Great Depression - Great Depression - Political movements and social change: Aside from the Civil War, the Great Depression was the gravest crisis in American history. He vetoed a bill that would have created a federal unemployment agency and opposed a plan to use public money to put people to work building roads and government buildings. Walter Schmitt (right) recognized that Hoover became the symbol for all that was going wrong. But U.S. President Herbert Hoover was slow to give help to farmers, even though he was from Iowa. Just as in the Civil War, the United States appeared—at least at the start of the 1930s—to be falling apart. This is the currently selected item. They said that the nation's economy had become "interdependent" – that is, what happened in one part, like farming, would affect other parts of the economy. Farmers who produced these goods would be paid by the AAA to reduce the amount of acres in cultivation or the amount of livestock raised. The Great Depression. In a later interview, Hoover said that he didn't agree with the progressive ideas being proposed. He was relying on the ideas of a group of advisors (known as the "Brain Trust") from Columbia University. FDR and the Great Depression . And so, much of FDR's New Deal was designed to help farmers. It worked. The Great Depression changed the lives of people who lived and farmed on the Great Plains and in turn, changed America. Google Classroom Facebook Twitter. Email. Practice: The Great Depression. The New Deal was a group of ambitious programs that produced major changes in America. The AAA identified seven basic farm products : wheat, cotton, corn, tobacco, rice, hogs, and milk. FDR made that promise in accepting the Democratic Party's nomination for president. Fewer families were buying new cars or household appliances. Next lesson. Hoover stubbornly refused to help unemployed workers in urban areas as well. But by the time he took the oath of office in March 1933, at least 12 million Americans were out of work and the banking system was near collapse. Four days after that, FDR went on the radio nationwide and asked Americans to stop hanging on to cash and trust the banks. After the stock market crash, many businesses started to close or to lay off workers. But U.S. President Herbert Hoover was slow to give help to farmers, even though he was from Iowa. The government programs that helped them to live through the 1930s changed the future of agriculture forever. The next day he closed the banks and called Congress into a special session to pass emergency laws to provide more money to the banks. Many looked to the government to do something to solve the problems. Simply put, if farmers produced less, the prices of their crops and livestock would increase. Eventually, the New Deal produced a host of new agencies and programs. Between 1929 and 1932, the country and the world kept spiraling downward into depression. FDR declared "So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.". To grow their crops, Plains farmers had plowed up natural ground cover that had taken ages to form over the surface of the dry Plains states. The Myth: An unregulated free market and unrestricted Wall Street greed caused the Great Depression and only the interventionist policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt got us out. The presidency of Herbert Hoover. Written by Bill Ganzel of the Ganzel Group. "Everyone tried to blame [President Herbert] Hoover for the Depression, and they'd probably blame him for the drought too if they could. The Great Depression.