So Mr. President, What Did You Do During Your Term In Office? (2)

Topic: (continue) Hoover Administration Year 1929 #2

June 1, 1929

On this day President Hoover appointed an interdepartmental committee consisting of Postmaster General Brown, Secretary of Commerce Lamont, and Secretary of the Navy Adams, to report upon necessary reforms in ocean-mail contracts to be let in the future.

June 15, 1929

President Hoover signs the Agricultural Marketing Bill. The bill establishes the Federal Farm Relief Board to assist farmers in setting up cooperative organizations, but it does not contain a plan whereby the Government would subsidize the sale of surplus commodities on the world market, as desired by a majority of the Senate.

August 21, 1929

A conference of western governors was taking place in August, 1929 to get cattle and sheep range conservation on government lands under way and to deal generally with western conservation measures, President Hoover proposed a joint commission to study the problems of the public domain. He concluded: " It is my desire to work out more constructive policies for conservation in our grazing lands, our water storage, and our mineral resources, at the same time check the growth of Federal bureaucracy, reduce Federal interference in affairs of essentially local interest, and thereby increase the opportunity of the states to govern themselves, and in all obtain better government."

September 19, 1929

President Hoover appointed a committee of leading economists and sociologists to undertake an exhaustive examination and report. The committee's own statement of instructions was: "In September, 1929, the Chief Executive of the Nation called upon the members of this Committee to examine and to report upon recent social trends in the United States with a view to providing such a review as might supply the basis for the formulation of large national policies looking to the next phase of the national development. The summons was unique in our history....The first third of the Twentieth Century has been filled with epoch-making events and crowded with problems urgently demanding attention on many fronts." (Memoirs)

September 28, 1929

President Hoover invited the heads of the leading mutual insurance companies to have luncheon with him at the White House. He reminded them that they all sold annuities based upon their investments. Could they not, in a special set-up, devise a direct old-age insurance policy with pensions beginning at sixty-five years of age: this policy to be based upon either lump-sum payments or annual premiums starting at any age from one year up, the cost to be lessened by forfeiture of all payments by those who died before sixty-five? He also suggested that they consider selling such insurance to business and industry on a group basis, thus making it easier for such enterprises to provide old-age insurance for their employees. He asked them to give him some computations on lump payments or annual premiums necessary for different ages in order to secure a unit of, say, $50 a month after sixty-five years of age. " (Memoirs)

December 7, 1929

On this day the President requested authority from the Congress for an official commission to examine the situation in Haiti and advise when and how the United States were to withdraw, in effect, how to extricate themselves from the mess into which they had been plunged by the Wilson administration. Immediately upon receiving the report of the commission, he began the withdrawal of American forces and the building up of a substantial government in Haiti. (Memoirs)

December 16, 1929

President Hoover signs an income-tax reduction bill that would save taxpayers $160,000,000 on their 1929 Federal taxes.Convinced of the fundamental strength of the economy and that the deepening depression will run its course, Hoover keeps government intervention to a minimum. In foreign relations, he arranges for a one-year moratorium on the Nation's World War I loans.

To be continued: The Hoover Administration Year 1930

Sources For Information: The American Presidents by David C. Whitney; Reader's Digest Association, Inc. (1996), The New York Public Library American History Desk Reference; A Stonesong Press Book (1997) The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover, Macmillan Company (1952); The Bicentennial Almanac Edited by Calvin D. Linton, Ph.D. Publishers, Thomas Nelson Inc. (1975) The Presidents of the United States Vol 2, A.S. Barnes & Co. (1973)

To contact: miriam@thehistorybox.com

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