#herberthoover

False Dawn: The New Deal and the Promise of Recovery, 1933–1947

George Selgin’s "False Dawn: The New Deal and the Promise of Recovery 1933-1947" provides a measured and calculated investigation of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s efforts to lift the United States out of the Great Depression. Selgin, a professor emeritus in economics at the University of Georgia and former senior fellow at the Cato Institute, does not deliver a polemic against FDR in the manner the title would suggest. The book’s cover also does not give a clue to Selgin’s focus.

The reader is greeted with an iconic photo, likely recognizable from any lower division textbook or online article, of men waiting in line for a meal. The photo is misleading for two reasons. First, it is dated to 1931. Although relevant in showing a line of unemployed men presumably out of work from the Depression, it was taken during President Herbert Hoover’s term, not his successor, Franklin D. Roosevelt, the focus of the book. Secondly, George Selgin sets a specific expectation by using this photo. It shows men full of dread, uncertain about the future. Surely, this work will provide an intimate look at the lives of struggling Americans who found, as the title indicates, a false dawn in the New Deal.

In actuality, Selgin gives readers just over 300 pages of distant, erudite economic analysis. From his preface, Selgin does not seem to grasp who his work is directed towards. In the book's Preface, he writes,

False Dawn isn’t meant just for academics and other experts. Its intended audience includes anyone interested in the Great Depression or the New Deal or anyone who just wants to learn more about how governments can and cannot fight recessions and depressions. For those reader’s sakes, I’ve left out the more technical details of statistical and theoretical works to which I refer. I’ve also tried my best to avoid both economics jargon and the stilted mannerisms and bombast characteristic of so much academic prose. (xiii)

However, this book is not for someone who just has a personal curiosity about the Depression. Despite what he said in the Preface, Selgin does not leave his statistics, theories, jargon, and so forth at the door. Chapters like those on the Federal Reserve and the Roosevelt Recession greet readers with charts mapping the “Adjusted Demand Deposits, All Commercial Banks, Plus Currency Held by Public for United States” and “Actual and projected average hourly earnings, 1929-1939," respectively. It would also do the reader well to know British Economist John Maynard Keynes, given the prominence of his ideas and correspondence in Selgin's book.

Readers may try other titles like The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression (2007) by Amity Shlaes, which is widely regarded as a scathing critique of Roosevelt more overtly than Selgin. For a more generous take on the president's efforts, H.W. Brands's Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (2008) is an alternative.

Beyond these hurdles, False Dawn does accomplish Selgin’s intent as a critique of the New Deal's recovery. Banking, farming, the Hoover-era Reconstruction Finance Corporation (which Roosevelt used), the National Recovery Administration, and more are given their due. Selgin also commendably delves into the impacts of World War Two and how the nation avoided a postwar downturn.

With extensive references to both the secondary sources from his fellow economists and primary sources on the correspondence between government officials and studies released during the Depression, Selgin has done his homework. Curious parties need to have less of a grasp of history and more of an understanding of economics to follow along. For individuals with the curiosity of a historian and the expertise of an economist, False Dawn should scratch the itch, endowing them with a more quantitative and measured insight into the Roosevelt Administration.

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Happy birthday to FDR's predecessor, Herbert Hoover!

During the dark months between FDR’s election in November 1932 and his inauguration as President on March 4, 1933, the nation’s economic depression went from bad to worse. On several occasions, President Herbert Hoover (1874-1964) encouraged the President-elect to join him in issuing emergency economic measures. FDR resisted these efforts, believing Hoover had full authority to act on his own. He also wished to avoid associating himself with Hoover’s economic policies.

Hoover sent this letter to FDR just four days before Inauguration Day. He warns that the economic situation has become so critical Roosevelt should call Congress into immediate session after his inauguration to meet the crisis.

First Lady Lou Henry Hoover

First Lady Lou Hoover’s Ode to Spring!

First Lady Lou Hoover welcomed spring with this undated poem, shared by archivist Matthew Schaefer in his Hoover Heads post, Lou Hoover ‘Spring’s Coming.’

SPRING’S COMING

Flower carpets, green slopes, meadowlarks’ trills.  Spring in California! It is coming. We begin to prepare, in fancy, for the inevitable outings, when the call to adventure gets beyond control. Afoot.  Ahorse. En auto.  We yield to the invitation of them all.  Even when we say, ‘the motor goes too fast; it misses the charm of the wayside; we can’t tell what flowers they are, only their color.’  Even then, we more often take the auto, because it gets us farther afield in less time. Occasionally having to go to Lost Hills and Taft and Coalings, I will prepare to make as many of these journeys as possible in the next few months, and to take as many routes as possible in order to see as many hundreds of millions of wild flowers as may be before the summer sun drives them away.

Herbert and Lou Henry Hoover, 1928. Hoover Library, NARA ID 40978757.

I had to go to Lost Hill’s this week… and I rejoiced at the hints of spring in sight and smell.  It is in the air.  Early, this year.

The hills and roadsides are already very green. Green are the more than twenty miles of empty sloping plain between the foothills and the first fields east, hundreds of square miles green here now, where was not a fresh blade all of last year. Dust they lay for more than a year, dry dust of the desert, from which it did not seem that leaf nor flower could ever spring again. And now it is all emerald carpet. A couple of months intervening, and too heavy frost not interfering, hundreds of miles long, and it will be a Persian rug of California flowers, hundreds of miles long. A score or two or three miles wide, the object of pilgrimage to thousands. And yet few people know that it exists.

Now it is green promise. Promise strengthened by a few gay poppy and mustard blooms on hardy year-old wayside plants, as one drives up Salinas valley. The Salinas valley, beautiful on a windless day, a soft hazy day, making the most lovely pastels of broad river flats, of almost leafless willows and poplars, of too closely cropped hillsides, and of blue mystic opalescent mountain distances.

Commission for Relief in Belgium

The Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB) was an independent, international organization, sponsored by neutral governments and with the guarantees and assurances of the belligerents to alleviate the suffering of German-occupied Belgium in the First World War (1914-1918). Headed by Herbert Hoover, the CRB, as an independent initiative, represented the first attempt in the modern period to address the problem of civilian relief during war.

German Occupation of Belgium

On the evening of 2 August 1914, the Belgian authorities were presented with an ultimatum by Germany requesting passage through Belgian territory to engage the French army. It declared that if Belgium observed a benevolent neutrality, making no opposition to the passing of German troops across its territory, its sovereign rights and independence would be guaranteed, and it would be compensated for all damage suffered. If they resisted, Belgium would be treated as an enemy. The Belgian government was given twelve hours to reply. There were no differences of opinion amongst the members of the Belgian cabinet; they refused Germany's request.

On 4 August, in violation of existing treaties, German armies swept across Belgium, and by the end of the month, most of Belgium was set apart as an occupied territory (Okkupationsgebiet) behind the zone of military operations. Field-Marshal Baron von der Goltz was appointed by the German emperor to be governor-general, and a central government was established under his command.

The destruction, requisitioning, and distribution of the country's existing food stocks created a desperate situation. The roads filled with refugees and threw the nation's economic life into disarray. The foremost problem confronting the country was the supply and distribution of staple necessities to the population. General services such as customs services, tax collection, and agricultural control and inspection remained intact under the strict supervision of the German authorities. The occupying Germans maintained the appearance that the Belgians were still administrating their own services. The post office and railways were taken over by the German administration and run as military institutions. Belgian law was retained but the German governor-general exercised the right to eliminate any existing laws or create new legislation.

There was also in force a complete code of military law and military tribunals for enforcement. Special departments administered every aspect of Belgian industry, commerce, and agriculture. German commissioners of banks supervised all financial operations. Central offices controlled the canals, railways, and coal mining industry. The means of travel were also limited. Automobiles were few, and the trams and railroads, when finally available for civilian use, were notoriously slow and restricted. Daily life was uncertain, and the people could never be sure from one week to the next what new restrictions or demands would be made upon the community. Nevertheless, the Belgian population maintained the hope that, within a relatively short period of time, the occupying Germans would be pushed back to their own borders.

ICYMI BOOK REVIEW: #TheLanguageOfTheBirds by #KAMerson. A #DaVinciCode type Thriller for #YoungAdults.