Hoover and the Crash

1. Hoover and the Crash Matching Activity Answers – the Origins of the Great Depression

2. Bank Failures When the Stock Market failed in 1929, most Americans didn’t realize the depth of the crisis. If you weren’t a stockbroker or an investor, you may not have realized the urgency of the situation. But in reality, most stockbrokers had invested money “on the margin” in 1929. Meaning, that if you had money in a bank’s savings account, you had lost everything.

3. The Reconstruction Finance Corporation The Reconstruction Finance Corporation was meant to help banks stay afloat and to encourage businesses not to lay off any of their workers. But when the average American struggling to feed his family saw Herbert Hoover sending millions of dollars to bankers and corporations, they were not happy.

4. Herbert Hoover If he had known what he was signing up for, Hoover may never have run for President at all. He was a condemned to being one of the most hated Presidents in history – but it really wasn’t his fault!

5. The Food Administration

6. The Bonus Army The Bonus Army met with Congressional leaders and tried to see the President, but they never received their pay early. In 1932, soldiers led by Douglas MacArthur and Dwight Eisenhower burned down the Bonus Army’s shantytown, and ran over their houses with tanks to make the men disperse. Hoover feared that the unrest might lead to Revolution – this was, after all, just 15 years after the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia.

7. “Wheatless Wednesday” Saving grain became a big priority during World War I – thanks to the efforts of none other than Herbert Hoover. Ironically, the man who became famous for feeding war refugees and soldiers during World War I would be hated by his own people for his lack of concern for the poor during the Great Depression.

8. Hoover Blankets Americans took advantage of every opportunity to criticize Herbert Hoover. Empty pockets were “Hoover Flags.” Automobiles being dragged by horses – because no one could afford to repair their motors – were called Hoover mobiles. Hoover blankets – they were newspapers.

9. “Black Tuesday”- October 29, 1929 The date that the Stock Market crashed for good was October 29, 1929 – “Black Tuesday.” The circumstances were so bad and the situation so irreparable, that some stock traders took their own lives. Banks lost all of their savings. Businesses closed. Borrowers defaulted on loans, and banks failed. This was the start of the Great Depression which would last an entire decade.

10. Overproduction Productivity is almost always considered a good thing. And to most Americans today, low prices are considered a good thing, too! But in the late 1920s and early 1930s, companies had become over productive. And when full warehouses of goods could no find buyers, prices – and then profits – began to drop. The vicious cycle of overproduction, falling prices, and lost jobs repeated itself all across the nation in 1929.

11. Throwback Answer: Trustbuster Here’s one for the SOL Review section of your notebooks. Theodore Roosevelt was the original Trustbuster! He broke up more trusts than any President ever had before him, using the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. He sued companies like Armour Meats and the Standard Oil Company.

12. “Hoovervilles” All across America, on the outskirts of major cities, shantytowns shot up. Homeless men and their families built lean-tos and shacks in parts of the city where no one else was. The shanties had no running water, heat, or bathrooms, and were disease-spreading, filthy environments.

13. Franklin Delano Roosevelt “This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”