Herbert Hoover

[Mark]

The Wrong Man at the Wrong Time

For all his previous successes, President Herbert Hoover proved incapable of arresting the economic free fall of the Depression— or soothing the fears of a distressed nation

By William E. Leuchtenburg




With training as a mining engineer and government experience as Commerce Secretary under Harding and Coolidge, Herbert Hoover took office in 1928 with strong skills, confidence, and apparently strong economy, as portrayed in the Liberty Magazine caricature of him, above. The Wall Street Crash of 1929 occurred seven months later.
(American Heritage Archives)
On March 4, 1929, Herbert Hoover took the oath of office as the thirty-first president of the United States. America, its new leader told the rain-soaked crowd of 50,0000 around the Capitol and countless more listening to the radio, was “filled with millions of happy homes; blessed with comfort and opportunity.”

He spoke in a monotone, but his words were oracular. “We are steadily building a new race, a new civilization great in its own attainments,” he claimed. “I have no fears for the future of the country. It is bright with hope.” One assertion more than any other articulated the theme of his inaugural address: “In no nation ‘are the fruits of accomplishment more secure.”

Through much of his term, critics would fling those words back in his face. He had been, in the phrase of the day, asking for it. “Never in American history,” observed a journalist in 1932, “did a candidate so recklessly walk out on a limb and challenge Nemesis to saw it off.”

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