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__**Herbert Clark Hoover**__  // Lifetime: August 11, 1874 – October 20, 1964 // //Political Party: Republican // //Terms of Office: March 4, 1929 – March 4, 1933 // //Vice President: Charles Curtis // President Herbert Hoover deserves a C for his single term he was in office. He didn’t complete any of his main goals and tried to solve the country’s economic problem too late since he was too stubborn to start sooner. However, even critics have to admit that he probably saved the country from further plummeting into the depression and he did eventually take many steps to try to help the country. Moreover, he helped shape a better foreign policy with other countries. For these reasons, Hoover earned a decent grade of a C.

Hebert Hoover, according to different records, had numerous goals as president. The main ones were to help the agricultural segment of the country, reforming the current tariff, strictly enforcing the prohibition law, aid the downward spiraling economy, and ultimately to eliminate any more poverty left in the United States. In the 1920s, agriculture was continuing to get worse and worse off as the rest of the country was growing more and more prosperous. He signed the Agricultural Marketing Act which created the Federal Farm Board that was supposed to help control surpluses of crops. However, it failed in its task, seeing as the farmer situation continued to get worse, due to the lack of authority and was eventually removed in 1933. Hoover also stated that he would reform the current tariff of 38% that was in place. He did actually reform the tariff with the Hawley-Smoot Tariff that raised the prices to 60%. However, the main goal was actually to help the farmers by decreasing foreign competition and this hurt them when the global tariff war broke out. Moreover, Hoover strongly advocated for the prohibition law, going along with the Republican Party. In 1929, he created the National Commission on Law Observance and Law Enforcement which found interesting things about Prohibition. They came to find that it ultimately failed, but did not suggest the amendment to be repealed. In other words, this was also a failure for Hoover. Once the stock market crashed in 1929 and many people began losing all their money, the president came up with a new goal, to help the economy. His method was ultimately to put money into the big businesses and banks in the hope that it would have a chain reaction and eventually reach the individual. Despite his wishes, this unfortunately did not occur the way he planned. Evidently, the depression worsened throughout the thirty’s and more and more people were losing money creating more poverty than at the beginning of the Hoover presidency. Clearly, Hoover failed at the vast majority of goals he hoped to achieve.

Hoover had a so-so relationship with his Congress. It started out mediocre and then grew worse in time. His party, the Republicans, had a slight majority in both houses the first two years. In the last two years, the Senate still had that slight majority, but the House of Representatives was overtaken by the Democrats. In 1929, he definitely had his fair share of disagreements with the Senate majority leader, James E. Watson. However, this did not reflect the overall relationship of him with his Congress, because they disagreed on issues such as isolationism, tariffs and the Ku Klux Klan, which were only issues between those two. Only three of his thirty-seven vetoes were overridden by Congress. The most significant of those overrides was when Congress passed a bill granting the ability for the Veterans of World War I to borrow half of their bonuses due to the down turn in the economy. Congress supported him in other instances such as the vetoing of the Tennessee Valley Authority despite the fact that it was well-liked by a Republican senator. Hoover also signed a bill helping labor unions that was called the Norris-LaGuardia Bill. This bill helped increase the freedom of workers to bargain via labor unions. It wasn’t up until Hoover began to veto the relief measures that problems with Congress arose. Basically, Congress wanted to actively help the economy, but Hoover saw this as wrong, so he vetoed most of the bills they tried to pass about it. In general, Hoover’s relations began well, but ended on a rocky note.

The most positive decision made by Hoover was starting the “Good Neighbor Policy.” Roosevelt often gets the credit for this policy, but it was Hoover who initiated it. The policy basically said that the United States would stay out of Latin American affairs. Woodrow Wilson’s policy of only recognizing government that was elected and not taken by assertion or force was overturned because of the vast amounts of revolutions going on in Latin America at the time. From then on, the American government would recognize any government that had control of the people no matter how that power was gained as long as they were planning to hold elections at some time in the future. Furthermore, Hoover removed troops from Nicaragua that Coolidge had placed there in 1927. In addition to that, he offered to remove the marines President Wilson had stationed in Haiti, but the Haiti government was satisfied with the troops there. By taking all these measures, Hoover improved the United States relations with the Latin American countries, which definitely benefited the country.

The most negative outcome of Hoover’s presidency was the passing of the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act in 1930. This tariff raised the current rates from about 38 percent up to almost 60 percent. The effects of this were seen in the fact that an “economic war” was started. Due to this tariff, many other countries, such as Britain, also put up high tariff walls. Thus, Americans now had to pay large percentages to get the goods they needed from other countries sinking them lower into depression. Moreover, France and Britain claimed that this was the reason they could not pay back the United States their debts that they owed from World War I. Again, this plunged not only the United States’ economy, but also the global economy, creating what seemed an irreversible depression. Furthermore, because of the depressions all over the world, dictators began to spring up in various countries such as Italy, Germany, and the Soviet Union. These dictators (Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin) exhibited behavior in taking over other countries to allow theirs to be more successful, thus creating World War II by provoking action by the French and the British. Ultimately, the results of this act were very negative and involved the suffering of Americans both economically and by loss of lives in the war.

The one decision that effected the future presidential administrations was to intervene in the national economy. Before Hoover’s presidency, this act had never taken place; most presidents had the “sit and wait” policy, not helping anyone. This time, Hoover decided to try and take measures to help out the population. He did things such as helping agriculture, assisting banks, balancing the budget, creating emergency powers, and making the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (gave loans to help businesses, mainly banks, from failing). Because of his actions, he set the precedent for all future presidents dealing with an economic crisis. If he hadn’t passed the measures he did, Roosevelt may have never started the New Deal, which would have made the Great Depression even worse for America. Furthermore, the current economic recession in the United States is being dealt with in a government-help fashion. Evidently, the source can still be traced back to the Hoover Administration when he originally began the practice. Moreover, it’s a better policy than the “hands-off” policy, because it grants relief to those people who would otherwise be in poor living conditions. Hoover was overall just an average president. He had about an equal amount of good and bad decisions within his term, but they mostly averaged each other out in the end, earning him a satisfactory C. He did contribute some unpleasant things such as the technical starting of World War I and the failure to meet any of his goals. Despite these negative aspects, the country seemed in a better state than when it started because of both the immediate and gradual impact of his eventual intervention in the American economy and his “Good Neighbor Policy” that Roosevelt continued to build off of.

Works Cited

"American President: Herbert Clark Hoover." //Miller Center of Public Affairs//. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 April 2010. [].  Bailey, Thomas A., Lizabeth Cohen, and David M. Kennedy. //The American Pageant: A History of the Republic//. 12 ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002. Print.

Degregorio, William A.. //The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents, Seventh Edition (Complete Book of Us Presidents)//. 7 ed. Fort Lee: Barricade Books, 2009. Print.  "The Herbert Hoover Administration." //Presidential Administration Profiles for Students//. Online Edition. Gale Group, 2002. Reproduced in History Resource Center. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale. [|http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/HistRC/]  "Presidential Vetoes, 1789–2008 — Infoplease.com." //Infoplease: Encyclopedia, Almanac, Atlas, Biographies, Dictionary, Thesaurus. Free online reference, research & homework help. — Infoplease.com//. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 April 2010. [].  Picture: []