, who supported his scheme for the federal assumption of state debts, took his view that the bill establishing the Bank of the United States was constitutional, and in general favoured strengthening the authority of the federal government. Distressed when the inevitable clash between Jefferson and Hamilton arose, he tried to keep harmony, writing frankly to each and refusing to accept their resignations. But when war was declared between France and England in 1793, he took Hamilton’s view that the United States should completely disregard the treaty of alliance with France and pursue a course of strict neutrality, while he acted decisively to stop the improper operations of the French minister, Edmond-Charles Genêt. He had a firm belief that the United States must insist on its national identity, strength, and dignity. His object, he wrote, was to keep the country “free from political connections with every other country, to see them independent of all, and under the influence of none. In a word, I want an American character that the powers of Europe may be convinced that we act for ourselves, and not for others.” The sequel was the resignation of Jefferson at the close of 1793, the two men parting on good terms and Washington praising Jefferson’s “integrity and talents.” The suppression of the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794 by federal troops whom Hamilton led in person and the dispatch of John Jay to conclude a treaty of commerce with Great Britain tended further to align Washington with the federalists. Although the general voice of the people compelled him to acquiesce reluctantly to a second term in 1792 and his election that year was again unanimous, during his last four years in office he suffered from a fierce personal and partisan animosity. This culminated when the publication of the terms of the Jay Treaty, which Washington signed in August 1795, provoked a bitter discussion, and the House of Representatives called upon the president for the instructions and correspondence relating to the treaty. These Washington, who had already clashed with the Senate on foreign affairs, refused to deliver, and, in the face of an acrimonious debate, he firmly maintained his position. Early in his first term, Washington, who by education and natural inclination was minutely careful of the proprieties of life, established the rules of a virtual republican court. In both New York and Philadelphia he rented the best houses procurable, refusing to accept the hospitality of George Clinton, for he believed the head of the nation should be no man’s guest. He returned no calls and shook hands with no one, acknowledging salutations by a formal bow. He drove in a coach drawn by four or six smart horses, with outriders and lackeys in rich livery. He attended receptions dressed in a black velvet suit with gold buckles, with yellow gloves, powdered hair, a cocked hat with an ostrich plume in one hand, and a sword in a white leather scabbard. After being overwhelmed by callers, he announced that, except for a weekly levee open to all, persons desiring to see him had to make appointments in advance. On Friday afternoons the first lady held informal receptions, at which the president appeared. Although the presidents of the Continental Congress had made their tables partly public, Washington, who entertained largely, inviting members of Congress in rotation, insisted that his hospitality be private. He served good wines and the menus were elaborate, but such visitors as Pennsylvania Sen. William Maclay complained that the atmosphere was too “solemn.” Indeed, his simple ceremony offended many of the more radical anti-federalists, who did not share his sense of its fitness and accused the president of conducting himself like a king. But his cold and reserved manner was caused by native diffidence rather than any excessive sense of dignity. Retirement Washington's Farewell Address Washington's Farewell Address George Washington on Mount Rushmore George Washington on Mount Rushmore Earnestly desiring leisure, feeling a decline of his physical powers, and wincing under abuses of the opposition, Washington refused to yield to the general pressure for a third term. This refusal was blended with a testament of sagacious advice to his country in the Farewell Address of September 19, 1796, written largely by Hamilton but remolded by Washington and expressing his ideas. Retiring in March 1797 to Mount Vernon, he devoted himself for the last two and a half years of his life to his family, farm operations, and care of his slaves. In 1798 his seclusion was briefly interrupted when the prospect of war with France caused his appointment as commander in chief of the provisional army, and he was much worried by the political quarrels over high commissions; but the war cloud passed away. George Washington: death George Washington: death George Washington: death procession George Washington: death procession Tour Washington state, birthplace of guitarist Jimi Hendrix, Microsoft, and Nobel Prize-winner Linda Buck Tour Washington state, birthplace of guitarist Jimi Hendrix, Microsoft, and Nobel Prize-winner Linda BuckSee all videos for this article On December 12, 1799, after riding on horseback for several hours in cold and snow, he returned home exhausted and was attacked late the next day with quinsy or acute laryngitis. He was bled heavily four times and given gargles of “molasses, vinegar and butter,” and a blister of cantharides (a preparation of dried beetles) was placed on his throat, his strength meanwhile rapidly sinking. He faced the end with characteristic serenity, saying, “I die hard, but I am not afraid to go,” and later: “I feel myself going. I thank you for your attentions; but I pray you to take no more trouble about me. Let me go off quietly. I cannot last long.” After giving instructions to his secretary, Tobias Lear, about his burial, he died at 10:00 PM on December 14. The news of his death placed the entire country in mourning, and the sentiment of the country endorsed the famous words of Henry (“Light-Horse Harry”) Lee, embodied in resolutions that John Marshall introduced in the House of Representatives, that he was “first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.” When the news reached Europe, the British channel fleet and the armies of Napoleon paid tribute to his memory, and many of the leaders of the time joined in according him a preeminent place among the heroes of history. His fellow citizens memorialized him forever by naming the newly created capital city of the young nation for him while he was still alive. Later, one of the states of union would bear his name—the only state named for an individual American. Moreover, counties in 32 states were given his name, and in time it also could be found in 121 postal addresses. The people of the United States have continued to glory in knowing him as “the Father of His Country,” an accolade he was pleased to accept, even though it pained him that he fathered no children of his own. For almost a century beginning in the 1770s, Washington was the uncontested giant in the American pantheon of greats, but only until Abraham Lincoln was enshrined there after another critical epoch in the life of the country. Herbert Henry Lehman (March 28, 1878 – December 5, 1963) was an American Democratic Party politician from New York. He served from 1933 until 1942 as the 45th governor of New York and represented New York State in the U.S. Senate from 1949 until 1957. Contents 1 Early life and education 2 Politics 3 Retirement 4 Personal life 5 Honors 6 See also 7 References 8 Further reading 9 External links Early life and education He was born to a Reform Jewish family in Manhattan, New York City, the son of Babetta (née Newgass) and German-born immigrant Mayer Lehman, one of the three brothers who co-founded Lehman Brothers financial services firm. His brother was New York Court of Appeals judge Irving Lehman. Herbert's father arrived from Rimpar, Germany, in 1848, settling in Montgomery, Alabama, where he engaged in the slave-era cotton business. As cotton was the most important crop of the Southern United States and global demand led to profitable business, the Lehman brothers became cotton factors, accepting cotton bales from customers as payment for their merchandise.[1] Cotton trading eventually became the main thrust of their business. In 1867, Mayer and Emanuel moved the company's headquarters to New York City, and helped found the New York Cotton Exchange. He attended The Sachs School, founded by Julius Sachs. In 1895, he graduated from Sachs Collegiate Institute in New York City, and in 1899, he graduated with a B.A. from Williams College.[2] After college, Lehman worked in textile manufacturing, eventually becoming vice-president and treasurer of the J. Spencer Turner Company in Brooklyn. In 1908, he became a partner in the investment banking firm Lehman Brothers of New York City with his brother Arthur and cousin Philip.[2] During World War I, he became a colonel on the U.S. Army general staff. By 1928, when he entered public service, he had withdrawn entirely from business.[citation needed] Politics Flyer supporting Lehman and Roosevelt's campaigns in 1936 Lehman became active in politics in 1920 and became chairman of the finance committee of the Democratic Party in 1928[3] as a reward for having been a strong supporter of Alfred E. Smith. He was elected lieutenant governor of New York in 1928 and 1930 and resigned from Lehman Brothers upon taking office. He then served four terms as Governor of New York, elected in 1932 to replace Franklin D. Roosevelt (who had been running for president), and re-elected in 1934, 1936 and 1938 (when he was elected to New York's first four-year gubernatorial term). Unlike Smith, Lehman was a supporter of Roosevelt's New Deal and implemented a similar program in New York. Elements of this program included an unemployment insurance system, an improved workmen's compensation plan, minimum wage standards for women and children,[4] and a "Little Wagner Act" to cover workers engaged in intrastate commerce. Under the original Wagner Act, workers engaged in intrastate commerce were not allowed to unionize.[5] In 1934, Lehman refused to grant clemency to Anna Antonio, an Italian immigrant who was accused of hiring hitmen to kill her husband, who she claimed was abusive. On December 3, 1942, he resigned the governorship less than a month before the end of his term, to accept an appointment as director of the Office of Foreign Relief and Rehabilitation Operations for the U.S. Department of State. He served as director-general of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration from 1943 to 1946.[3] Lehman was the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senator from New York in 1946 and also ran on the Liberal and American Labor tickets but was defeated by the Republican candidate, Irving Ives. In 1949, he ran again, this time in a special election to serve the remainder of Robert F. Wagner's term. Lehman defeated John Foster Dulles, who had been appointed to temporarily fill the vacancy after Wagner's resignation, and he took his seat on January 3, 1950.[6] On October 17, 1950, New York State Supreme Court Judge Ferdinand Pecora and Senator Lehman (D-NY) gave radio addresses on behalf of the CIO-PAC during prime (10:30-11:15 P.M.).[7] In the campaign, he ran on the Democratic and Liberal tickets, with the American Labor Party urging their members not to vote for any candidate. In 1950, Lehman was re-elected to a full term, running on Democratic and Liberal lines and opposed by the American Labor Party.[3] Lehman was one of two U.S. senators who were opposed to nominating Mississippi Senator James O. Eastland to be chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. (The other was Wayne Morse of Oregon.) He was also an early and vocal opponent of Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.). Lehman was one of the most liberal senators and was therefore not considered part of the Senate's "club" of insiders. He retired from the Senate after his full term and was not a candidate for renomination in 1956.[8] In October 1941, Lillian Hellman and Ernest Hemingway co-hosted a dinner to raise money for anti-Nazi activists imprisoned in France. New York Governor Herbert Lehman agreed to participate, but withdrew because some of the sponsoring organizations, he wrote, "have long been connected with Communist activities." Hellman replied: "I do not and I did not ask the politics of any members of the committee and there is nobody who can with honesty vouch for anybody but themselves." She assured him the funds raised would be used as promised and later provided him with a detailed accounting. The next month she wrote him: "I am sure it will make you sad and ashamed as it did me to know that, of the seven resignations out of 147 sponsors, five were Jews. Of all the peoples in the world, I think, we should be the last to hold back help, on any grounds, from those who fought for us." Retirement After his retirement from the Senate, Lehman remained politically active, working with Eleanor Roosevelt and Thomas K. Finletter in the late 1950s and early 1960s to support the reform Democratic movement in Manhattan that eventually defeated longtime Tammany Hall boss Carmine DeSapio.[9] He also helped to found the Lehman Children's Zoo (now the Tisch Zoo) in Central Park.[10] Lehman was the first, and until the 2007 inauguration of Eliot Spitzer, the only Jewish governor of New York.[11] During much of his Senate career, he was the only Jewish Senator as well. Unlike most of his Jewish constituents, who had immigrated to the US from eastern Europe, Lehman's family was from Germany. Lehman spent much of the last two years of his life at his New York City home. He celebrated his 85th birthday in March 1963 in increasingly poor health and died of heart failure on December 5, 1963, at age 85. Lehman is interred at Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York. The gravesite of Herbert H. Lehman Personal life On April 28, 1910, Lehman married Edith Louise Altschul (sister of banker Frank Altschul). The couple had three children: Hilda (1921), Peter (1917), and John. Hilda, Peter and John served in the United States military during World War II; Peter was killed while on active duty.[2] According to a group history published April 6, 1944, the governor's son was to be awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. The medal was set to be awarded to Peter on his father's 70th birthday.[12] Peter married and had two daughters: Penny Lehman (1940) and Wendy Lehman (1942).[13] His daughter Hilda married thrice. In 1940, Hilda married WPA actor Boris De Vadetzky, of French Russian descent;[14] they later divorced.[15] In 1945, she married U.S. Army Major Eugene L. Paul;[16] they later divorced.[15] She married a third time which also ended in divorce.[15] She had three children: Deborah Wise (1947), Peter Wise (1949) and Stephanie Wise (1951). Honors In 1957, he received the Solomon Bublick Award from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1963, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.[3] He died the day before the ceremony.[17] Lehman was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal by the U.S. Army for his service as a colonel on the Army General Staff during World War I. Lehman College of the City University of New York is named after him; a bust of Lehman, by sculptor John Belardo, was dedicated there in September 2005.[18] The High School of American Studies at Lehman College is located on the campus. College dormitories are named in his honor at Williams College, the University at Buffalo, Potsdam College (SUNY), and at Binghamton University. A ship on the Staten Island Ferry, The Governor Herbert H. Lehman, is named for him. She was retired in 2007 after forty-two years of service and has been sold for scrap.[19] There is a Herbert H. Lehman Center for American History at Columbia University. Lehman's papers were donated to the Columbia University Libraries and are housed in the social sciences library – which is also named in his honor. In addition, Columbia has a Herbert Lehman Professorship of Government, whose current incumbent is Mahmood Mamdani. Columbia's sister school, Barnard College, formerly had a building named in honor of Adele Lewisohn Lehman, Herbert Lehman's sister-in-law, which housed the Wollman Library. Barnard also has a "Lehman Auditorium" in Altschul Hall. Williams College, Lehman's alma mater, named a dormitory after him in 1928. Lehman High School (established 1974) on Westchester Square in The Bronx, New York, is named in his honor. In 1974, Lehman was inducted into the Jewish-American Hall of Fame.[20] Liman, Israel, in northern Israel is named after him. A passage from testimony by Lehman for a United States House of Representatives subcommittee in 1947, "It is immigrants who brought this land the skills of their hands and brains, to make of it a beacon of opportunity and hope for all men," has been inscribed in his honor on several versions of US passport since 2004.[21] The Farm Security Administration (FSA) was a New Deal agency created in 1937 to combat rural poverty during the Great Depression in the United States. It succeeded the Resettlement Administration (1935–1937).[1] The FSA is famous for its small but highly influential photography program, 1935–44, that portrayed the challenges of rural poverty. The photographs in the FSA/Office of War Information Photograph Collection form an extensive pictorial record of American life between 1935 and 1944. This U.S. government photography project was headed for most of its existence by Roy Stryker, who guided the effort in a succession of government agencies: the Resettlement Administration (1935–1937), the Farm Security Administration (1937–1942), and the Office of War Information (1942–1944). The collection also includes photographs acquired from other governmental and nongovernmental sources, including the News Bureau at the Offices of Emergency Management (OEM), various branches of the military, and industrial corporations.[2] In total, the black-and-white portion of the collection consists of about 175,000 black-and-white film negatives, encompassing both negatives that were printed for FSA-OWI use and those that were not printed at the time. Color transparencies also made by the FSA/OWI are available in a separate section of the catalog: FSA/OWI Color Photographs.[2] The FSA stressed "rural rehabilitation" efforts to improve the lifestyle of very poor landowning farmers, and a program to purchase submarginal land owned by poor farmers and resettle them in group farms on land more suitable for efficient farming. Reactionary critics, including the Farm Bureau, strongly opposed the FSA as an alleged experiment in collectivizing agriculture—that is, in bringing farmers together to work on large government-owned farms using modern techniques under the supervision of experts. After the Conservative coalition took control of Congress, it transformed the FSA into a program to help poor farmers buy land, and that program continues to operate in the 21st century as the Farmers Home Administration. Origins Walker Evans portrait of Allie Mae Burroughs (1936) Arthur Rothstein photograph "Dust Bowl Cimarron County, Oklahoma" of a farmer and two sons during a dust storm in Cimarron County, Oklahoma (1936) Dorothea Lange photograph of an Arkansas squatter of three years near Bakersfield, California (1935) The projects that were combined in 1935 to form the Resettlement Administration (RA) started in 1933 as an assortment of programs tried out by the Federal Emergency Relief Administration. The RA was headed by Rexford Tugwell, an economic advisor to President Franklin D. Roosevelt.[3] However, Tugwell's goal moving 650,000 people into 100,000,000 acres (400,000 km2) of exhausted, worn-out land was unpopular among the majority in Congress.[3] This goal seemed socialistic to some and threatened to deprive powerful farm proprietors of their tenant workforce.[3] The RA was thus left with only enough resources to relocate a few thousand people from 9 million acres (36,000 km2) and build several greenbelt cities,[3] which planners admired as models for a cooperative future that never arrived.[3] The main focus of the RA was to now build relief camps in California for migratory workers, especially refugees from the drought-stricken Dust Bowl of the Southwest.[3] This move was resisted by a large share of Californians, who did not want destitute migrants to settle in their midst.[3] The RA managed to construct 95 camps that gave migrants unaccustomed clean quarters with running water and other amenities,[3] but the 75,000 people who had the benefit of these camps were a small share of those in need and could only stay temporarily.[3] After facing enormous criticism for his poor management of the RA, Tugwell resigned in 1936.[3] On January 1, 1937,[4] with hopes of making the RA more effective, the RA was transferred to the Department of Agriculture through executive order 7530.[4] On July 22, 1937,[5] Congress passed the Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act.[5] This law authorized a modest credit program to assist tenant farmers to purchase land,[5] and it was the culmination of a long effort to secure legislation for their benefit.[5] Following the passage of the act, Congress passed the Farm Security Act into law. The Farm Security Act officially transformed the RA into the Farm Security Administration (FSA).[3] The FSA expanded through funds given by the Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act.[3] Relief work One of the activities performed by the RA and FSA was the buying out of small farms that were not economically viable, and the setting up of 34 subsistence homestead communities, in which groups of farmers lived together under the guidance of government experts and worked a common area. They were not allowed to purchase their farms for fear that they would fall back into inefficient practices not guided by RA and FSA experts.[6] The Dust Bowl in the Great Plains displaced thousands of tenant farmers, sharecroppers, and laborers, many of whom (known as "Okies" or "Arkies") moved on to California. The FSA operated camps for them, such as Weedpatch Camp as depicted in The Grapes of Wrath. The RA and the FSA gave educational aid to 455,000 farm families during the period 1936-1943. In June, 1936, Roosevelt wrote: "You are right about the farmers who suffer through their own fault... I wish you would have a talk with Tugwell about what he is doing to educate this type of farmer to become self-sustaining. During the past year, his organization has made 104,000 farm families practically self-sustaining by supervision and education along practical lines. That is a pretty good record!"[7] The FSA's primary mission was not to aid farm production or prices. Roosevelt's agricultural policy had, in fact, been to try to decrease agricultural production to increase prices. When production was discouraged, though, the tenant farmers and small holders suffered most by not being able to ship enough to market to pay rents. Many renters wanted money to buy farms, but the Agriculture Department realized there already were too many farmers, and did not have a program for farm purchases. Instead, they used education to help the poor stretch their money further. Congress, however, demanded that the FSA help tenant farmers purchase farms, and purchase loans of $191 million were made, which were eventually repaid. A much larger program was $778 million in loans (at effective rates of about 1% interest) to 950,000 tenant farmers. The goal was to make the farmer more efficient so the loans were used for new machinery, trucks, or animals, or to repay old debts. At all times, the borrower was closely advised by a government agent. Family needs were on the agenda, as the FSA set up a health insurance program and taught farm wives how to cook and raise children. Upward of a third of the amount was never repaid, as the tenants moved to much better opportunities in the cities.[8] The FSA was also one of the authorities administering relief efforts in the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico during the Great Depression. Between 1938 and 1945, under the Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration, it oversaw the purchase of 590 farms with the intent of distributing land to working and middle-class Puerto Ricans.[9] Modernization The FSA resettlement communities appear in the literature as efforts to ameliorate the wretched condition of southern sharecroppers and tenants, but those evicted to make way for the new settlers are virtually invisible in the historic record. The resettlement projects were part of larger efforts to modernize rural America. The removal of former tenants and their replacement by FSA clients in the lower Mississippi alluvial plain—the Delta—reveals core elements of New Deal modernizing policies. The key concepts that guided the FSA's tenant removals were: the definition of rural poverty as rooted in the problem of tenancy; the belief that economic success entailed particular cultural practices and social forms; and the commitment by those with political power to gain local support. These assumptions undergirded acceptance of racial segregation and the criteria used to select new settlers. Alternatives could only become visible through political or legal action—capacities sharecroppers seldom had. In succeeding decades, though, these modernizing assumptions created conditions for Delta African Americans on resettlement projects to challenge white supremacy.[10] FSA and its contribution to society The documentary photography genre describes photographs that would work as a time capsule for evidence in the future or a certain method that a person can use for a frame of reference. Facts presented in a photograph can speak for themselves after the viewer gets time to analyze it. The motto of the FSA was simply, as Beaumont Newhall insists, "not to inform us, but to move us."[citation needed] Those photographers wanted the government to move and give a hand to the people, as they were completely neglected and overlooked, thus they decided to start taking photographs in a style that we today call "documentary photography." The FSA photography has been influential due to its realist point of view, and because it works as a frame of reference and an educational tool from which later generations could learn. Society has benefited and will benefit from it for more years to come, as this photography can unveil the ambiguous and question the conditions that are taking place.[11] Photography program The RA and FSA are well known for the influence of their photography program, 1935–1944. Photographers and writers were hired to report and document the plight of poor farmers. The Information Division (ID) of the FSA was responsible for providing educational materials and press information to the public. Under Roy Stryker, the ID of the FSA adopted a goal of "introducing America to Americans." Many of the most famous Depression-era photographers were fostered by the FSA project. Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and Gordon Parks were three of the most famous FSA alumni.[12] The FSA was also cited in Gordon Parks' autobiographical novel, A Choice of Weapons. The FSA's photography was one of the first large-scale visual documentations of the lives of African-Americans.[13] These images were widely disseminated through the Twelve Million Black Voices collection, published in October 1941, which combined FSA photographs selected by Edwin Rosskam and text by author and poet Richard Wright. Photographers Fifteen photographers (ordered by year of hire) would produce the bulk of work on this project. Their diverse, visual documentation elevated government's mission from the "relocation" tactics of a Resettlement Administration to strategic solutions which would depend on America recognizing rural and already poor Americans, facing death by depression and dust. FSA photographers: Arthur Rothstein (1935), Theodor Jung (1935), Ben Shahn (1935), Walker Evans (1935), Dorothea Lange (1935), Carl Mydans (1935), Russell Lee (1936), Marion Post Wolcott (1936), John Vachon (1936, photo assignments began in 1938), Jack Delano (1940), John Collier (1941), Marjory Collins (1941), Louise Rosskam (1941), Gordon Parks (1942) and Esther Bubley (1942). With America's entry into World War II, FSA would focus on a different kind of relocation as orders were issued for internment of Japanese Americans. FSA photographers would be transferred to the Office of War Information during the last years of the war and completely disbanded at the war's end. Photographers like Howard R. Hollem, Alfred T. Palmer, Arthur Siegel and OWI's Chief of Photographers John Rous were working in OWI before FSA's reorganization there. As a result of both teams coming under one unit name, these other individuals are sometimes associated with RA-FSA's pre-war images of American life. Though collectively credited with thousands of Library of Congress images, military ordered, positive-spin assignments like these four received starting in 1942, should be separately considered from pre-war, depression triggered imagery. FSA photographers were able to take time to study local circumstances and discuss editorial approaches with each other before capturing that first image. Each one talented in her or his own right, equal credit belongs to Roy Stryker who recognized, hired and empowered that talent. John Collier Jr. John Collier Jr.   Jack Delano Jack Delano   Walker Evans Walker Evans   Dorothea Lange Dorothea Lange   Russell Lee Russell Lee   Carl Mydans Carl Mydans   Gordon Parks Gordon Parks   Arthur Rothstein Arthur Rothstein   John Vachon John Vachon   Marion Post Wolcott Marion Post Wolcott These 15 photographers, some shown above, all played a significant role, not only in producing images for this project, but also in molding the resulting images in the final project through conversations held between the group members. The photographers produced images that breathed a humanistic social visual catalyst of the sort found in novels, theatrical productions, and music of the time. Their images are now regarded as a "national treasure" in the United States, which is why this project is regarded as a work of art.[14] Photograph of Chicago's rail yards by Jack Delano, circa 1943 Together with John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath (not a government project) and documentary prose (for example Walker Evans and James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men), the FSA photography project is most responsible for creating the image of the Depression in the United States. Many of the images appeared in popular magazines. The photographers were under instruction from Washington, DC, as to what overall impression the New Deal wanted to portray. Stryker's agenda focused on his faith in social engineering, the poor conditions among tenant cotton farmers, and the very poor conditions among migrant farm workers; above all, he was committed to social reform through New Deal intervention in people's lives. Stryker demanded photographs that "related people to the land and vice versa" because these photographs reinforced the RA's position that poverty could be controlled by "changing land practices." Though Stryker did not dictate to his photographers how they should compose the shots, he did send them lists of desirable themes, for example, "church", "court day", and "barns". Stryker sought photographs of migratory workers that would tell a story about how they lived day-to-day. He asked Dorothea Lange to emphasize cooking, sleeping, praying, and socializing.[15] RA-FSA made 250,000 images of rural poverty. Fewer than half of those images survive and are housed in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress. The library has placed all 164,000 developed negatives online.[16] From these, some 77,000 different finished photographic prints were originally made for the press, plus 644 color images, from 1600 negatives. Documentary films The RA also funded two documentary films by Pare Lorentz: The Plow That Broke the Plains, about the creation of the Dust Bowl, and The River, about the importance of the Mississippi River. The films were deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. World War II activities During World War II, the FSA was assigned to work under the purview of the Wartime Civil Control Administration, a subagency of the War Relocation Authority. These agencies were responsible for relocating Japanese Americans from their homes on the West Coast to Internment camps. The FSA controlled the agricultural part of the evacuation. Starting in March 1942 they were responsible for transferring the farms owned and operated by Japanese Americans to alternate operators. They were given the dual mandate of ensuring fair compensation for Japanese Americans, and for maintaining correct use of the agricultural land. During this period, Lawrence Hewes Jr was the regional director and in charge of these activities.[17] Reformers ousted; Farmers Home Administration After the war started and millions of factory jobs in the cities were unfilled, no need for FSA remained.[citation needed] In late 1942, Roosevelt moved the housing programs to the National Housing Agency, and in 1943, Congress greatly reduced FSA's activities. The photographic unit was subsumed by the Office of War Information for one year, then disbanded. Finally in 1946, all the social reformers had left and FSA was replaced by a new agency, the Farmers Home Administration, which had the goal of helping finance farm purchases by tenants—and especially by war veterans—with no personal oversight by experts. It became part of Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty in the 1960s, with a greatly expanded budget to facilitate loans to low-income rural families and cooperatives, injecting $4.2 billion into rural America.[18] The Great Depression The Great Depression began in August 1929, when the United States economy first went into an economic recession. Although the country spent two months with declining GDP, the effects of a declining economy were not felt until the Wall Street Crash in October 1929, and a major worldwide economic downturn ensued. Although its causes are still uncertain and controversial, the net effect was a sudden and general loss of confidence in the economic future and a reduction in living standards for most ordinary Americans. The market crash highlighted a decade of high unemployment, poverty, low profits for industrial firms, deflation, plunging farm incomes, and lost opportunities for economic growth.[19]
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