Us Presidents 3042 Essay Research Paper 30

Us Presidents 30-42 Essay, Research Paper 30. President – Calvin Coolidge Term – August 3, 1923 to March 3, 1929 Coolidge set out to establish a working relationship with the leading members of the Harding administration, and he drew on many people for advice and help. The scandals of Harding’s presidency, particularly the Teapot Dome oil affair, were coming to light, and Coolidge spent much of his time defending his party. His relations with Congress were unhappy, but he coped with scandal by prosecuting offenders, and, thanks to that, his integrity, and his self-possession, he retrieved public confidence in the White House. He gained enough control over the Republican Party to be nominated for president in June 1924. Coolidge also gained enough of the people’s

confidence to be easily elected over his major opposition, John W. Davis (Democrat) and Robert M. La Follette (Progressive). When Coolidge entered the campaign with a series of “nonpolitical” statements late that summer, it was as the apostle of prosperity, economy, and respectability. His opponents exhausted themselves with charges about the government’s deficiencies, while the President received credit for his equanimity and the economic upturn. But 1924 was a sad year for Coolidge, for in July his younger son, Calvin, Jr., died of blood poisoning. Coolidge was fairly successful in getting what he wanted during his full term as president. Heading the list were paring the national debt and reducing income taxes, so that there would be more money for consumer spending.

Other measures included orderly growth of civil and military aviation, expansion of the services of the departments of Agriculture and Commerce, regulation of radio broadcasting, development of waterways, flood control, and encouragement of cooperative solutions to farm problems. Twice, he blocked enactment of the McNary-Haugen bill, which proposed to dump farm surpluses abroad in the hope of raising domestic market prices, because he objected to its price-fixing features and its cost. 31. President – Herbert Clark Hoover Term – March 4, 1929 to March 3, 1933 With the nation unprecedentedly prosperous and with large Republican majorities in Congress, Hoover began his administration under auspicious circumstances. In his campaign he had promised to call Congress into special

session to consider farm relief and limited changes in the tariff. He called Congress into special session on April 15, 1929, and on June 15 it passed the Agricultural Marketing Act, designed to help farmers suffering from low incomes in an era of prosperity. Hoover’s recommendation for tariff revision, an increase in agricultural duties also designed to help the farmer, became the Hawley-Smoot Tariff, the highest peacetime tariff in the nation’s history. Although the bill was not what he wanted, Hoover signed it on June 17, 1930, justifying his act on the ground that the flexible provision, permitting him to change rates within a compass of 50% on the advice of the tariff commission, would enable him to remedy injustices in the law. Early in his administration Hoover

attacked the problem of enforcing prohibition. On May 28, 1929, he announced that he had appointed the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement, with George W. Wickersham as chairman, to investigate the problem. The commission made its report nearly two years later. The report was self-contradictory, and nothing came of it. Hoover’s administration, like that of Martin Van Buren almost a century earlier, was dominated by one development–an economic depression. The disastrous slump that began when the stock market crashed on Oct. 29, 1929, left from 12 to 14 million Americans unemployed before the end of Hoover’s term. In the 1930 congressional elections the weak Democratic minority in the House of Representatives became a majority, and the Republican majority in