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[Abridged] Presidential Histories - 31.B) Herbert Hoover, the first businessman president, an interview with David Hamilton
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31.B) Herbert Hoover, the first businessman president, an interview with David Hamilton

[Abridged] Presidential Histories

02/06/23

56m

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"It simply comes to this: men hate me more after they work for me than before. They don't need think they are coming to a snap. They're coming to a perfect hell and I am the devil." - Herbert Hoover, 1897, written from the gold fields of Australia.
The United States had seen generals, publishers, history professors, and lawyers - oh so many lawyers - become president. But it had never had a businessman president before Herbert Hoover. David E. Hamilton, a history professor at the University of Kentucky, discusses how Hoover's background in business gave him the tools to handle some aspects of the presidency, but left him entirely unequipped to handle others.

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Previous Episode

"My country owes me nothing. It gave me, as it gives every boy and girl, a chance. It gave me schooling, independence of action, opportunity for service and honor.” - Herbert Hoover
Herbert Hoover entered government a self-described progressive. But by the time the end of his life, his opposition to the New Deal had some calling him a father of modern conservativism. What's the truth of the matter? Join me as I talk to Thomas Schwartz, director of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library-Museum, about the evolution of Herbert Hoover and whether he changed, or whether the country changed around him.

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Next Episode

"The fundamental business of the country, that is, production and distribution of commodities, is on a sound and prosperous basis," - Herbert Hoover, on the eve of the Great Depression, Oct. 25, 1929
What caused the Great Depression? Robert McElvaine, a professor of history at Millsaps College and the author of Down and Out in the Great Depression: Letters from the “Forgotten Man” and The Great Depression: America, 1929-1941, argues the very factors that made the 1920's roar were the instruments of its destruction - mass production, easy credit, and an ads industry that told Americas, 'spend away today, don't worry about tomorrow.'

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