Herbert Hoover

Thirty-first president, 1929–1933

Trained as a mining engineer, Herbert Hoover was known as a public intellectual and a problem solver. As such, he embodied the new class of expert who applied rationality to social problems. During and after World War I, his management of European food relief was a model program of public administration that solved a pressing social need. The Great Depression, however, which began during the second year of his presidency, proved to be beyond Hoover’s control and understanding. A believer in the power of private initiative, he hesitated to involve the federal government in relief programs on the regulation of business. Lengthening breadlines and escalating joblessness, however, finally convinced him to take action, but his measures were too little, too late. Consequently, he was defeated by a huge margin in his 1932 reelection bid.