Us welcome to the Herbert Hoover president ial library and museum, one of the gain such institutions operated by the National Archives and records administration. I noticed tom schwartz, the direct her and that the great pleasure of introducing our distinguished guest speaker. Before it began, there are a few housekeeping matters. As courtesy to our speaker and other members of the audience, please silence your cell phone to another unit tronic devices. Remember, this is being for later broadcast on cspan and know where you towed the links being captured on digital video for a national audience. We will also have an ample supply of Herbert White house for sale and im sure Charles Rappleye was signed. Should we have time, please visit our new exhibit, the world is a gangster. And while youre at it, take a card from our lobby, which highlights our upcoming programs event and business. If youre not a member of our foundation, i hope you will take over membership application and consider joining. The Foundation Supports all of our exhibits and programs, including travel grants, which provided our speaker several weeks of research in the library of collections. Finally, if you also help us by filling out a survey form after the program before you leave, that helps us in evaluating the programs that we provide. Charles rappleye is an awardwinning editor. His interests are wideranging. Hes written about the media, law enforcement, organized crime, slavery and the American Revolution as well as the wellreceived biography of robert morris, financier of the American Revolution. A native of cambridge, massachusetts, rappleye majored in economics at the university of wisconsin. One of the strengths of the study at the hoover president he is to explain in simple language the complicated Economic Issues that are on about and sustained the Great Depression. To use and gentlemen, please welcome tray inside them. [applause] hi there. Thanks for coming out today. Its a little awkward for me to come to the hoover institution. The hoover president ial library and talk to people about Herbert Hoover, about what i know about Herbert Huber because i feel like a number of you will know more about who we are today then i would know in another five years of research. I feel like this is the place has some aficionados and syntax for and i appreciate your listening to what i might have to add. What i am going to do is not so much talk about what i feel like i can add is what i have found that struck me about hoover. I knew something about hoover when i started, but not a whole lot. I am like every man battle way. The things that ive been across that really struck me and surprised me out with b. Of general interest, of interest to you people. I also want to thank tom schwartz for the invitation to speak here and particularly, matt shafer and Spencer Howard who wrote the researchers who worked with me hand in glove for a couple years am i constantly calling on them for them to her nation to look at the document that i had missed, to assist me on finding an locating material. They are very good at what they do and i appreciate how helpful they were to me. I will start with an amex code. The first thing that really struck me about hoover in which i found so compelling and it revealed him in a real human dimension with this constant conflict. He was never very subtle on what he was doing or how he was doing it. He was full of second guesses about himself, that is out of cheese, he was of a divided mind that was before the presidency. Its very much part of his character. During the presidency, he continued to play again. It couldnt have been very easy. Here is a story that i sort of brought some of that out. On a saturday afternoon in may, the suit being made in 31, when the depression really sad and and hoover was under a lot of pressure. President hoover spent a rare free hour chatting with a journalist h. B. Call to burn, rip porter who made the switch earlier from print to radio. It was more a conversation and then an interview and hoover was feeling free and clip, the u. S. President not draw and before was over, the discussion turned to the upcoming election. He asked if you were worried about the camp and prospects. Not at all the president quickly replied. He was worried about the popularity of Franklin Roosevelt. Im sorry, this is really 32. So he knew that he was up against roosevelt. After applause, hoover decided to explain himself. The reason im not worried is because i dont give a whether i am a lack did or not. He was hoovers old ambivalence about politics embraced now by three trying years in the white house. A candid remark, but not exactly true and carried potential for real political damage. Kaltenborn ended his visit soon after hoovers statements and a few minutes later, hoover called dennis press secretary ted johnson and inquired akeley as to what he might know about kaltenborn. You know them from a two years back at the brooklyn daily eagle. Hoover then asked if he understood the Current White House rules for reporters that all talks with the president are confidential. He couldnt say for sure. Then run him down and hoover thought. It would cause a world sensation repeated publicly. He caught up just as he was leaving the white house the white house and the story but successfully squelched. It was a typical case of hoover secondguessing himself in a nice demonstration of the divided mind. But something more, conversation id go concealed yen to return to office. The president may say he doesnt give a about reelection, but he wants it more than anything else. Part of what i like about this anecdote is hoover of two minds and its not clear he knows which side hes on. These conflicts are internal and they beguile hoover as well as everyone around them. Hoover could also show it has to allow the symbol of determination, some real sense of what he wanted, where he was going. As an example of that, when he first learned that Calvin Coolidge was not going to run for reelection, he was unlikely amounts on favorite to succeed and step aside. When this has been, hoover had no warning of it. Nobody had any warning that they amass kind of how he did things. He would surprise people. On this occasion he called reporters to his vacation spot in the midwest where he was taking some time out from the white house and coolidge said i did not choose to rent for my reelection. At the time that was big mystery. What to coolidge really mean. Did he mean simply is not going to run, which is what it turned out to be. He wasnt real straightforward in what he said. He did next lane at and people were wondering. It was announced by telegram. Hoover was at Bohemian Grove, place back then and now is a retreat for the elite and a place where they can let their hair down. Hoover loved that place. When the word came in that coolidge had made the announced that, there were hundreds of telegrams to the front Office Asking what hoover had to say. A crowd of men made their way to hoovers tomcat into somebody had to say. The upj was followed by hundreds more he had to send out for how. Most called for hoover to announce his candidacy for the nations top office, but hoover responded with caution. I regret this and its the president might standdown. In case the implication and president coolidge should be renominated and reelect it. Hoover sent out a telegram of private communications instructing the cohort to sit tight. There might be a campaign to say i made more bright output appear on. There should be no demonstration of any kind until coolidge had clarified his crypt and patterns. This was for show. Hoover wanted to conceal his ambition of the public, but also president coolidges real motives remained obscure it add also from his wife and for months leading up to his decision to enter the race, hoover kept his conversation about politics secret. You can tell his friends thought now were allowed. That same night after he told his people to sit tight, and a midnight meeting. They met in santa rosa for steve Bohemian Grove and quickly retired to a nearby tavern that offered more prize. Arnold was a stanford grad and sociologists who taken the trend north on short notice. The political backers into motion. That night he gave arnold his blessing. Herbert hoovers campaign for the president to thought on way that night. The next day the hoover distributes to the country is safer that would be employed for political communication. Some people one thing, some people another and kind of hedging bets with himself. He wasnt sure yet that he was in the race, but hes getting things into motion. Disintegrates at typical day you have to be careful what you say publicly and you have another agenda private key. You get the sense was hoover that he had traveled steadily and online before he could than to these larger scenes of action. What i found, to his having made it to the white house, his sense of internal conflict continued to bedevil kluger and it was not just internal. In other words, people could see it. They were surprised at this. Theyve always been a super executive and a man of quick decision and firm conviction. Once he was in the white house, that seemed to dissipate. It was confusing to the lack or at and people around him. It seemed to me that he had lost his political charm if i might call it that. He no longer had that friendly, affable attitude when he began president. He was distant. He had a high respect for the office and this is what bill attributed this to. In bills view, hoover became distinctly more pronounced after his election. It was the same transformation as the journalist Thomas Stokes had noticed during the campaign when he remarked on hoovers formality and how the secretary of commerce now appeared tentative. Gil in his recollection said he made too early it early trip to the huber white house and the Staff Legislation was surprise on both occasions finding the president who he formerly considered a friend wouldnt even look at him. Hed look at the ceiling or you look at the floor, he look out the window while i was trying to talk to him. Bill found this so disturbing he avoided any further encounters with the president. He never lost his respect for huber however. And to the end considered him a great character, one of the standouts he met during the course of his own public career but the presidency, bill said,mothers hoovers better qualities. Quote, i think of the office of president impressed him so much that he lost much of his effective personality in trying to respect the office, dale said. I always felt mister huber was so impressed with the office that he couldnt be the free, open man that he was. This ambivalence and this sort of hesitation in the face of conflict and you think back to hoovers years and congress, he cried on it but somehow once he took the central position of president , hesitation became his mode. And again, this is all early in the game. And it took a real toll on hoover. He was elected by a landslide and was very popular across the country. Within a year and this is, hoover takes office in march. The crash toward the end of october. But the stock market crash, people didnt immediately recognize oh, here comes the beginning of the Great Depression. That took months to sink in or even years to recognize quite how deep the trough was they were heading into. So even before this happens, hoover, his Political Capital isall gone. Hes a hobbled president even in the onset of the depression so its to keep in mind as the story progresses that as i utilize a device in telling this story, i divided the book into three parts in the first is called the rise and fall of huber hoover so im dating his fall to the 1930s. This is before the depression was his burden to bear and the point is hes not wellsuited to be president. Im not the only person to run across that. A quote from Walter Lipman was one of the great pundits of the time and this was his analysis of what has happened and this is again in the early 1930s. Lipman writes, my own notion that the crossexamination, mister hubers conduct in the critical matters will disclose a strange weakness which renders him indecisive at the point where the battle can be won or lost and this is the famous epic called the peculiar weakness of mister huber. This weakness appears at the point where in order to win he would have to intervene in the early of conflicting wills whichare the living tissue of popular government. Read the pattern was there for all to see when lines were drawn and the contenders look for conviction, hoover tended to fade away, his voice mute and his purpose obscure. Knowing hoover was new to elected office, lipman laid the president s failings to the vagaries of democratic process. Quote, he is baffled and worried. His action paralyzed by his own extent experience inthe very special business of democracy. Some might see hoovers remote bearing as arrogance but lipman felt otherwise. Again, the source was in the system. Hoover prize certainty, lipman wrote, and was excessively diffident in the process of the early rationality of democracy. Hoover was quickly emerging as a caution to those who saw the dry logic of the engineer as an antidote to the practice of politics, lipman again quote, in therealm of reason he is an unusually bold man. In the realm of unreason he is a statesman with exceptionally thin skin and an easily bewildered man this is hoover on the verge of the depression occupying an office that didnt quite fit, trying to lead a people that was not hearing him and then the precedent sets in and this i think, i felt was what im talking about next hoovers frustrations in the white house, i think Say Something about hoovers. He generally was understood to be specific, compose, very dignified fellow and dignity was very big in his mind and dignity was a big part of his conception of the presidency when it started to turn against him he feltreally bamboozled , frustrated and angry. But i think it also says a lot about being president , what a Pressure Cooker that places when things start to go wrong and here are a couple of quick anecdotes about hoover feeling the heat. The first one involves, this was again ted jocelyn, his press secretary and a big supporter of hubers, he wrote a biography that salvaged tubers reputation at the time but politically that was not going to happen. Now, this is 1931 and the questions really starting to grip the country. As the frustrations mounted and the long they filed in one after another hoover started to feel the strain. Quote, the president is don tired, jocelyn noted in july. How he stands up under the pressure is a mystery to me. Taking somehow to ease hoovers burden, jocelyn played a wildcard. He contacted byron price, a well liked Washington Bureau chief for the associated press. The president needed someone to alter his outlook. Quote, he is in a state and maybe a talk with you will do him good, jocelyn told byron privately. Not an interview, told price, not talk. Priceis intrigue and upon being ushered into hoovers office he was astonished. He didnt looks to me like the hoover ive been seeing, he recalled later read his hair was ruffled, he was almost crouching behind his desk and he burst out at me with a volley of angry words. Not against me or the press, but against the politicians and the Foreign Government with absolutely unbridled language. You start to wonder what that actually means, some people talked about hoover being able to swear with the best of them in the mining camps of the australian outback and you can imagine thats some pretty heavy language in those days but you never got any closer than when he was using colorful language out there so we willjust have to fill in with our imagination. In the midst of these tents and interminable negotiations, hoover was boiling over area price made triple notes of the encounter and provides a verbatim quote from the president. And now i am asked to take the blame, hoover fumed. Is it my fault these selfish men, the whole world over have refused to see the folly of their policies until it was too late . Is it my fault that france, our ally has stoodblindly in the way of settlement and cooperation . Hoover was mad at frances anger and encompassed the whole Economic Disaster that had compromised his term in office and i should say this was in negotiations over International Debts france had thrown against in the war. But his anger encompassed the whole Economic Disaster that so compromised his term in office area, over a period of years as president and in the cabinet i have done all i could to over the terrible situation we are in today but it was not enough, hoover complained to price. The original sin was committed at bursae, hoover said and it was aggravated bystupidity and stubbornness. Quote, i guess ill continue this a little further to give you the sense of where things are headed. Whatever ted jocelyn was thinking it appeared to have worked. Price kept his confidence and hoover invited him back repeatedly, always off the record and always to vent his anger area but a whole hoovers dark days this summer of 1931 may have been the most emotional. It was only then huber realized however part how far he might reach or push, the Global Economic crash began 20 months before and was not going to turn or come around like the depressions of the past. He recognized now that as John Maynard Keynes had written a few months ago, quote, we are living in this year in the shadow of one of the greatest economic catastrophes of modern history. So heres hoover with all this realizing that things are slipping away from him not just policy wise but his standing with the American People and so he goes a little bit of out of character. For one thing he always took his own counsel but in this case he brought somebody in as a special advisor to read that person was James Mccafferty who was a former member of congress and after his one term in congress he had left the government and worked, left the office and worked briefly under hoover at commerce. He then went back to the west coast, was involved in shipping and when hoover was elected president , lafferty made a point of traveling to washington to celebrate the inauguration and in his James Mccafferty sort of way he went, when the white house was open for gas after the inauguration, after the ceremonies mccafferty was in the white house and made sure he was by the front door so when hoover returned from the inaugural and entered the white house, the first face that he saw there was jim mclafferty. Mclaffertyshook his hand, told him how proud he was of huber. And then went on his way. But a year later, seeing that hoover was in so much political trouble, mclafferty went to the white house and offered his services as an advisor area at hoovers request now, reading the passage here, hoovers request, mclafferty returned to the white house the following week and thus began the continuing sub rosa conglomeration. The two met let regularly, mclafferty slipping in and out of the white house early in the morning or late in the day without the knowledge of the press or even most of the white house staff. Between visits, mclafferty wanted the cafeterias and the lobbies of congress, touting the policies of the administration, sounding out the sentiments and loyalties of his formercolleagues in the legislature. Then he would go back to hoover and report on what he learned serving the president as a conduit, fixer and sometimes amply as a sounding board. To him, mclafferty, and his former congressman hanging around washington and slipping in and out of the white housetalk with hoover about whats going on politically , it must be people like that operating washington today but of course, we dont know about it. Its all very secret and intriguing. Of all the issues on hoovers agenda heading into the summer of 1930, the first he raised with mclafferty was the question of veterans benefits. The American Legion and its allies have just pushed through congress the bill extending disability pensions to veterans of the spanishamerican war, pensions that they would collect whether or not the disability was related to military service so they were expanding the whole idea of the compensation that goes to veterans, the way that veterans are honored. There was a time when it was considered that if you fought in the war, you did so because that was your conviction and you lived with the consequences unless you were disabled and then the government was obliged to help. That began to change and it was, the change came around now. The bill carried a price tag of 11 million but invited a much costlier expansion. Hoover veto the bill in may 28, the first veto of his presidency but it hardly slow the movement incongress. Four days later during a break in tariff debates, both houses voted to override. Now in june, the senate was moving to expand that new coverage and benefits to the millions more veterans from world war i. It was a signal moments on issues ranging from terrace to political patronage, hoovers priorities tended to get lost but the hard logic of the Balance Sheet seemed to clarify things for the president and when it came to government spending, hoover shed his timidity and prevarication area to his mind, limiting spending was a matter of protecting the American People, a duty he embraced with birth. For the most part hoover muddled through his first year in office preaching cooperation but failing to define himself to congress or the public, now he found his mission. Mclafferty was delighted to see the president in such a combative mood. Like so many others, he sausage hoovers central problem to be one of leadership. He wanted hoover to hit harder, to drive his enemies. Watching hoover bent on stage, watching hoover vent his outrage over the pension bill, mclafferty egg him on. The lawmakers lined up against him had done so for fear of constituent backlash, the answer was to make those politicians fear hoover even more. Let them all know they are not for you, you are not for them, mclafferty told hoover. Make them fear you. Hoover is a guy who for whom cooperation was the byword. Government would not be coercive, it was by enticing people to seek their better interests that he sought to move things forward, the idea of driving his enemies through fear was out of character but it sort of fit the Pressure Cooker that he was in and hoover adopted this as a strategy. Mclafferty again in 1931 when the democrats floated a new more expensive version of the veterans bonus, and this law stood before the famous veterans bonus showdown in washington. Hoover ruled that his people would make no effortto improve the bill , this is a new bill, hoovers decision is to let it be as he says, as bad as possible. The better to assert his plan to be at the toe. It was a cynical strategy hoover described through clenched teeth read he is very tense, mclafferty observed in his diary. He is cutting his words short and his voice, never loud, was low. I dont want compromise, the president told his aid area i want the bill to go to the limits so it will arouse the country so it cannot pass over a veto. Mclafferty who also in political matters in black and white encouraged the president s intransigence. My advice is that you figuratively kick them in the face, mclafferty told the president area dont show any mercy right now. If you do it will be welded as weakening on yourpart. Your enemies wont have it any other way. The public will say you are weakening, dont give them a chance to say it. This is this sort of frustration, rage, anger and disappointment that hoover encountered in the white house. And it was, its not what i expected to see from the quaker president. Its not what i think people generally think of but i think its what happens when you are caught in the crossfire the way it happened withhoover. These are observations about character and about the man behind the mask, i guess you could say. But there was also of course hoover in the depression, hoover, the guy who left the depression saddened,hoover the guy who didnt know how to handle it. At least thats my understanding as i came into this. But following closely and studying for a couple of years or a little more into hoover and thedepression and what he did , here again i come away with a different understanding that i started with and one that i did not expect in that i will share with you. And thats the sense of hoover as a man of real vision and insight when it comes to, when you get away from the game of politics and into the arena of policy and prescription and the economy. Hoover was a lot smarter, i believe then he is given credit for and had some very important things to say, things to notice. I will take it in a couple of stages because as the depression deepens, hoovers response shifts but right off the bat, with the wall street crash again, you have the big crash on wall street, people want to know especially when you dont have the example of the Great Depression in front of you, people dont know automatically where the one thing leads tothe next or where that might take it. And with the depression there was a lot of talk about fundamental, the fundamentals of the American Economy are fine. In fact, hoovers only Public Statement on the arrival of the depression was that the fundamental business of america is in good shape and we are going to get through this area and its just a matter of confidence and we americans know how to handle these things, that kind of thing area but hoover, and again he was reluctant to bring the government into engagement on a question of the economy that there was no precedent for that. There was no indication that again, this crash meant a widespread malaise in the economy. So hoovers first reaction was not to, not the governmental one what to call together the leaders of American Business and in a series of conferences to cajole, to persuade, to press them to maintain their spending, not to panic, not to slash payrolls in the first onset of bad news which was a pattern up until then. But then when he took the stage in front of the first group of these business conferences which have since been laughed at by economists and pundits who say that it was just a dog and pony show, i think thats a little unfair. I think he really felt this was an avenue that might work area anyway, hoover opened the first of these conferences with an appraisal of the wall street crash that was far more candid and more gloomy than anything he has shared with the public and i might add with most anything that was being said at the time. And i think this is the case of hoover having real insight into what was happening. He calledthis group together, the president said , only because quote, he viewed, because he viewed the crisis more seriously than a mere stock market crash. This was an instinctive judgment. There were as hoover pointed out no means to gauge the depth of the damage but hoover felt confident in warning that quote, we could expect along and difficult. At best and there must be much liquidation of inflated values, debts and crises with heavy penalties for the nation. So almost alone among his contemporaries, hoover saw what was coming. His lot was not to incite fear, his goal was to instill awareness of the gravity and a sense of Mission Going forward. They are quotes, immediate duties these businessmen sitting before him was to quote, consider the human problem of unemployment and distress. Previous crises had seen immediate liquidation of labor, of wage cuts and layoffs. Hoover opposed such steps quote, with every instinct. Labor was not a commodity, he said but an entity compose of human homes. Hoover has never been accused of being eloquent and human homes is a curious way to put things but you get the idea. And besides, slashing payroll would magnify the shock of the market collapsed by sudden reduction of purchasing power so he quite aware of this whole idea of Consumer Spending driving the American Economy. Wage cuts might prove his essential, hoover told employers, whose wage should fall as a last resort. Wait until at least the cost ofliving came down, another likely result of prolonged economic doldrums. Hopefully then the worst hardships might be avoided. And again on the question of whether this was just a dog and pony show, in fact in the first year of the depression, wages stayed up. To the point where economists were starting to worry that these high wages were stifling recovery. But when it comes to sort of the human cost of the depression, the wages staying up for years, for more than a year after this initial onset and hiring, hoover exhorted the employers that if they were going to cut, cut half ships, reduce hours before you reduce the number of employees. There were a lot of measures taken like that to try to share the pain, to try to keep individualsfrom taking the whole brunt on their own. Of course, a lot of this eroded as things kept getting worse and worse but it was a bona fide effort to try to dampen the effect of the crash and the unemployment and for a time, it worked. Now, theres a couple other examples that i think are important read certainly i found to be surprising as to hoovers insight and ill give one here. Hooters pronouncement on prosperity were the principal public acts in response to this oncoming depression but they were not the extent of these engagements. Hoover was cerebral and conscientious and the moment he was able to car from a crowded schedule he sought deeply on the nature of the economic problems and how to answer it. One arena that he focused on was housing area hoover saw at least the germ of a solution by surveyingthe field of employment and job creation for bottlenecks , obstructions, obstacles that might be cleared away and he found just that in the Credit Structure of the housing industry. Home mortgages at the time were limited to just half the value of the new structure. Aspiring homeowners were expected to cover the other half outofpocket. Mortgage loans ran only 3 to 5 years at which point they had to be paid off or refinance and second mortgages sometimes use to augment the initial construction carried Interest Rates as high as 20 percent area mortgages canceled out since then , but hoover was looking at the whole situation of the American Economy and he focused on this really awkward and difficult financing structure of the housing industry area his new focus on home finance and its ramifications for the depression represented an important insight. Studies conducted much later with data unavailable to hoover at the time showed that Residential Construction was a leading factor in the general collapse. Of 12 sectors broken out for 1971 study, construction showed the sharpest, deepest dive of all. Well before any other voice was raised, hoover noted a distinct proportional decrease in the amount of credit available for homebuilding and he observed quote, this comes to the front in times of depression whencredit available for this purpose almost disappears. Recognizing the ailments, he saw opportunity, building homes would generate substantial new employment not just for construction but also producing Building Materials and furnishings at the same time hoover believed quote, increasing improvement in Housing Conditions is of the utmost socialimportance. The upshot of this was he proposed to the people of the Federal Reserve launching a new system of federalmortgage finance. The people of the Federal Reserve at the time didnt share hoovers concern about credit. They felt there was plenty of credit in the system, that there was Something Else going wrong and it was not the time to launch a new initiative in home finance area hoover was frustrated with thatreturn. And he took it upon himself to circumvent, to bypass the people of the fed. He put his proposal into legislation for home loan finance boards. It stalled in congress for a couple years but among the final acts of congress under the hoover presidency was the loan , the federal home loan finance board. Its an indication of how difficult it is to get things done. It never amounted to what hoover or his ambitions for the project but it is an indication of what he saw as the problem, what he saw as a solution and a certain sophistication that i dont think is generally recognized about hoover area and again, as the depression pressed on, around the world countries around the world, people around the world considered the depression to be really the deathknell of capitalism, the sort of and of the cycle that waspredicted by karl marx. That capitalism had finally reached its High Water Mark and collapsed area and certainly thats part of what happened area you have the markets asset valuations running up a huge bubble and then the collapse, we are familiar with that cycle these days and thats what happened at the time so a lot of people back then, its time to abandon capitalism. Capitalism doesnt work areas and so you had the first revolution, the soviet revolution in russia but it was followed byrevolutions all around theworld , particularly in south america. People, a socialist model. You also have the rise of the fascists in italy and germany. People turning away from the idea of capitalist economy to the planned economy and you have a powerful movement here , especially among big corporate industrialists saying we need to pan plan our economy. We need centralized planning. Thats the future, thesoviets are doing the fiveyear plans, we need fiveyear plans, we need 10 year plans. Hoover rejected all that and kind of alone at the top of the elite, the World Leaders , hoover was saying this is not the end of capitalism. Capitalism, private enterprise remains the engine that drives Human Progress area he never let go of that area but more than that, rather than a crisis, capitalism, he broke it down and saw acrisis of credit. That the problem was not that capitalism didnt work but the credit markets have been shut down by asset valuation, by asset inflation and proceedings like that. So hoovers response was the federal home loan bank, im sorry, home loan board, federal land lending, monetary easing. He was pushing that at the Federal Reserve, lower Interest Rates. Big open market purchases, anticipating the target program of 80 years later, im sorry, anticipating quantitativeeasing. The program we are pursuing now. As a way to reflect out of this depression, not inflate. That was always a bugaboo of hoover but easing credit, opening the channels of credit. Making sure that the capitalist system was lubricated to work the way it was supposed to. That was his response to the depression. At a time when a lot of people were losing their bearings, were gravitating towards centralized systems that have long since now been thoroughly discredited. It was hoover who saw that was not the way to turn, that this was a crisis of credit, not capitalism and brought to bear a whole raft of innovative proposals to respond to that. I think that, i wont read passages aboutthat. They really fill out, this book is a story of these innovations that hoover pursued but i think he needs to be recognized for the vision, the recognition that what was the nature of the crisis and the way out of it. I will finish, pursuing that a little further, if hoover is so darned smart then why didnt work . I think theres an answer to that and that is hoovers allegiance to gold. The Gold Standard was the principal Economic Framework that people worked in for the 40 years leading up to world war i which was 40 years of remarkable Global Economic development and integration for which the Gold Standard was integral because it did integrates in parallel pricing, the different economies, all over the face of the globe and led to this unprecedented expansion of economicactivity and wellbeing. All through the latter part of the 19th century. Coming into the 20th with world war i and so on, all of that was disrupted. Hoover was trying to, after the chaos of world war i, most of the countries of the world return to the Gold Standard just before the depression hit. Okay . So you had you hoover trying to hold on to gold at a time when disruption all over the world and it looked like it was chaos. Hoover believed the return to the Gold Standard would stem the chaos. Whether that was true or not, we will never know but chaos took over and it was sort of competing devaluations, just one after another pulled countries out of the depression. Hoover, United States under hoover was one of the last to let go of gold and in fact it didnt happen until Franklin Roosevelt came in so the recovery was delayed in the us and we were amongthe last to climb out of the depression. This is largely considered to be well, hoover was foolish enough to hold on to gold too long. That may be the case but i think, i will venture to say that the jury is still out. If you look at the world from Herbert Hoover to now, the next thing that happened was fdr and the abandonment of the Gold Standard which happened by stages and technically we didnt completely abandon gold until Richard Nixon but in fact thats what we did is let go of the gold content of the dollar and let the dollar rise and, or sink , inflate and by and large that made us more competitive against the rest of the world and trade started to pick up and so on. However, the only thing that happens when you let go of gold and you start to inflate is asset values start to inflate and you start incurring debt which is what the us did and all the western economies did. Until you basically, you go from there to today where under the Gold Standard it was clear people were, if you started going into debt that people started withdrawing their foreign currencies from your country, started selling off or cashing in for gold area gold was in automatic discipline in the International Monetary system. Without that feature, then asset values can inflate indefinitely and so can debt until you now have a situation where the world is kind of swimming in debt which so far has been okay area and weve been able to, and when we hit a downturn like we did in 2009 , we do the quantitative easing, we do more inflation and everything tends to float off the shoals a little bit but all the banks around the planet and all the democracies around the globe are deep indebt. Debt that is not clear if its worth the paper its printed on. I dont know if that means we are coming up to some kind of waterfall kind of cliff again where all these asset valuations are brought down to earth area but i will say, i would say that as far as the idea of letting go of a Firm Standard of value, going ahead with inflating currencies and incurring Massive Public debt, its not clear yet that that was the right answer and that hoovers answer was wrong areas i think thats as far as you can go for anything with Herbert Hoover as an economic visionary but i would go that far and i would say that was another, what i consider a real discovery for me in learning about Herbert Hoover in the white house. Thats my talk, im happy to answer questions and ill be signing books. I dont know if tom can tell me if ive overstayed my limit. But i dont know, tom. Are we taking questions . Okay. The way this will work, if you have a question raise your hand and dont start your questionuntil you have the microphone. Thank you. Is there anything that Herbert Hoover wanted to do and failed that president roosevelt picked up and succeeded on . There were a few things and you know, thats an interesting question. Its an interesting point that in fact some of the leading advisers to roosevelt said later that almost everything they did under the new deal had been initiated under hoover area and its sort of a, the kind of claim you can only make if youre a roosevelt acolyte, that you cant get much mileage saying from the hoover camp saying that everything they did, we did first but that was their acknowledgment area in particular, for example the reconstruction finance quote which hoover devised to channel funds into the banks. It was the first step in that direction by the federal government and consequently the republicans and democrats in congress that hoover put forth to program put a lot of restrictions on it. High Capital Requirements for the loans, a lot of scrutiny and a lot of sort of obstacles in paying thatmoney off. When the democrats took over and fdr took over, they were much freer with thefunds from the reconstruction finance corporation. They had a lot of success floating industry as well as banks and so they started with what hoover had and expanded on it and found it to be very important in staging the recovery. Some of hoovers foreign policies as well, i mean , that problem in agriculture preceded the depression. In fact, there are many good basis to believe it was agricultural problems that precipitated the depression. Hoovers response, the farmers strategy that they wanted adopted was to have two markets, a domestic market and then export markets and when you sold at low prices on the export markets, the government would give you a subsidy to match the high domestic price they were keeping in the us markets, it was a very convoluted to price strategy that hoover and several other republican administrations rejected and hoover came in, his first act as president was to call for a special session of congress for new Agricultural Policy area he instituted the federal farm board which hoover understood that price supports were a dead end. That trying to keep american prices high against the backdrop of a low Price International market was futile but the farmers wanted action and Hoover Hoover wanted something to happen. They instituted the federal farm board, he started buying crops to maintain crop prices and stockpiling them. They ended up with huge warehouses full of grain that would go rotting. It was kind of a disastrous policy but the Roosevelt Administration pursued many of the same policies and then expanded on some of them, paying farmers not to grow crops and that sort of thing. Some of that was pioneered under the hoover farm administration. Roosevelt pursued it as well. Its hard to say that was a success. Theres sort of a vestige now of the price report that we pay now in the ironic situation of paying people not to plantcrops. All that survives. The hoover farm board, then from the roosevelt farm administration, all different ways of trying to deal with intractable agricultural problems that weve been dealing with now for Something Like 100years. Those are probably the principal ones the rfc, the housing board remained under roosevelt,then expanded its operations. There were a lot of, and i think the basic thing that people point to is that until hoover, the federal government really did take its hands off in the face of economic problems and say thats for the businesspeople and the society as a whole to deal with, thats not for government. The ups and downs of the economy, just the way it is, thats life. Hoover wasnt ready to accept that and i dont know that he could area society was getting bigger, more urban. When hoover came in, it had just crossed the line from most americansliving in rural to being urban , city people. And when you are dealing with large numbers of people who dont have access to the land, the sort of basic resources you get from, its really hard to start if youre a farmer but theres a lot of starving that setting in the urban areas during the depression with people needing food and they didnt have root sellers they could go to so the whole idea of government stepping in in the face of economic distress, that started under hoover and thats what roosevelt was all about. So in some, theres been a debate historically for some time, is hoover the end of the old or the beginning of new . And i think theres elements of both sides but i think hoover did open the door to a lot of roosevelt and what happened after that. Thats my long answer to your short question. You mentioned he was kind of a hard charging executive beforehand then as president was more ambivalent area did he get his mojo back after he got out of office and turned back into the guy he was before . Know. Thats my short answer. No, he went through a real life change with the presidency. Up until he was president , as somebody put it hoover never failed at anything. He was successful in a wide range of endeavors from being poor and lacking education, he got to stanford. He got educated. He became very successful and wealthy as a globetrotting geological consultant. He made his first million by the age of 40 and that was a time when 1 million was 1 million. Then turned his attention to Public Service and did so during world war i so we was running these massive, very highly regarded programs. And as secretary of commerce he presided over the roaring 20s, the greatest seven or eight years of Economic Growth americas ever seen and he was considered to have a lot to do with a lot of that. Then he becomes president and everybody, hes his whipping boy for what happened area and loses all his prestige. And then having left the white house, he stays silent for a year, he goes into a withdrawn kind of state and then comes back as a critic of fdr, critic of the new deal and whereas before he been an affirmative kind of guy talking about what we need to do and being positive in his outlook, ever after it was about what we are doing wrong and beating up on roosevelt. From a position whereactually , he wasnt playing a glove on roosevelt and in fact roosevelt spent the next four elections running against hoover all over again, every time the republicans put somebody new he said its just a number hoover. You dont want that again do you . And everybody agreed no we dont and voted for roosevelt area his first glimmer of sort of being acknowledged as former president and maybe not a completely useless person was from truman who extended a hand and then asked him to review situations in europe for humanitarian purposes and put him on his old track but hoover didnt become on another, he didnt go back to his old age. He did those things for truman. He then was invited by truman and again by eisenhower to review the efficiencies of the Us Government so there was the hoover commissions and they made recommendations and a lot of them were followed so he got some plaudits as an administrator but he politically, he kept on back to the conventions sort of hoping there would be a call for lets bring hoover back in the Republican Conventions and in fact the republicans were treating him like kryptonite, sort of know, you stay over there and hoover had to live with that. As much as he got some of the recognition back as a former statesman, that was it for him. Thanks again. With president hoover we had a self made person that did a lot ofsuccessful things that youve already covered. And then we get a mindset, you get away of doing things as a result, trades, personal traits and that was a somewhat selfmade wealthy man running for president. Did you see anything that would be helpful for him to understand he wouldnt go into the mistakes that preparing for this next president ial election . Thats an interesting question. Yes, and to bring it a little further, hoover was elected president , that was his first elected office area if this result in trump being our president , that would be his first so they will have that in common. But where hoover never really had a bond, he had a lot of respect for the American People but hoover hated public appearances. This was one of his character things, he wanted to be a public figure but didnt want to deal with the public. He didnt like public speaking, he didnt like the dog and pony show aspect of being president. Whereastrump seems to enjoy that part. Even before he got there. So i dont think they share the same assets and adventures sort of thing, their strong suits are different. However, i do think that one thing hoover ran into in the white house, something that littman thought about was the process of politics is messy and uncertain and you are constantly beingput in the position of making deals with people you dont want to deal with. Hoover was not very good at that. I wonder how good trump would be at that . The whole thing about being a successful private enterprise type executive is making decisions, making them stick, sicknesses to something that maybe it doesnt look like its the right thing to do but you have some insight and you are going to, thats how you make a lot of money is by getting people to buy things from you, to may pay more than their work or you buy things for less than their work and that requires a private acumen. Thats not the same thing as persuading all of congress to go along with what you want to do area i wonder how trump is going to deal with the situation when he says heres what weve got to do, everybody get in line and everybody stands thereand looks at him and says im not getting in line. Maybe we will see. Maybe not. I think if you have any further questions you can ask them of charles as he is signing your book. And lets thank him once more for his presentation. [applause] thank you for coming and safe travels. [inaudible conversation] heres look at books that are being published this week. Senior fellow at the new America Foundation and law professor at georgetown university, rosa brooks looks at the history of warfare in the book how everything became war and the military became everything. Inpatient hm, journalist Luke Dietrich looks at the Scientific Study of memory through the lens of his grandfathers work as a brain surgeon area Elizabeth Greenwood talks about the death on industry and reasons why some people take their own death in the book playing dead. In way of the reaper, former sniper Nicholas Irving relates some of his most Dangerous Missions in iraq and afghanistan and university of london researcher Susan Williams called american efforts during world war ii to covertly secure highquality uranium boards in flies in the condo. Look for these titles in bookstores this week and watch for many of the officers in the near future on tv on cspan to