Abstract
The congressional elections of 1930 resulted in a virtual tie in both houses and during the months before the newly elected Seventy-Second Congress convened in early December of 1931, sufficient deaths occurred, after which the Democrats won more special elections, providing a small Democratic majority in the House. The Republicans held a bare majority of one in the Senate. In both houses there was a clique of Progressives, chiefly western Republicans, who habitually sided with the Democrats, providing them with working majorities in both houses. The Democrats organized the House, electing John Nance Garner of Texas as speaker. The Republican changed their House leadership. John Q. Tilson of Connecticut, who would have been in line to become minority leader, was defeated by Bertrand Snell of New York. Many Republicans felt that Tilson had been ineffective as majority leader and would have been even less effective as minority leader. In the Senate, where the Republicans commanded the votes to organize, the insurgents sabotaged the reelection of George H. Moses of New Hampshire. They refused to vote for the Democratic candidate, Key Pittman of Nevada, and divided their votes among several Republicans, depriving both Moses and Pittman of a majority. The insurgents created a daily deadlock from early December through the two-week Christmas vacation, paralyzing the Senate from conducting business while banks failed, business faltered, and the economy stalled.
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Notes
Jordan A. Schwarz, The Interregnum of Despair: Hoover, Congress, and the Depression (Urbana, IL, 1970), 76–77
James H. MacLafferty Diary, Box 1 [All MacLafferty citations are from Box 1], Dec. 2, 1931, HHPL.
E. Francis Brown, “Mr. Hoover Faces Nation’s Problems,” Current History (Jan. 1932), 578
John Spargo, The Legend of Herbert Hoover Who “Did Nothing” (Old Bennington, VT, 1936), 30–32, Herbert Hoover Presidential File (hereafter HHPF), Box 226, March 21, 1936, Hoover Archives, Stanford University.
Edward Eyre Hunt, “Fight on the Depression, Phase II,” 1935, Box 336, HHPF, Hoover Archives, Stanford University, 40–44
James Stuart Olson, Herbert Hoover and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, 1931–1933 (Ames, IA, 1977), 33
Martin L. Fausold, The Presidency of Herbert C. Hoover (Lawrence, KS, 1985), 156.
Quotation from James S. Olson, “The End of Voluntarism: Herbert Hoover and the National Credit Corporation,” Annals of Iowa 41 (Fall 1972), 1104; Ed., New York Times, Jan. 22, 1932
Herbert Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover, vol. 3, The Great Depression, 1919–1941 (New York, 1952), 107–8
David Quigley, “Assessing the Hoover Presidency,” in Uncommon Americans: The Lives and Legacies of Herbert and Lou Henry Hoover, ed. Timothy Walch (Westport, CT, 2003), 189
David Burner, Herbert Hoover: A Public Life (New York, 1979), 272–75.
Albert U. Romasco, The Poverty of Abundance: Hoover, the Nation, the Depression (New York, 1968), 191
William Starr Myers and Walter H. Newton, The Hoover Administration: A Documented Narrative (New York, 1936), 164
Ray Lyman Wilbur and Arthur Mastick Hyde, The Hoover Policies (New York, 1937), 424–25.
David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 (New York, 1999), 76–77
Theodore G. Joslin, Hoover off the Record (Garden City, NY, 1934), 170–73
Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 62. For insights into Michelson’s work see his own book, Charles Michelson, The Ghost Talks (New York, 1944).
Harold Wolfe, Herbert Hoover: Public Servant and Leader of the Loyal Opposition (New York, 1956), 154
Harris Gaylord Warren, Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression (New York, 1967), 70–71
Herbert Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover, vol. 2, The Cabinet and the Presidency, 1920–1933 (New York, 1952), 282–84.
Susan L. DuBrock Wendel, “President Hoover and Banking Reform” (MA thesis, Northeastern Illinois University, 1985), deserves reading in its entirety. For specific details see Hoover, Memoirs, vol. 3, 124
Eugene Lyons, Herbert Hoover: A Biography (Garden City, NY, 1964), 279
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David Hinshaw, Herbert Hoover: American Quaker (New York, 1950), 70
Text of Speech by Will R. Wood, Chairman of the Congressional National Committee, Rebutting Shouse Attack on Hoover, March 28, 1932, NBC Broadcast, in MacLafferty Diary, undated entry, HHPL.
Clair Everet Nelsen, “The Image of Herbert Hoover as Reflected in the American Press” (PhD diss., Stanford University, 1956), 137
William Allen White, ed., Emporia Gazette, July 13, 1932, CF, HHPL.
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© 2012 Glen Jeansonne
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Jeansonne, G. (2012). The Seventy-Second Congress. In: The Life of Herbert Hoover. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137111890_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137111890_11
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