Herbert Hoover won the presidency in 1928

Do you ever wish you could go back in time and warn your past self that danger was just around the corner? For instance, if you went on a walk in the woods with your friend, slipped, and broke your leg, while you were recovering with your leg in a cast you might think, “If only I had known what was going to happen! I would never have gone on that walk.”

Herbert Hoover must have felt that way in 1930. He had won the presidency in 1928 in a landslide, after working in the administrations of Presidents William Harding and Calvin Coolidge. He supported those men's policy of keeping the federal government out of business and the stock market--a policy known as deregulation.

On the campaign trail in 1928, Hoover preached the power of prosperity: “We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land,” he said. “We shall soon, with the help of God, be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this nation.” He, like many Americans, believed that the way to do that was to continue to let the unregulated stock market rise. And indeed, in 1929 the stock market was climbing higher than it had ever gone before.

So what could go wrong? The new President Hoover must have felt supremely confident as he took office in 1929. If only 1930 Hoover could have gone back in time to warn 1929 Hoover about what was coming…