Republican Politics: Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover

1
Republican PoliticsHarding, Coolidge, and Hoover
2
Warren G. Harding

• Twenty-Ninth President (1921-1923)
• Born November 2, 1865
• Did not approve of the League of Nations
• Won election with 60 of the national vote.
• Successfully cut taxes and designed budget
• Scandelous administration and ineffective
  governor
• Died August 2, 1923

3
Calvin Coolidge

• Thirtieth President (1923-1929)
• Born July 4, 1872
• Became President when Warren G. Harding died
• Isolationist foreign policy
• Favored tax cuts and limited aid to farmers
• Died January 5, 1933

4
Herbert Clark Hoover

• Herbert Hoover was born in West Branch, Iowa in
  1874.
• He was a member of the inaugural class at
  Stanford University where he studied geology.
• Hoovers wife, the former Lou Henry, was athletic
  and brilliant. She was the first woman to
  graduate from Stanford and met Herbert in the
  geology lab.
• Lou Hoover spoke five languages, assisted her
  husband in his geology and engineering work,
  often translating his articles and books.
• She was a world traveler and often assisted her
  husband in the cultural necessities for
  international business.

5
Hoovers Mining Career

• Herbert made a specialty of turning around
  struggling operations with organization and
  technology
• His wife helped translate his work and bridge the
  cultural gaps in foreign nations. Their work made
  them wealthy.
• They were forced to flee China for a time during
  the Boxer Rebellion, an insurrection aimed at
  purging the nation of western influence.
• While in London, at the outbreak of the First
  World War, the Hoovers organized an impromptu
  organization to evacuate expatriated and
  vacationing Americans from Europe.

6
Belgium

• During WWI, Germany invaded Belgium on the way
  France.
• Britain and France placed a blockade on the
  Central Powers which kept them from importing
  food.
• Germany no longer had enough food for its own
  population, let alone occupied countries such as
  Belgium.
• Hoover, living in London, organized his entire
  mining firm as a relief operation for Belgium.
• Hoover negotiated with the Allied nations to
  allow the relief ships through the blockade and
  negotiated with the Germans to not attack the
  ships with submarines.

7
Hooverizing

• Woodrow Wilson placed Hoover in charge of
  agricultural production for the American war
  effort.
• Hoover was immediately successful.
• In addition to rationalizing the American
  production system, Hoover convinced Americans
  that it was patriotic to go without in war time.
• Cutting back became known as Hooverizing,
  rationing was one way that World War I affected
  people on the home front.
• Seeking to manage domestic consumption in order
  to feed the U.S. Army and to assist Allied armies
  and civilians., the U.S. Food Administration
  declared Food Will Win the War.

8
They will be fed!

• Following the war, Hoover turned the United
  States Food Administration into a relief
  organization for the devastated populations,
  including the defeated Central Powers, in Europe.
  
• American aid fed two million people per day in
  Poland alone.
• When a critic accused Hoover of helping the
  Bolsheviks by providing food aid to the Soviet
  Union, Hoover responded in the following speech,
  Twenty million people are starving. Whatever
  their politics, they will be fed.

9
Secretary of Commerce

• With Hoover was invited to serve in the cabinet
  as Secretary of Commerce of Republican President
  Warren G. Harding.
• While many members of the Harding cabinet were
  implicated in controversies and scandals, Hoover
  remained unscathed and, thus, retained his post
  under Calvin Coolidge.
• By the 1920s the American economy was
  transformed, industry and commerce, rather than
  agriculture, now provided the backbone of the
  American economy.
• As Commerce Secretary, Hoover was in the middle
  of the economic transformation, leading to the
  impression, that Herbert Hoover was everywhere.

10
Prohibition of Intoxication Liquors

• The Eighteenth Amendment was passed in 1919.
• This Amendment started prohibition in the United
  States that lasted through the 1920s and was a
  major issue throughout the entire decade.
• It was supposed to decrease criminal activity but
  normally law abiding citizens were breaking the
  law by making, drinking or selling alcohol.

11
The Volstead Act

• The 18th Amendment was ratified in 1919 and took
  effect in 1920.
• The Volstead Act clarified the new rules
  surrounding prohibition.
• President Wilson vetoed the Volstead Act on
  constitutional grounds.
• His veto was overridden by Congress.

Special stamps were required for medicinal
liquors under the Volstead Act.
12
"A Noble Experiment"

• The sale, transport, and consumption of
  intoxicating beverages became illegal.
• Many law-abiding Americans defied the
  regulations.
• The black market for alcohol was a boon for
  organized crime.

Detroit police discover a clandestine still
13

• Multimedia Citations
• Slide 2 http//www.historylink.org/db_images/Hard
  ing.JPG
• Slide 3 http//www.historyplace.com/specials/cal
  endar/docs-pix/coolidge.jpg
• Slide 4 http//www.ecommcode2.com/hoover/research
  /photos/1930-63.html
• Slide 5 http//www.ecommcode2.com/hoover/research
  /photos/images/1900-8.gif Add Another File
• Slide 6 http//hoover.archives.gov/exhibits/colle
  ctions/flour20sacks/images/1941-A68A.jpg
• Slide 7 http//www.ecommcode.com/hoover/hooveronl
  ine/hoover_bio/archive/food/conserve.htm
• Slide 8 http//www.ecommcode2.com/hoover/research
  /photos/images/1921-11.gif
• Slide 9 Joan Hoff Wilson, "Herbert Hoover
  Forgotten Progressive." Waveland Press, 1975.
• Slide 10 http//us.history.wisc.edu/hist102/photo
  s/html/1145.html
• Slide 11 http//www.bottlebooks.com/american20me
  dicinal20spirits20company/prescription.JPG
• Slide 12 http//www.npr.org/templates/story/story
  .php?storyId4062605