American History - Part 169 - Hoover - Election of 1928 - Hoover and Good times
Channel: ListenAndReadAlong
Date: 2013-08-07

Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION-- American history in VOA Special English.
The Presidential election of 1928 gave American voters a clear political choice. The Democratic Party nominated Al Smith. He was the popular governor of the state of New York. The Republican Party chose Herbert Hoover. He was an engineer and businessman who served as secretary of commerce for Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge.

Al Smith was a strong political leader and an effective governor. But he frightened many Americans, especially conservative citizens living in rural areas.
Smith was an honest man. But many rural Americans simply did not trust people from big cities. Al Smith seemed to them to represent everything that was new, different, and dangerous about American life.
But being from New York City was not Al Smith's only problem. He also opposed the new national laws that made it illegal to buy or produce alcoholic drinks. And he had political ties to the New York political machine. But worst of all, in the eyes of many Americans, Al Smith was a Roman Catholic.
 From George Washington through Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and up to Calvin Coolidge, every American President had been male, white, and a Protestant Christian. Of course, there was no law requiring a candidate to be Protestant. But 1,000,000s of traditional Americans just were not ready to give their vote to a Roman Catholic.
Opponents of the Smith campaign generally did not speak openly about his religion. But many of them were afraid that Smith would take his orders from the Vatican in Rome, instead of working with the Congress in Washington.
But many Protestant Americans thought there was a conflict. And they looked to the Republican Party to supply a strong candidate to oppose Smith and the Democrats.
The Republicans did just that. They nominated former secretary of commerce Herbert Hoover, one of the country's most popular men. Hoover was well-known to Americans. People trusted him. And they liked the way he had gained great personal success from poor beginnings.
In fact, Hoover's life story would have pleased Abraham Lincoln, another American who rose from a poor family to fame.
Hoover was born in the farm state of Iowa in 1874. His father was a poor metal worker who kept moving his family from state to state.
Herbert Hoover's father died when the boy was just 6 years old. His mother died 4 years later. Young Herbert had to move to the western state of Oregon to live with his mother's brother.
Herbert's uncle was luckier in life than Herbert's parents. He had made money in the land business. And he helped the boy gain admission to Stanford University in California. At the university, Herbert showed great skill in mathematics. And he decided to go into business as a geologist studying the science of the earth.

This, then, was the choice Americans faced in 1928. On the one hand, Al Smith. A Democrat. A Roman Catholic. A politician from the city. A man wanting some social change.
And on the other hand, Herbert Hoover. A Republican. A businessman who had proven the dream that even a poor boy could become great in America. A man who seemed to succeed with every effort he touched.
The main issue in the campaign was not economics or religion, but the new national laws banning alcoholic drinks. Hoover was for the laws; Smith against them. The two candidates also argued about how to provide aid to struggling farmers, and how to increase electricity and water supplies.
 Herbert Hoover won the election of 1928. It was one of the greatest victories in Presidential history. Hoover won fifty-eight percent of the votes. Smith got just forty percent. And Hoover captured 484 electoral votes to Smith's 87.
And so it was that the engineer and businessman Herbert Hoover entered the White House in 1929. 
 The nation's stock market reacted by pushing stock prices to record high levels. Everyone expected that economic growth would continue and expand. But the happy times were just a dream. Within one year, the stock market collapsed. 1,000,000s of people lost their jobs. The nation fell into the worst economic crisis it had ever faced.
Herbert Hoover was not personally responsible for the crisis. In many ways, it was his own bad luck to be elected just before the disaster struck. But it was his job to guide the nation through its troubled waters. And he would prove to be the wrong person to give such leadership.
His 4 years in office would be one of the most difficult periods in the nation's history. We will look at President Hoover's administration in our next program.