As I continue my self-designed program in economics, I keep running into a debate about whether Herbert Hoover was a proponent of laissez-faire or bigger government in the aftermath of the crash of 1929. It is with some detail that Murray Rothbard discusses that subject in America's Great Depression and concludes that Hoover was anything but a free marketeer. More recently, a briefing paper by Steven Horwitz, put out by the Cato Institute, draws the same conclusion.
The facts to consider are as follows:
-Federal spending (in constant 1929 dollars) doubled in the period 1929-1933
-Federal budget deficits in 1931 and 1932 were 52.5% and 43.3% of total federal expenditures, respectively (which are larger than any such deficits run between 1933 and 1941 during the peak of the New Deal)
-Hoover was a great supporter of public works programs, argued vociferously for businesses not to lower wages (even though it was a pronounced period of deflation), supported legislation that greatly empowered unions, stifled any immigration through his 1930 executive order, and signed the Smoot-Hawley tariff into law
-The litany of programs in 1931 that he signed into law included putting tax dollars towards propping up troubled financial institutions and targeting loans to specific sectors
-The Revenue Act of 1932 was the largest peactime tax increase in American history
The above does not even delve into the efforts that he made as Commerce Secretary in the 1920s that did not make it to law. Thus, it should be clear that his reputation as a staunch advocate of laissez-faire economics is undeserved.
And, as a final coup de grace, here is a quote from Raymond Moley, an original member of FDR's "Brain Trust":
"[W]e found every essential idea enacted in the 100-day Congress in the Hoover Administration itself. The essentials of the NRA, the PWA, the emergency relief setup were all there. Even the AAA was known to the Department of Agriculture. Only the TVA and the Securities Act was drawn from other sources. The RFC, probably the greatest recovery agency, was of course a Hoover measure, passed long before the inauguration."
Source: http://www.cato.org/pubs/bp/bp122.pdf
