Critical Thinking 22-3!

How did Hoover's belief in "rugged individualism" shape his polities during the Great Depression?

Hoover faced many challenges being the president of the time for the Great Depression. He need to figure out a way to try and pull America out of the situation that it had fallen in to. His policies became to be focused around his idea of rugged individualism were people should succeed through there own efforts. He thought that families should take care of themselves during this trying period and that they should not become so dependent on the governments help. He had a belief that hand outs would weaken peoples self respect and because of that he did not support any form of welfare or direct relief to those that were in need. Hoovers response to everything that was going on was infuriating to the many people that did not what to be strengthened moral but just wanted to survive the day. The depression seem to take hold of the country and people grew more and more frustrated with Hoovers refusal to really ge t out there and help them. He did try ways to help the economy, such as calling together leaders of big businesses, banking, and labor to try and encourage them in ways to improve the nation with less pay cuts and lay offs and other cautious approaches of that sort. It turned out though that these approaches still might have leaned a little too much on the " rugged individual" idea and were still to mild.