The Politics of Boom and Bust

1. The Politics of Boom and Bust Chapter 32

2. Introduction Three Republican presidents- Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover- steered the nation on the roller-coaster ride of the 1920s, a thrilling ascent from the depths of post-World War I recession to breathtaking heights of prosperity, followed by a terrifying crash into the Great Depression.

3. Introduction Meanwhile, the United States retreated from its brief internationalist fling during World War I and resumed with a vengeance its traditional foreign policy of military unpreparedness and political isolationism.

4. The Republican “Old Guard” Returns Warren G. Harding, inaugurated in 1921, looked presidential. His smiling, charming, exterior concealed his weak, inept interior. Harding, like Grant, was unable to detect moral halitosis in his evil associates, and he was soon surrounded by the “Ohio Gang” of cronies.

5. The Republican “Old Guard” Returns He hated to hurt people’s feelings, especially those of his friends, by saying no, and designing political leeches capitalized on this weakness. Harding, aware of his mental furnishings, promised to assemble the “best minds” of the party.

6. The Republican “Old Guard” Returns Charles Evans Hughes- Secretary of State Andrew Melton- Secretary of the Treasury (aluminum king/millionaire) Herbert Hoover- Secretary of Commerce (wartime food administrator)

7. The Republican “Old Guard” Returns But the “best minds” of the cabinet were largely offset by two of the worst. Sen. Albert B. Fall of New Mexico, a scheming anti-conservationist, was appointed secretary of the interior. Harry M. Daugherty, a small town lawyer but a big time crook in the “Ohio Gang” was supposed to prosecute wrongdoers as attorney general.

8. The Aftermath of War Wartime government controls on the economy were swiftly dismantled; the War Industries Board disappeared with almost indecent haste. Washington likewise returned the railroads to private management in 1920. Reformers had hoped that wartime government operation of the lines might lead to their permanent nationalization.

9. The Aftermath of War Labor, suddenly deprived of its wartime crutch of friendly government support, limped along badly in the postwar decade. Unions wilted in the hostile environment, and membership shriveled by nearly 30% between 1920 and 1930.

10. The Aftermath of War Needy veterans were among the few nonbusiness groups to reap lasting gains from the war. Congress in 1921 generously created the Veterans Bureau, authorized to operate hospitals and provide vocational rehabilitation for the disabled.

11. The Aftermath of War Veterans quickly organized The American Legion, which was founded by Col. Theodore Roosevelt in Paris in 1919. The legion became notorious for its aggressive lobbying for veterans’ benefits.

12. America Seeks Benefits Without Burdens The United States, having rejected the Treaty of Versailles, was still technically at war with Germany, Austria, and Hungary nearly 3 years after the armistice. In July 1921 Congress passed a simple joint resolution that declared the war officially ended.

13. America Seeks Benefits Without Burdens Isolation was enthroned in Washington, but Harding could not completely turn his back on the outside world, especially the Middle East, where a sharp rivalry developed between America and Britain for oil-drilling concessions. Secretary Hughes eventually secured for American oil companies the right to share in the exploitation of the sandy region’s oil riches.

14. America Seeks Benefits Without Burdens In 1921-1922 Washington hosted a “Disarmament Conference”, in which invitations were sent out to all the major naval powers except Bolshevik Russia. The double agenda included naval disarmament and the situation in the Far East. Hughes proposed that the scaled down navies of America and Britain should enjoy parity in battleships and aircraft carriers, with Japan on the small end of a 5:5:3 ratio.

15. America Seeks Benefits Without Burdens In exchange for a weakened Japanese navy, Britain and the U.S. agreed not to fortify their far East possessions. Also, the Four-Power Treaty bound Britain, Japan, France and the U.S. to preserve the status quo in the Pacific.

16. America Seeks Benefits Without Burdens Later in the 1920s many Americans called for the “outlawry of war.” The conviction spread that quarreling nations would only take the pledge to foreswear war as an instrument of national policy.

17. America Seeks Benefits Without Burdens In 1928 the Kellogg-Briand Pact was signed by Secretary of State (under Coolidge) Frank B. Kellogg and the French foreign minister. This new parchment peace was delusory in the extreme. Defensive wars were still permitted, and what scheming aggressor could not cook up an excuse of self-defense.

18. Hiking the Tariff Higher Increasing tariff levels were spurred into action by their fear of a flood of cheap goods from recovering Europe. Presidents Harding and Coolidge, true to their big-industry sympathies, were far more friendly to tariff increases than to reductions. What the U.S. failed to realize was that Europe needed to sell their products in the U.S. or they would not be able to repay war debts to Washington.

19. Hiking the Tariff Higher Americans were also slow to learn that international trade was a two-way street. In general, they could not sell to others in quantity unless they bought in quantity- or lent them more U.S. dollars. The Europeans raised their tariff walls and the vicious circle further deepened the international economic distress, providing one more rung on the ladder by which Adolf Hitler scrambled to power.

20. The Stench of Scandal The loose morality and get-rich-quickism of the Harding Era manifested themselves spectacularly in a series of scandals. The most shocking of these was the Teapot Dome scandal, an affair that involved priceless naval oil reserves at Teapot Dome (Wyoming) and Elk Hills (California) in 1921.

21. The Stench of Scandal Sec. of the interior Albert B. Fall induced the secretary of the navy to transfer the reserves to the Interior Dept. Fall then quietly leased the lands to oilmen Harry Sinclair and Edward Doheny, but not until he received a bribe from both totaling nearly $400,000.

22. The Stench of Scandal Details of the crooked transaction gradually began to leak out in March 1923 and Fall, Sinclair, and Doheny were indicted. The case dragged out in the courts until 1929 when Fall was found guilty of taking the bribe and was sentenced to 1 year in jail.

23. The Stench of Scandal Citizens wondered what was going on when public officials could sell out the nation’s vital resources, especially those reserved for the U.S. Navy. The acquittal of Sinclair and Doheny undermined the faith in the courts, while giving further currency to the cynics.

24. The Stench of Scandal Attorney General Daugherty prompted a senate investigation in 1924 of the illegal sale of pardons and liquor permits. Harding embarked on a speech making tour across the U.S. and all the way up into Alaska in 1923. On august 2, 1923, he died in San Francisco of pneumonia and thrombosis.

25. “Silent Cal” Coolidge News of Harding’s death was sped to Vice President Coolidge who was visiting his father in New England. The elder Coolidge, a justice of the peace, used the old family Bible to administer the presidential oath to his son. Coolidge embodied the New England virtues of honesty, morality, industry, and frugality. His thrifty nature caused him to sympathize fully with Sec. of the Treasury Mellon’s efforts to reduce both taxes and debts.

26. A Three-Way Race for the White House in 1924 Self-satisfied Republicans nominated Coolidge at their presidential nominating convention in Cleveland in the summer of 1924. Squabbling Democrats unenthusiastically nominated John W. Davis, a wealthy corporation lawyer connected with Wall Street and J.P. Morgan. Davis was no less conservative than cautious Coolidge.

27. A Three-Way Race for the White House in 1924 The field was now wide-open for a liberal candidate, which was filled by Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette from WI and the newly formed Progressive party. Even though the party only had a presidential nominee on its ticket, La Follette earned nearly 5 million votes. “Cautious Cal” and the Republicans slipped easily back into office, overwhelming Davis by over 7 million votes.

28. Foreign-Policy Flounderings Isolation continued to reign in the Coolidge era and the Senate proved unwilling to allow America to adhere to the World Court- the judicial arm of the still suspect League of Nations. Overshadowing all other foreign-policy problems in the 1920s was the knotty issue of international debts, a complicated tangle of private loans, Allied war debts, and German reparations payments.

29. Foreign-Policy Flounderings Almost overnight, WWI had reversed the international financial position of the U.S.; in 1914 America had been a debtor nation to the sum of about $4 billion; by 1922 it had become a creditor nation to the sum of about $16 billion. The key knot in the debt tangle was the $10 billion that the U.S. Treasury had loaned to the Allies during and immediately after the war.

30. Foreign-Policy Flounderings Uncle Sam held their IOUs- and he wanted to be paid. The Allies, in turn, protested that the demand for repayment was grossly unfair. The French and the British pointed out that they held up a wall of flesh and bone against the common foe until America the Unready had finally entered the fray.

31. Foreign-Policy Flounderings America, they argued, should write off its loans as war costs, just as the Allies had been tragically forced to write off the lives of millions of young men. The debtors also complained that the real effect of their borrowed dollars had been to fuel the boom in the already roaring wartime economy in American, where nearly all their purchases had been made. The final straw was America’s postwar tariff walls made it almost impossible for them to sell their goods to earn the dollars to pay their debts.

32. Unraveling the Debt Knot America’s tightfisted insistence on getting its money back helped to harden the hearts of the Allies against conquered Germany. The French and the British demanded that the Germans make enormous reparations payments, totaling some $32 billion, as compensation for war-inflicted damages. The Allies hoped to settle their debts to the United States with the money received from Germany.

33. Unraveling the Debt Knot The French sent troops into Germany’s industrialized Ruhr Valley in 1923. Berlin responded by permitting its currency to inflate astronomically. At one point in October 1923, a loaf of bread cost 480 million marks, or about $120 million in pre-inflation money. Sensible statesmen now urged that war debts and reparations alike be drastically scaled down or even cancelled outright.

34. Unraveling the Debt Knot Reality finally dawned in the Dawes Plan of 1924, negotiated largely by Charles Dawes, who was about to be nominated as Coolidge’s running mate. The plan rescheduled German reparations payments and opened the way for further American private loans to Germany.

35. Unraveling the Debt Knot U.S. bankers loaned money to Germany, Germany paid reparations to France and Britain, and the former Allies paid war debts to the U.S. The source of this monetary merry-go-round was the flowing well of American credit. When that well dried up after the great crash in 1929, the jungle of international finance turned into a desert.

36. Unraveling the Debt Knot The United States never did get its money, but it harvested a bumper crop of ill will. The bad taste left in American mouths by the whole sorry episode contributed powerfully to the storm-cellar neutrality legislation passed by Congress in the 1930s.

37. The Triumph of Herbert Hoover Poker-faced Coolidge bowed out of the 1928 presidential race and his logical successor was super Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover who was unpopular with the political bosses but much-admired darling of the masses. Democrats nominated Alfred E. Smith, 4 time governor of NY and one of the most colorful personalities in politics.

38. The Triumph of Herbert Hoover Al(cohol) Smith was soakingly and drippingly ‘wet” at a time when the country was still devoted to the “noble experiment” of prohibition. To a nation that had only recently moved to the city, Smith seemed to abrasively urban. He was Roman Catholic in an overwhelmingly Protestant- and unfortunately prejudiced- land.

39. The Triumph of Herbert Hoover Radio figured prominently in this campaign for the first time, and it helped Hoover more than Smith. Herbert Hoover was a living example of the American success story and an intriguing mixture of two centuries. As a poor orphan boy who had worked his way through Stanford U.. He had absorbed the 19th century copybook maxims of industry, thrift, and self-reliance.

40. The Triumph of Herbert Hoover Hoover was the ideal businessperson’s candidate; a self-made millionaire, he recoiled from anything suggesting socialism, paternalism, or “planned economy.” Yet as secretary of commerce, he endorsed labor unions and supported federal regulation of the new radio broadcasting industry. He even flirted for a time with the idea of government owned radio, similar to the BBC in Britain.

41. The Triumph of Herbert Hoover Hoover triumphed in a landslide, bagging 21 million popular votes to 15 million for Smith. The electoral college vote was even worse with Hoover racking up 444 to Smith’s 87.

42. President Hoover’s First Moves The Hawley-Smoot Tariff started out in the House as a fairly reasonable protective measure designed to assist the farmers. By the time lobbyists pushed it through the Senate, it had acquired a thousand amendments. It thus turned out to be the highest protective tariff in the nation’s peacetime history.

43. President Hoover’s First Moves Hawley-Smoot Tariff seemed like a declaration of economic warfare on the entire outside world, reversing a promising worldwide trend toward reasonable tariffs and widened the yawning trade gaps. Economic isolationism, both at home and abroad, was playing directly into the hands of a hate-filled German demagogue.

44. The Great Crash Ends the Golden Twenties When Hoover confidently took the presidential oath on March 4, 1929, there were few black clouds on the economic horizon. America’s productive colossus- stimulated by the automobile, radio, movies, and other new industries- was roaring along at a dizzy speed that suggested a permanent plateau of prosperity. However, the speculative bubble was actually near the bursting point.

45. The Great Crash Ends the Golden Twenties A catastrophic crash came in October 1929, partially triggered by the British, who raised their interest rates in an effort to bring back capital lured abroad by American investments. Foreign investors and wary domestic speculators began to dump their “insecurities” and a frenzy of selling followed.

46. The Great Crash Ends the Golden Twenties Tension built up to the panicky Black Tuesday of October 29, 1929, when 16,410,030 shares of stocks were sold in a save-who-may scramble. A “sick joke” of the time had hotel room clerks asking registrants, “For sleeping or jumping?” By the end of 1929- two months after the initial crash- stockholders had lost more than $40 billion in paper values, or more than the total cost of WWI to the U.S.

47. The Great Crash Ends the Golden Twenties By the end of 1930, more than 4 million workers in the U.S. were jobless; two years later the figure had about tripled. Where employees were not discharged wages and salaries were often slashed. Over 5,000 banks collapsed in the 3 years of the depression, carrying down with them the life savings of tens of thousands of ordinary citizens.

48. The Great Crash Ends the Golden Twenties Breadless breadwinners often blamed themselves for their plight, despite abundant evidence that the economic system, not individual initiative, had broken down.

49. Hooked on the Horn of Plenty What caused the Great Depression? Overproduction by both farm and factory (the depression of the 1930s was one of abundance, not want). The nation’s ability to produce goods had clearly outrun its capacity to consume or pay for them.

50. Hooked on the Horn of Plenty Too much money was going into the hands of a few wealthy people, who in turn invested it in factories and other agencies of production. Not enough was going into salaries and wages, where revitalizing purchasing power could be more quickly felt. Overexpansion of credit through installment-plan buying overstimulated production.