Chapter 32
The Politics of Boom and Bust
1920-1932
The Republican "Old Guard" Returns
Warren G. Harding was inaugurated in 1921. He was unable to detect corruption in his own staff. He was a very soft guy in that he hated to say "no," hurting peoples' feelings.
Charles Evans Hughes was the secretary of state. Andrew W. Mellon, Pittsburgh's multimillionaire aluminium king, was the secretary of the Treasury. Herbert Hoover was the secretary of commerce.
Harding's brightest and most capable officials (above) were offset by two of the worst: Senator Albert B. Fall, an anti-conservationist who was the secretary of the interior, and Harry M. Daugherty, a crook who was the attorney general.
GOP Reaction at the Throttle
Industrialists wanted the government to stop legislating business and to actually help businesses make profits.
In the first years of the 1920s, the Supreme Court struck down progressive legislation. The Supreme Court ruled in Adkins v. Children's Hospital (1923) that women did not deserve special protection in the workplace. They said that the 19th Amendment made women the legal equals of men.
Corporations under President Harding could expand without worries of antitrust laws.
The Interstate Commerce Commission was led by men who were sympathetic to the managers of the railroads.
The Aftermath of War
Industrialists convinced the government to release control that it had installed on the economy during WWI. The Esch-Cummins Transportation Act of 1920 returned the railroads to private management.It pledged the Interstate Commerce Commission to guarantee their profitability.
The Merchant Marine Act of 1920 authorized the government to sell its wartime fleet of 1500 vessels at extremely low prices.
The La Follette Seaman's Act of 1915 improved working conditions for sailors but it economically hurt the American shipping industry because they now had a hard time competing with foreigners, who did not treat their crews very well.
Labor struggled without friendly government support; there were a lot of strikes and wage cuts.
In 1921, Congress created the Veterans Bureau to operate hospitals and provide vocational rehabilitation for the disabled. The American Legion was created in 1919 by Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. It was a support/social group for veterans. The legion convinced Congress in 1924 to pass the Adjusted Compensation Act, which gave every former soldier a sum of money, depending on their years of service.
America Seeks Benefits Without Burdens
Because the Treaty of Versailles was rejected, the United States had technically been at war with Germany, Austria, and Hungary for 3 years after the armistice. Congress passed a joint resolution in July 1921 that officially declared the war over.
Isolationism was prominent in Washington. President Harding hated the League of Nations and at first, he refused to support the League's world health program.
Secretary Hughes secured the rights for American oil companies to share oil lands in the Middle East with Britain.
Several world powers met at the Washington "Disarmament" Conference in 1921-1922 to discuss disarmament of their respective navies. Secretary Hughes led the American delegation. The Five-Power Naval Treaty of 1922 limited the construction of certain types of large naval ships, and it applied ratio limits to the number of ships a country could build (ex: Japan could build 3/5 as many ships as America). Submarines and destroyers were not restricted. It also stated that the British and Americans would refrain from fortifying their Far Eastern possessions, including the Philippines. The Japanese were not subjected to such restraints in their possessions.
A Four-Power Treaty between Britain, Japan, France and the United States replaced the 20-year old Anglo-Japanese Treaty and preserved the status quo in the Pacific.
In the late 1920s, Americans called for the "outlaw of war." Calvin Coolidge's secretary of state Frank. B. Kellogg signed with the French foreign minister in 1928 the Kellogg-Briand Pact. Known as the Pact of Paris, it was ratified by 62 nations.It tried to outlaw war, but it had a big exception: defensive wars were still permitted.
Hiking the Tariff Higher
Because businessmen did not want Europe flooding American markets with cheap goods after the war, Congress passed the Fordney-McCumber Tariff Law in 1922, raising the tariff from 27% to 35%.
Presidents Harding and Coolidge were much more prone to increasing tariffs than decreasing them; this presented a problem: Europe needed to sell goods to the U.S. to get the money to pay back its war debts. Europeans responded by also increasing tariffs.
The Stench of Scandal
In 1923, Colonel Charles R. Forbes, head of the Veterans Bureau, was caught stealing $200 million from the government, chiefly in connection with the building of veterans' hospitals.
In the Teapot Dome scandal (1921), the secretary of the interior, Albert B. Fall, convinced the secretary of the navy to transfer valuable oil-laden land to the Interior Department (the land was owned by the navy). Fall was then bribed with $100,000 to leased the lands to oilmen Harry F. Sinclair and Edward L. Doheny.
Attorney General Daugherty was accused of illegal selling pardons and liquor permits.
President Harding died in San Francisco on August 2, 1923 of pneumonia and thrombosis.
"Silent Cal" Coolidge
Vice President Calvin Coolidge took over the presidency following Harding's death. He was extremely shy and delivered very boring speeches.
Coolidge did not change the business-friendly policies that Harding had created.
Frustrated Farmers
After the end of WWI, farms struggled because the Federal government stopped guaranteeing high prices and other nations started to grow more crops. Machines also enabled farmers to grow more crops, but this created crop surpluses, which decreased prices.
The Capper-Volstead Act exempted farmers' marketing cooperatives from anti-trust prosecution.
The McNary-Haugen Bill sought to keep agricultural prices high by authorizing the government to buy crop surpluses and sell them abroad. President Coolidge vetoed the bill because the bill would've cost the government money.
A Three-Way Race for the White House in 1924
Preceding the election of 1924, the Democratic party was split into many different factions. They eventually chose John W. Davis to compete against Calvin Coolidge (Republican) and La Follette (Progressive) for the presidency.
Senator La Follette from Wisconsin led the new liberal Progressive party. He was endorsed by the American Federation of Labor and by farmers. The Progressives called for government ownership of railroads and relief for farmers, opposed monopolies and antilabor injunctions, and supported a constitutional amendment to limit the Supreme Court's power to invalidate laws passed by Congress.
Calvin Coolidge won the election of 1924.
Foreign-Policy Flounderings
Isolationism continued in Coolidge's second term. Exception to this were in the Caribbean and Central America, where Americans participated in a few armed conflicts in Haiti and Nicaragua.
In 1926, the Mexican government declared control over its oil resources. Despite American oil companies support for war, Coolidge resolved the situation diplomatically.
After WWI, America became a creditor to the world, loaning money to various countries.
The United States demanded to be repaid for the $10 billion that it had loaned to the Allies in WWI. The Allies protested the debt, pointing out that they had lost many troops and that America should just write off the loans as war costs. America's postwar tariffs also made it difficult for the European Allies to make money to pay their debts.
Unraveling the Debt Knot
America's demand for repayment from France and Britain caused these countries to demand war reparations from Germany. The Allies hoped to pay their American debts with the money received from Germany.
Negotiated by Charles Dawes, the Dawes Plan of 1924 addressed the debt repayment issue. It set up German reparations and allowed for Americans to make private loans to Germany.The Germans used these loans to pay the reparations, which the Allies used to pay the war debts to the Americans.
A downturn in the global economy disrupted the flow of money, and because of this, the United States never fully received its war repayments from Europe.
The Triumph of Herbert Hoover, 1928
When Calvin Coolidge decided not to run for re-election in 1928, the Republicans chose Herbert Hoover. Hoover supported isolationism, individualism, free enterprise, and small government. He was a good leader. Other strengths were his integrity, humanitarianism, passion for assembling the facts, efficiency, talents for administration, and ability to inspire loyalty in close associates.
The Democrats nominated Alfred E. Smith. He was a Roman Catholic in an overwhelmingly Protestant country.
For the first time, the radio was widely used in election campaigns. It mostly helped Hoover's campaign.
Smith was unable to win the South due to a combination of his Catholicism, opposition to prohibition, and liberal ideals. Herbert Hoover won the election of 1928 in a landslide, becoming the first Republican candidate in 52 years (except for Harding's Tennessee victory), to win a state that had seceded.
President Hoover's First Moves
The disorganized wage earners and the disorganized farmers were not getting rich in the growing economy.
The Agricultural Marketing Act, passed in 1929, was designed to help the farmers by setting up the Federal Farm Board. The Board purchased agricultural surpluses, hoping to stabilize agriculture prices. The Board created the Grain Stabilization Corporation and the Cotton Stabilization Corporation, which also purchased surpluses. The corporations failed after farmers produced too much surplus, exceeding the budget of the Board.
The Hawley-Smoot Tariff of 1930 was intended to be a mild tariff, but Congress tacked on several amendments, turning it into a bill that raised the tariff to 60%. This was the nation's highest protective tariff during peacetime. The tariff deepened the depression that had already begun in America and other nations, and it increased international financial chaos.
The Great Crash Ends the Golden Twenties
The stock market crashed in October 1929. It was partially triggered by the British, who raised their interest rates in an effort to bring back capital lured abroad by American investments. The British needed money, and they were unable to trade with the United States due the high tariffs.
On "Black Tuesday" of October 29, 1929, millions of stocks were sold in a panic. By the end of 1929, two months after the initial crash, stockholders had lost $40 billion.
As a result of the crash, millions lost their jobs and thousands of banks closed. The United States was the hardest industrialized nation to be hit.
This crash led to the Great Depression.
Hooked on the Horn of Plenty
One of the main causes of the Great Depression was overproduction by farms and factories. The nation's ability to produce goods had outrun its capacity to consume or pay for them. All of the money was being invested in factories and other agencies of production; not enough money was going into salaries and wages. Over-expansion of credit also contributed to the depression.
The Great Depression worsened the economic state in Europe, which had not yet fully recovered from WWI.
In the 1930s, a drought scorched the Mississippi Valley, causing thousands of farms to be sold.
Hoovervilles: a nickname for tin-and-paper shantytowns.
Rugged Times for Rugged Individuals
In the beginning of the Great Depression, President Hoover believed that industry and self-reliance had made America great and that the government should play no role in the welfare of the people. He soon realized, however, that the welfare of the people in a nationwide catastrophe was a direct concern of the government.
Hoover developed a plan in which the government would help the railroads, banks, and rural credit corporations in the hope that if financial health was restored at the top of the economic pyramid, then unemployment would be relieved as the prosperity trickled down. Hoover's efforts were criticized because he gave government money to the big bankers who had allegedly started the depression.
Hoover Battles the Great Depression
President Hoover convinced Congress to allocate $2.25 billion for useful public works. (ex: the Hoover Dam)
Hoover opposed any projects that he viewed as "socialistic." Ex: He vetoed the Muscle Shoals Bill, which was designed to dam the Tennessee River and sell government-produced electricity in competition with citizens in private companies.
In 1932, Congress created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC), which lent money to insurance companies, banks, agricultural organizations, railroads, and state and local governments.
Congress passed the Norris-La Guardia Anti-Injunction Act in 1932, which outlawed antiunion contracts and barred federal courts from stopping strikes, boycotts, and peaceful picketing.
Routing the Bonus Army in Washington
Veterans of WWI were hit hard by the Great Depression. The "Bonus Expeditionary Force" (BEF) converged on the Capitol in the summer of 1932. They demanded that Congress fully pay the deferred bonus that Congress had passed in 1924 (the payment was supposed to be paid in 1945).
After the BEF refused to leave the Capitol, President Hoover sent in the army to evacuate the group. The ensuing riots and incidents brought additional public disdain for Hoover.
Japanese Militarists Attack China
In September 1931, Japanese imperialists, seeing that the West was bogged down in the Great Depression, invaded the Chinese province of Manchuria. Although a direct violation of the League of Nations, the League was unable to do anything because it lacked America's support.
In 1932, Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson decided to only diplomatically attack the Japanese. He issued the Stimson doctrine, which declared that the United States would not recognize any territory acquired by force. Japan ignored the doctrine and moved onto Shanghai in 1932. The violence continued without the League of Nation's intervention.
Hoover Pioneers the Good Neighbor Policy
President Hoover sought to improve relations with Latin America. He withdrew American troops from Haiti and Nicaragua.
Hoover's actions laid the groundwork for future President Roosevelt's "Good Neighbor" policy.
