ABSTRACT
President Hoover was elected as the possessor of precisely the qualities which the swift-ensuing depression belied. The depression, bringing business disruption and consequent suffering for millions, was not Hoover's fault. In all of his mining operations Hoover had never followed a vein more eagerly than this one of exculpation which referred the depression to foreign causes. It similarly prepared the way for the World Economic Conference in London in 1933, the collapse of which was the fault not of Hoover, but of Roosevelt. The Coolidge administration had been opposed to bounties to farmers, and Hoover had eliminated the export debenture feature, designed by an indirection to "make the tariff effective for farmers," from the agricultural relief law of 1929. The Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) thus marked a stage, though not the final one, in Hoover's plans for overcoming the depression. The bill creating the RFC met Democratic opposition in Congress that delayed and crippled the President's program.
