Presidency of Herbert Hoover

Historical Context Note

Lucas Paul Richert (University of Saskatchewan)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.3: American (US) Writing and Culture: The Early Twentieth-century , 1900-1945.
Vol. editors: J. Michael Duvall (College of Charleston), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Tony Papanikolas (San Jose State University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Domains

Changes of government, elections and reigns

Dates

Date of occurrence 1929-03-04-1933-03-04

Places

United States (Location)

Resources

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The enormous prosperity of the 1920s helped elect the Republican candidate, Herbert Hoover. His Democratic Party challenger, New York governor Alfred Smith, was hindered by his Roman Catholicism. When the election results came in, Hoover had taken 21 million popular votes compared to Smith's 15 million. Hoover won the electoral college vote by 444 to 87. After the stock market crash of 1929, Hoover sought to fix the problem in a number of ways: First, Hoover consulted some of America's business leaders and asked them not to respond to the economic downturn with wholesale lay-offs and wage decreases. Second, Hoover told state and local governments to liase with private charities to ameliorate the effects of the downturn. Third, Hoover offered his support for the establishment of the…

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271 words

Citation: Richert, Lucas Paul. "Presidency of Herbert Hoover". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 01 October 2008 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=504, accessed 23 April 2024.]

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