Herbert Hoover, Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: The Great Depression (1952)

Memoirs: the Great Depression was not published until 1952, although Hoover tells us that the bits we are interested in were written in the five years after 1932.  It is probably not a book you will want to read: a dull, dense diatribe, re-fighting in huge detail the battles he lost 30 years earlier.   It is for all of its 488 pages (big word warning) self-exculpatory – seeking to absolve himself from all blame ...  and blaming everybody else instead. 

The academic who reviewed it for the Pacific Historical Review in 1953 sums it up perfectly:

“Hoover is an angry man with an angry thesis.  The main outline of that thesis runs substantially as follows:

The real origins of the great depression occurred in Europe before the Wall Street stock market crash. 

Among the most important of these were the maladjustments coming from the great war, the refusal of the great European nations to live within their own incomes, and their enticement of the American Federal Reserve Board into unsound fiscal policies.  Without this, the author asserts, the ensuing stock market crash and the following depression would have been no more serious than the normal recurring economic readjustments... 

But the policies of the board, against which Hoover repeatedly protested, a weak national banking system, and the evil practices of private financial leaders sent us into the dreary days of 1930-1931. 

Even so, the Hoover thesis continues, the many remedial measures of his administration had by 1932 checked the depression, and the country was well on the road to recovery. 

Just at this critical time, however, the Democratic party, made up of conservative Democrats, corrupt city machines, and radical intellectuals, among whom, according to Hoover, were at least 1000 Communists, fellow travelers, and some traitors, won the election by trading on the vices of a few Wall Street financiers and the misery of the many.”

If you meet a quote from the book for an interpretations question in the exam, you will be able to say that, appearing 30 years after the events, angry and tediously self-exculpatory, the book is probably useless to the historian, even as a source for what Hoover was thinking at the time – useful only if you want to know how a bitter old man of 78 chose to portray the events. 

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Quotes

Hoover starts by denying all responsibility for the Depression:

“The ‘Great Depression’ did not start in the United States.  To be sure, we were due for some economic readjustment as a result of the orgy of stock speculation in 1928-1929.  This orgy was not a consequence of my administrative policies.  In the main it was the result of the Federal Reserve Board's pre-1928 enormous inflation of credit at the request of European bankers which, as this narrative shows, I persistently tried to stop, but I was overruled...  But even this slump started in foreign countries before it occurred in the United States, and their difficulties were themselves a contributing factor to the stock market crack.  Our domestic difficulties standing alone would have produced no more than the usual type of economic readjustment which had re-occurred at intervals in our history… Eighteen months later, by early 1931, we were convalescing from our own ills when an economic hurricane struck us from abroad.  The whole financial and economic structure of Europe collapsed.”

Then we get in huge detail an account of the bad fortune and dirty tricks which cost him the election:

“General Prosperity had been a great ally in my election in 1928.  General Depression, who superseded, was in some part responsible for my defeat in 1932.  The recovery which began in July steadily increased over that summer, but not sufficiently to overcome that particular political opponent.”

“I give more attention to the campaign of 1932 than might be otherwise desirable, because I then accurately forecast that attempts would be made to revolutionize the American way of life.  The effort to crossbreed some features of Fascism and Socialism with our American free system speedily developed in the Roosevelt administration.  The result was that America failed to keep pace with world recovery.”

“The over-all strategy of our political opponents during the period between their defeat in 1928 and their convention in 1932 was in some aspects new in American political life.  It was simple enough… it became the Democratic strategy to substitute attack on me personally for attacks on my policies or even on the Republican party … a continuous campaign of misrepresentation … out of the smear departments of yellow journalism.”

“The attack included also a continuous flood of press releases and radio propaganda.  The Congressional Record alone shows hundreds of such attacks.  A President cannot with decency and with proper regard for the dignity of his office reply to such stuff.  And in my case, some of the old-guard Republican leaders in the Senate and the House, who had been defeated in their Presidential ambitions in 1928, certainly did not exert themselves energetically in their traditional duty to counterattack and expose misrepresentations.”

“Probably the greatest coup of all was the distortion of the story of the Bonus March on Washington in July, 1932… As abundantly proved later on, the march was in considerable part organized and promoted by the Communists and included a large number of hoodlums and ex-convicts determined to raise a public disturbance… [My] directions limited action to seeing to it that the disturbing factions returned to their camps outside the business district.  I did not wish them driven from their camps… This incident was made the base of a fabrication of smearing lies over years.”

“The reason for the small number of speeches was my great burden not only of normal administration but of the depression.  Moreover, I wrote my own speeches – and a proper presentation requires many days to prepare.”

“By the nature of things, we were somewhat on the defensive as to certain issues, especially in view of constant misrepresentation which could be met only by painstaking exposure and dreary recital of facts.”

Next, we are told how it was all Roosevelt's fault that the economy and banking collapsed in the period between the election of November 1932 and Roosevelt taking office in March 1933:

“Roosevelt's refusal to cooperate ...  on the budget, under circumstances so favorable to the united action of both parties, and directly contrary to all the promises made in his campaign, greatly increased the epidemic of fears in the country.”

“One reason why unemployment rose so rapidly after the election was Mr. Roosevelt's promise of legislation by which the government would give all of the unemployed a job.  This, together with other discouragements to employers, led them to abandon much of their support of idle employees and to reduce operations.”

“The next blow to recovery came from a great fear that currency tinkering would be undertaken by the new Administration.  A flood of rumors that the gold standard would be abandoned … fired public fears to dangerous heat.  During the latter part of January, the consequences of these actions and rumors began to show up in a ‘flight from the dollar’ by our citizens to points outside the United States.”

“A statement from Roosevelt even at this date could probably have stopped the panic.  In any event, I could have stopped it if I had had his support.”

Finally, we read some ideas about how Hoover would have run the economy, and how wicked was the New Deal:

“The American system is based upon the confidence, hopes and the judgment of each man in conducting his business affairs upon his judgment.  He determines his prices in relation to demand, supply and competition.  His policies are based upon endless chains of contracts and agreements.  If only one link be touched, the whole chain weakens and the expected results are frustrated.  Also, under a ‘planned economy’ the actions of government and bureaucrats are unpredictable.  At once men become hesitant and fearful.  Every time the planners inject their dictation into some region of private enterprise, somehow, somewhere, men's minds and judgments become confused.  Initiative and enterprise slacken; production and consumption slow down.  At once unemployment is increased, and every fear is accelerated.  Then more drastic powers and more government agencies are demanded by the planners.  And thus the cancer of power over men grows by creating its own emergencies.”

“It is of some interest to examine Roosevelt's attitude of mind amidst his long failure to overcome the depression….  Mr. Roosevelt became periodically most optimistic…  Apparently Roosevelt was not plagued with the fact that unemployment had not greatly diminished since the day of his election.  He constantly fooled himself by using as his statistical base his induced bank panic of March 4, 1933.”

“1933 started forces which were to have considerable influence in the attempt to collectivize the United States, particularly through the labor unions.  We saw government conducted by ‘emergencies,’ purges, propaganda, bureaucracy, hate, the turmoil of class conflict – all of collectivist pattern.  We saw an era of the deepest intellectual dishonesty in public life.  We saw the growth of executive power by the reduction of the legislative arm, with few exceptions, to a rubber stamp.  We saw the Congressional powers over the purse practically abandoned.  We saw the subjection of the Supreme Court to the collectivist ideas of the executive.  We saw the independence and responsibility of the states undermined by huge Federal subsidies directly to the citizens. 

“Thus the four great pillars of free men were weakened.  As a result of eight years of the New Deal, there was not more but less liberty in America.  And, unique among the nations of the world free of collectivism, we had not ended the Great Depression.  Its vast unemployment and its huge numbers on relief were only ended by war.”

Hoover's Memoirs: the Great Depression is available online here (pdf).