ny to was to persuade the civilian population of the had states that it was not worth it. let them go. we lost them enough. we never like south carolina anyway. let them go. [laughter] they needed to reach that point. i think they came close more than once. that is the army that depressed morale. have you had an different name of this water stain on my book? [laughter] thank you very much. [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> you're watching american history tv. all weekend, every weekend on c-span3. each week, american history tv sits on in a lecture with one of the nation's college professors.

you can watch the lectures every saturday evening at midnight eastern. next, steve voguit talks about the actions president roosevelt took during his terms in office. his classes about 45 minutes. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] professor voguit: good morning. today we have reached the point where we will see the story or two men that are going to run for president in 1932. herbert hoover is the last in a long series of republican presidents. since the civil war, there had only been two democrats. one was grover cleveland. that you terms were not consecutive. and woodrow wilson.

in the 1920's, we had three consecutive republican presidents with warren harding calvin coolidge, and then herbert hoover. i see him as being at the very least, one of the unluckiest presidents of american history. he's elected november 1928, sworn in march 1929, and the start market crashed in october. he gets blamed. people who are homeless living hooverville, people who have bad shoes have hoover shoes. if you are eating oatmeal for breakfast, lunch, and dinner you're eating a hoover meal. he has these beliefs of what the role of government is and what the role of government is,

especially in relation to the economy. and he will not waver. he is committed to his belief. which is commendable. finding someone that doesn't change with the wind. but for the time, it was not right. i also view him, me personally as probably the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time. professor voguit: this quote is as he was leaving office. the next president was coming in. he saw us going down the road of wasteful spending and debt. he said, if we can't escape this, we're going to be wrecked smashed by inflation. which actually, as you will see probably later, we will intentionally create. he is going to lose this

election to franklin delano rossevelt in 1932. he was a candidate for the democrats. this was after the tumultuous year of 1919 and american voters were voting for a republican no matter who it was, and happened to be warren harding. he won and chose his cabinet here in saint augustine, florida across the street at the hotel . we will come back at the end of this day to day to the hotel. this is franklin roosevelt's probably most famous first quote from the moment he took office. as you will see, the american people got scared. scared more than a they ever had been before. they were in a position emotionally of helplessness. he said to them, first of all, the very first thing i want to say to you while, is that we have nothing to fear but fear itself.

and boy, where they filled with fear. he is kind of the right guy in the right place at the right time. he's going to make a huge change in america. we are going to make a fundamental shift away from the old form of government to a new form of government, which is going to be characterized by big government, big spending, a national debt of immense proportions. but he had to do something. he was in a position where he had a country that was hurting. he said he saw a nation of that was 1/3rd ill-fed and ill-housed. the biggest fear during these early years of the great depression was that they didn't want anyone to die. they didn't want anyone to start -- starve to death or freeze to

death. let me take you through the holdup -- the buildup to the selection. to appreciate where we were as a nation, go to the end of the 1920's. 1928-1929. prosperity had blossomed in the 1920's. it showed signs of improvement once coolidge became president. it was a constant upward trajectory. but when hoover took office, it went crazy. the part of the economy that got crazy was the stock market. here is what we know. in the last year and a half approximately of the 1920's, february 1928-september 1929 stock prices really started to go up. i don't mean that they increased by 5%, 2%, 3%, the increases were staggering. it was startling. it was unlike anything anyone had ever seen before. in the last six months prior to the crash.

the crash, remember is in october 1929. from may 1928-september 1929 the average, which means some of these increased way more than 40%, but the increase in those six months were a share of anything. a share of ford or general motors or general electric or westinghouse or whatever the company may be. the average increase in the price of a share of stocks when up 40% in six months. there were stories everywhere, stories of the kindergarten teachers who were making big money. they were accumulating small fortunes. or cabdrivers were elevator

operators. it seems to be like a beaver going on. the amount of shares being sold in a given day had consistently about 2-3,000,000 shares throughout the 1920's. once we get to this period of time, this amazing boom that took place, it goes to 5 million shares. it never went to below 5 million shares per day threat that last year and have. it got as high as 10-12,000,000 shares transacted in a single day. these aren't prices going down. these are prices going up. there was such a demand for shares of stock. there was such a hunger for shares of stock, that the value of stock kept growing. it is a supply and demand thing. there were only so many shares of stock, and everyone wanted to buy something. every time you bought, it went up. the more people demanded shares of any company at all, the more value was being forced into the shares and stocks. the perception of the stock market changes. and the perception had been, prior to this boom, that the

stock market was kind of for just certain types of investors. you had to have enough money when you played the stock market to know that you might lose. that loss, you have to be well off enough that you could absorb the loss. the perception had changed from very risky, yes, you can make money, but you may very well lose. you may have to hold onto the stock for years and years. it changed from that perception to a sure thing. it was a no-brainer. the payouts were immediate. when i buy in march, it's going to be worth more in april. it is for sure. it is absolutely for sure. you can't lose. there was an article in ladies home journal called everyone off to be rich. -- called "everyone ought to be rich.” the person they based the

article from was the chief financial officer from general motors. he said he didn't see how anyone could lose on the stock market. whatever you but would become more valuable. this is my metaphor for this. it was as if he were inflating a balloon. they are blowing more air into the balloon. the balloon is becoming a bigger and bigger, overinflated. the value of the stock had to come down. but it wouldn't stop. they didn't know it was going to crash. they did not know in the aftermath of the crash, we would go into the great depression. you and i know that, but they did not. so this sure thing was like a sure thing. so they kept blowing air into the balloon, and october 1929 it collapsed.

it came up little bit in the days after, but then the economy , it exposed real weaknesses in the economy. it was going to have to go through some sort of major adjustment. it would need to go down to make this economic adjustment. buying on margin was what fueled this whole thing. is the installment plan applied to the stock market? it was how they were buying cars, houses. you put so much down and pay the rest in easy installments. you could do this with stocks. some brokerage firms were accepting as little as 10% down.

most all of them were accepting no more than 20% down. if you're rich and died -- your rich aunt died in. and left you -- in peoria and lefty $10,000. -- and left you $10,000, you were told to invested in the stock market. and after a couple of smart buys and sell, you would be able to triple it. maybe you wouldn't have to be operating a cab anymore. it was golden. it was an amazing moment. what happens as a result of this crash in the aftermath. we see the economy slide down. in the years of 1920-1923 are herbert hoover's years. the economy starts to crash and sink when he is president. with his fiscal conservatism, he is simply not the guy trying to save us from this. here is how bad it was. in that period of time from

1929-1933, 90,000 banks went out of business in the u.s. sit down with a calculator someday and to do that math. 9000 banks in the course of four years. they either went bankrupt or closed to avoid bankruptcy. i did it the other day in my office. i came to like, 50-60 banks a day in the u.s. were closing their doors. imagine what that did to the emotional state of the company how frightened and fearful people had to be. one of the effects of the sli de -- loss of banking was that the money supply started to reduce. the conservative estimate is that the amount of money installation reduced by 33%. i've read historians who believe it is as high as 40% of money disappeared.

when banks went out of business, people panicked. they were terrified. they were reluctant to spend. they started to hide money. they would hide it under the floorboards and in the backyard, milk cans. they were hoarding it and hiding it because this was pretty scary. our gross national product which is the value of all the goods and services produced in an economy in the course of 12 months, was at $104 billion in 1929. we want to see the gnp increase. it is a number that we still keep. today, the more commonly used his gross domestic product. gross domestic product is favored in these days, because it includes the value of exports. the belief is that it is a much better snapshot of the economy.

but it went down to $76.4 billion. that is a 26% increase. if the gnp goes up by 4/10th of 1%, that is great economic news, because the economy is expanding. if it goes down by a fraction of a percent, ehh, i'm a little worried about the economy. if it drops by 25%, that's catastrophic. that is a catastrophic drop in the gnp. that means companies are closing, people are losing their jobs. there is no demand, no one buying the products, and no purpose in trying to operate. by 1932, which is the election year, the unemployment rate nationally was 25%. that means if it's 25% on average, in places like detroit where the automobile industry was, this might be 50%.

it could even be about 50%. -- above 50%. it never really went below 15. if you averaged it out over the entire decade of the 1930's, it was at 20%. a lot of unemployed people. those who remained employed experienced pay cuts instead of pay increases. the conditions were frightening and they got worse as the years went on. in fact, how bad was it? here's my favorite, absolute favorite weight to describe how bad it was. 1933-1934 and 1935, those three consecutive years. they are the only three years in american history where more people moved out of the u.s. then moved in. -- than moved in. there was still immigration in people coming to america, but there were lots of people leaving. the economy was crashing. it was collapsing.

is the only time ever where we had more people leave than came in. there is nothing more you have to say to understand how dismal and bad and frightening that period of time was. what is hoover's problem? [laughter] in our textbook, alan brinkley uses the space, " it was an ordeal for herbert hoover.” -- uses this phrase. " his presidency was a four-year ordeal.” to give you some sense of what was going on for herbert hoover, he remained committed to the principles that he always believed in throughout public life, which was fiscal conservatism. he believed that the government needed to be small. the government needed to do what it was originally planned to do by the constitution of the u.s. it wasn't supposed to interfere much in the lives of the american people. but it especially wasn't

supposed to interfere in the conduct of business. that business should be hands-off, it should be untouchable for the government. by this point in american history, we've only written two regulatory laws. one was back in the 1800s, the interstate commerce act to regulate railroads. the other was the great progressive law of woodrow wilson, was the civil trade act to police and corporations. here are two things he did to give you an idea of his conservatism. instead of coming up with a major government program to save the company out of this depression. -- to save the country out of this depression. he held meetings at the white house with business leaders and farming union leaders. he basically said to them, come up with something.

come up with some sort of recovery program. come up with some sort of idea that would improve the economy. but he was appealing to them to do this voluntarily. he wasn't ordering them. he wasn't legislating this. he wasn't using the power of government to do this. he was making an appeal to these groups to try and save us. to the american people, he started to talk about this--he said to the american people, these are tough times and people are losing their jobs, their homes. and yet, we don't have enough to eat. and yes, our homes are cold because we can't afford the coal, so we just have to be rugged individualists, we have to hang in there. we have to survive this. he was an independently wealthy millionaire. he was very successful civil engineer. i'm not trying to say he was a bad guy, or he was condescending

in any way. i'm just saying it's a little easier to preach rugged individualism if you have a couple million in the bank than if you've lost her job or house and have four mouths to feed. pretty tough to be rugged. he asked congress for millions of dollars for a federal works program. let's take this pile of money and hire people unemployed to do things. he wanted to do things that would pay back the money. like building a toll road. let's build a turnpike. the tolls will pay back the $423 million that we asked congress to spend. it was the right idea, but not a big enough bandaid. as time marched on, there was a need for more action.

when that become obvious, he just couldn't do it. he was committed to a balanced budget. he believed the government should only spent what it has taken in. if the conditions -- as the conditions worsened, he defended the concept of a balanced budget. as these years went by, the money coming into the federal government started to shrink. companies go out of business. americans lose their jobs, so if you want to tax their income how much tax you collect on zero? uh, zero. it was a constant reduction in the amount of money coming in. so on june 6, 1932, he signed into law the highest tax increase in american history in peacetime. he raised taxes because the amount of money coming in had been reduced.

there was still this spending taking place. to be able to balance the budget, he started to tax companies that were still in business. he started to tax inheritances. it was the worst possible economic approach at that point in time. where does this take us? this takes us to the great depression. alan brinkley, who we are using as our basic text, believes there were five reasons for the great depression. i think this is the perfect time to take a look at them. the fifth one is probably the one that will cause franklin roosevelt to get elected overwhelmingly. first of all, the economy we had as a result of the prosperity of the 1920's was not like what we had today. it was not as diversified. today our economy is huge.

if there is a bad year in automobile sales, we keep going. we are diverse enough that other sectors can improve. we had wealth, but as always in america during those years prior to this, in the hands of the few. the rockefellers, the carnegie's, henry flagler. they were very wealthy people. remember that 40% of americans in the 1920's were at or below the poverty line. 60% are making about $2000 a year, which is more than they ever dreamed they would be making. but it doesn't mean they are fabulously wealthy or even middle-class and able to pace -- keep spending. they get frightened into sleep -- frighten easily by the way the economy is moving.

diversification is a problem. so much of what we did was based on the automobile industry. it was clearly the backbone of the economy. if the car industry does bad. it goes bad in the 1930's. there is not much demand for steel. not a lot of people are buying automobiles, and it will cause the entire economy to go down. let's purchases will cause less production, which will create losses of jobs, which will create more fear, and constantly spiral downward. the second thing brinkley refers to, we simply were able to spend our way out of this. yes, we were better off in the 1920's than ever before, but it wasn't like now. today, we have this amazing spending power. and no matter what the conditions, we are able to keep spending.

we did it after 9/11. every time there is an economic bump in the road, we keep going. big screen tvs, new cars, new vacations. we are very affluent as a country and the people. that spending keeps the economy moving. we invented the installment plan. you don't need the $800 for the car. you can give me so much money down and pay the rest in easy installments. you can buy stock this way. we were over extended. we had borrowed way too much money. we started to catch that disease that some of us have with credit cards. i don't really have the money for this, but i have a credit card, will you take a credit card?

this sofa is just so lovely, i think i will buy it anyway. i don't have the money for it, but you will take a credit card. buying on margin destabilizes the stock market. it was simply overinflated. the fourth one is the problem of international trade. this was herbert hoover's favorite cause of the great depression. hoover lived a very long time. in the later years of his life when he looked back at all of this, this was his favorite way to explain the great depression. it was kind of like a global pandemic. it started in europe because of world war i. the first world war damaged the european economy. members of the versailles treaty had a huge reparations payment on the german economy, and they collapsed. a lot of european economies struggled to get on their feet which was good for us.

we had a market for our goods. it was an economic condition that had a ripple effect across the pacific ocean and infect our shores. go back to the 1800s and look at the history of economic depressions in america, you will see there were panics. 1893 was a biggie. that's usually referred to as the panic of 1893. it's because one of the important ingredients in having a depression is that we, the american people, have to become frightened, terrified, scared stiff, panics stricken, unable to spend anything. and oh my, they were. they were really frightened. you take this mess to the election of 1932.

we have in in this election the republican party nominated herbert hoover. you might wonder, if everything was so bad and he was president for four years as all of this bad stuff emerged, why on earth with a ever let him run again? he represents a political party that is like-minded. they believe that fiscal conservatism is correct. they believe that the role of government is to stay out of the affairs of business. so he's kind of their man. plus the incumbent, the person holding the office at the time of the election. if he wants to run, and he does, because he has been telling the american people that this will eventually correct itself. the economy is going through a reorganization. and capitalism, free enterprise will get through peaks and

valleys. we're in a valley, but we will come out of this. he wanted four more years. so that he could oversee the correction and then be in office as the good times came back. so he could smile and say, i told you so, it would get better. so he gets the nomination. the democrats find this amazing guy, franklin roosevelt, who between the election of 1920-1932 contracted polio. he overcame it. it's pretty obvious that by overcoming this paralysis and resuming his political career into being a political force in the democratic party was the connection between what he achieved personally and where the country was.

he is telling everyone, vote for me, and i will give you a new deal. this term, the new deal, has three usages in this period of american history. one is his initially his campaign promise. everyone loved the sound of that. i want a new deal. because the old one isn't working. i lost my job, my house, nothing to eat, and we are all present. so give me a new deal. -- we are all freezing. this begins the nickname of his new administration. presidents don't do this anymore, but they did at the time. woodrow wilson had the square deal. it kind of sounds like cowboy talk. i just want a square deal, pardner. john f. kennedy had a nickname. this was the new frontier. lyndon johnson was the great society. they would say their administration has this name. today, we would call that branding.

the third things the new deal becomes is a plan for ending the great depression. but we are not there yet. we are just looking at the campaign promise. he also had a campaign song, called "happy days are here again.” i would sing it for you, but i can't sing. it's lively and bouncy. it was kind of odd. he was a polio victim who tried to hide that. telling everyone, vote for me and get a new deal, and he has people singing "happy days are here again.” and you looked around america, it wasn't really a happy site. -- a happy sight. he may be one of the first presidents who understand the power of film. he would be an amazing orator.

perfect in front of the camera. he utilized everything he could think of to promote his idea, to promote his brand. including his grandchildren. one of my favorite film clips, which you can find on youtube i'm sure, is all the grandchildren assemble, singing "happy days are here again" at the top of their lungs. these little screechy voices screaming happy days are here again. he takes one granddaughter on his lap and says, so misty, do you know our theme song? and she says, yeah, happy days are here again! and it was way different than herbert hoover's fiscal conservatism. the issue is really simple. the issue is one thing. it's the depression. by the time of the election, we are in a depression. this issue is how to bring it to

an end. herbert hoover is trying to tell us to be rugged individuals, and roosevelt is saying that you will all get a new deal. that sounded so much better than, "why don't you just, you know, be a rugged individual?” the results of this are very one-sided. he is the people's choice franklin roosevelt. they didn't know what the new deal was going to be. it emerged in the first hundred days of his presidency, but it sounded so good. we are all going to get a new deal. we will all have this amazing man lead us out of this. the democrats get 22 million votes. look at how many people are voting by this point. 472 electoral votes.

you need one more than half to be president of the united states. how did hoover do? there were 15 million republicans in america. they pretty much stayed in the camp. almost 16 million voted for him. herbert, the incumbent president gets 59 electoral votes. the people wanted franklin roosevelt. they wanted a new deal. he gets elected in 1932. i put this collage together. this is one of his campaign buttons. in the first 100 days or so of his administration, he puts together a group of advisors.

he raided faculties of the ivy league schools. one of the things i find most interesting about him, is that he was harvard educated, new yorker with almost an accepted -- affected way of speaking, but was able to connect with people who were down and out and struggling and suffering. they believed in him. they really believed in him. the other pictures are from the campaign. the one on the bottom right is a color photo. it's so easy to look at history in the 1920's-19 40's and think everything happen in black-and-white. but they did have colors. professor voguit: across the street at the hotel, we had a lot of famous guests. there was a very famous guests staying in the hotel at the time of the selection who summed it up perfectly. -- at the time of this election who summed it up perfectly. this is a map of the 1932 election.

the blue states, the ones that voted for franklin roosevelt. here is my home state of pennsylvania. i always thought it was a little different in pennsylvania. they voted for hoover. 36 of his 59 electoral votes came from the state of pennsylvania. the part i am from, us on this interesting, during the 1930's socialist political party in america. really, the new deal that franklin roosevelt was going to give us is going to be very liberal. it's going to be way more similar to socialism than fiscal conservative from the republican point of view.

the rest of the team votes came out of delaware and a couple new england states. the guy staying across the street was an american humorist named will rogers. he didn't tell jokes. well, he could tell jokes. but he was kind of a humorist. he put affairs in perspective in a folksy, humorous way. when he did a one-man show, he would dress as a cowboy is a rope and 12 the road -- and twirl the rope. he would say, all i know is what i've read in the paper. when he asked if franklin roosevelt was going to do a good job. he said of he burned down the capital he would cheer, and say

at least got a fire started. that's how desperate they were for someone to do something to help them. it was a very bad time. herbert hoover was preaching rugged individualism, practicing fiscal conservatism, and the wrong man at the wrong time. this takes us to the new deal. it takes us to the plan of the great depression. -- to end tehhe great depression. this is a fundamental shift in our nations history. prior to this, in all the years america existed, we were a nation with a small government. it was the presidents that all saw government in the same perspective. it had certain duties to

fulfill. it had certain responsibilities it was empowered with. but it wasn't supposed to go much beyond that. there were boundary lines. the government had to stay inside the boundary lines. talking about national government. franklin roosevelt came into a very terrible moment in our history. where 1/3 of the population didn't have anything to eat. my mom, honest to god, was eating oatmeal for breakfast lunch, and dinner. my mother lived in a shack. i visited it, where she lived with her mom and four siblings. it was a chicken coop over which they placed asbsestos shields. they barely survived the great depression. as a boy, she took me to see where she lived as a kid.

she was born 1926, my mother. when the great depression hit, when the market crashed, she was three years old. she was a kid. she was a 10-year-old during the 1930's. the government started to give out food, just give food away. she had to pull her wagon. she had to go over a bridge and the building where the government was handing out flour, sugar, whatever it was. her mom would send her to do that and she would come back with her wagon. it was a terrible moment for her. my mother lived into the 1990's. it completely formed how she was, how she believes what she did. she wouldn't throw anything away. she would get everything fixed. like if you peel a tomato or

chop it up for a salad, i don't know how you do it, but she would try to get every little scrap of tomato off the tomatoes. she wouldn't cut the end off and chuck that into the trash. she wouldn't take a paring knife and take all of the edible pieces of the tomato because she didn't have anything. franklin roosevelt comes into america and sees this suffering and says, we have to do some thing extraordinary. we have to do something extraordinary in an extra ordinary moment. he will completely take the government in another direction. he's going to create big government with huge budgets. he's going to spend more money than the government takes in. his name was franklin delano roosevelt. the republicans at the time referred to him as franklin deficit roosevelt. the deficit being when you spend more than you take in.

he will take the point of view that what the government should do now is do what the people what the people cannot do for themselves. feed them? yes. clothe them? yes. and whatever the cost is. it's a real turning point in american history. the days of the fiscal conservatism, the very defined role of government is ending with herbert hoover. and with franklin roosevelt, there is this other way. you can look back at this, especially us from 2015. we can say yeah, but now government has gotten so big that spending is so huge that maybe that the problem. but instead of looking at that what i'm asking you is just think about 1932. and 1933, 1934, when more people moved out of america than came

in. he had to do something. he had to help these people who had nothing but oatmeal to meet. -- to eat. he had to lift their spirits and convince them that they were going to get out of this. that they would actually get a new deal. that he was there to save them. as will rogers said, i don't know what he's going to do, but if he burns a building down, at least he gets a fire started. because the previous administration has done nothing. when we come back, we shall take a look at the new deal. it ended of being a supposed plan. there were three goals. -- a simplistic plan. one was to say banking and print more money. -- save banking. things improved through the 1930's, but it was an uphill battle. the country was broken. thanks.

>> join us each saturday evening at 8:00 p.m. and midnight eastern for classroom lectures from across the country. on different topics e andras -- topics and eras of american history. the lectures are also available as podcasts. download them from itunes or visit c-span.org/history/pod casts. >> each week, american history tv's real america brings you archival film that tells the story of the 20th century. ? ♪