Warm-up: How would you have tried to solve the Great Depression? Hoovers Response Hoover & the Depression After crash, insisted key to recovery was confidence; the nations business is on a sound and prosperous basis Insisted things would improve soon Had government spend more on new public buildings, roads, parks, & dams Got business leaders to promise to maintain wages ;did for a short time but started dropping wages Got Congress to pass Hawley-Smoot Tariff backfired when European nations raised their tariffs slowing down international trade Hoover & the Depression Claimed state & local government responsible to provide relief Set up Reconstruction Finance Corporation gave government credit to industries, railroads and insurance companies, etc. Hoover believed in laissez-faire Believed that prosperity at the top would help the economy as a whole---"trickle-down theory" Trickle-down Theory *******Business******** Production Jobs Bonus Army WWI veterans promised a pension for fighting in war but would not receive it until 1945; $1,000 bonus 20,000 jobless veterans and their families, "bonus army," marched on Washington DC & camped until they receive the bonus Most went home but a few thousand stayed and Hoover called out the Army, under General Douglas MacArthur, who used force to drive marchers out of Washington