DAY 3

Hoover as President: What would YOU do?

Learning Goals: Students will examine artifacts and their own words and works to:

• Determine why Hoover wanted to insert the Federal Government into the financial situation, and did so;
• Learn why Hoover was such a wonderful person and such an ineffective politician; and
• Learn what steps Hoover took to avert the events leading to the Great Depression.

Preparatory Set: Hand back student exit papers. Have them use the bottom of the paper to write down the 'lessons learned' from Day 1, and the following details and attitudes about Hoover:

• His education process; (had to test his way into college... self-made man);
• His religious background (Quaker... everybody helps each other);
• Where he grew up (West Branch, a small town in the middle of Iowa... we are in this together);
• His profession (engineer... there is always an answer); and
• His experience in helping people (feeding millions of starving people... people MUST have their basic needs met).

Task 1: Students then look at the documents following these instructions, and think about the question, "What would you do if you received this information, and you were President of the United States?"

A. Graffiti Wall

1. Put up a large section of butcher paper on the wall with the words "What would you do?" and "What would Hoover do?" written on it.
2. Have the students pass around the various artifacts below and think about their reaction to the artifacts. Remind the students that these all came from the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, and President Hoover likely saw these things or heard about them from his wife.
3. Give the students markers, and then have them write brief answers to the two questions on the wall.

Task 2 is shown below the artifacts.

A letter to Mrs. Hoover.

Note the categories where the downturns occur.

Bank poster urging people to stick together to 'weather the storm.'

A car advertisement that promotes buying cars to help the economy.

Auto production curtailments impact many other industries in a cascade fashion.

Editorial Cartoon deriding chasing small-time crooks when the real crooks are on Wall Street.

Task 2: What could Hoover do?

1. Set up a chart like the one below on the board or butcher paper, covering the Result columns so the students cannot see them. Have the class develop consensus about the decision to be made, and then reveal the results.

ISSUE	Action 1	Result Action 1	Action 2	Result Action 2
Tariff to slow imports from other nations and protect jobs in the US	Push to pass the tariffs	Protect jobs in the Midwest, but hurt foreign economies selling to the US, possibly resulting in damage to banking worldwide, including the US system	Avoid or downplay tariffs	Significant job loss throughout the Midwest, as goods produced in Europe replace those made in the US
Farm bill to save farmers with mortgage problems	Push to pass the farm bill	Support some farmers in avoiding foreclosure, but angering the leadership of your political party	Allow farm mortgages to continue to fail without help from the federal government	Farms go into foreclosure more quickly, causing food shortages in the US and an exodus of people from farms to the cities
Rich friends are available to help the economic situation	Ask the rich friends to help as appropriate (no salary cuts to employees, continue to use banks, etc.)	The friends help, but their help isn't enough to stop the economic slide, and they stop helping	Ask the rich friends for advice on how to solve the problem	Solutions suggested seem to benefit only the companies of the people making the suggestions
Federal work for those who are unemployed	Push to enact federal work in construction for those who are unemployed	Many go to work under your plan, fixing the infrastructure and completing a variety of works for the government	Press industry to employ more people, keeping the government out of what is a business issue	Industry lacks the money to employ more workers, but your political party is happy!

2. Have the students discuss whether they made good decisions for the nation. Next, show them the alternative results, and have them share their reactions.
3. Ask them if they thought Hoover had good choices to make.

Task 3: Figuring out what happened

1. Students look at the following editorial cartoon:



Students look at http://hoover.archives.gov/exhibits/Hooverstory/gallery06/gallery06.html and http://hoover.archives.gov/exhibits/Hooverstory/gallery07/gallery07.html

2. Teachers should use reading strategies appropriate to the students' reading levels and abilities. One useful example is the KWLH strategy. Please see the North Central Regional Education Laboratory site for a description of this process. (http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/students/learning/lr1kwlh.htm)
3. Students should use all their works (and the classroom's work), as well as the two sites listed above to decide which of the pictures represents how Herbert Hoover went down in history. They should be given a copy of the editorial cartoon listed above (either via the web, or on paper), then cut out (or cut and pasted onto a page) the picture or pictures they believe portray his legacy, and write an essay describing why they think so. They should also address whether they think Hoover had any choice when using the federal government in attempting to solve the problems leading to the Great Depression.
4. Students should try to use information from previous works to support their decisions, as well as the sites listed in step 1. Teachers should develop a rubric based on the students' use of the information from previous tasks and preparatory sets, as well as the two sites.