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| To unemployed men like these, Hoover’s efforts to stop the Great Depression fell short. |
Remember Hoover’s prediction back in 1928 that the United States would soon “be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this nation”? He must have felt like he had given that speech on another planet just a little over a year later. He had been president for only eight months when the Stock Market Crash of 1929 happened. How could so much have gone so wrong so quickly?
Hoover was a fighter, and he worked tirelessly to try to stop the Great Depression. Click on the question in each row of the table below to learn what he did--and how it fell short.
| What kinds of new agencies did Hoover encourage to help people? | Local and state relief agencies. He still wanted to keep the federal government out of people’s lives and out of business and the stock market as much as possible. |
| How did these agencies do? | State and local governments were suffering from the Great Depression as well and had little to offer beyond short-term relief. |
| How did people respond to Hoover’s efforts? | They called on the federal government to do more to regulate banks and business and get both working again. |
Hoover resisted calls for federal intervention. In December 1930, he made another prediction in a speech to Congress: “Economic depression cannot be cured by legislative action or executive pronouncement.” He would find out over the next two years if he was right.
