Was president Hoover a do-nothing president?
He wasn't. Many liberals still call him that because they need
to still believe this myth in order to argue that their
interventions are necessary, but the truth is the exact
opposite.
Hoover believed in strong government leadership, both in good
times as well as bad. As Secretary of Commerce, he backed the "Own
your own home" campaign, which is similar to Clinton's "National
Homeownership Strategy". Even before the crash of '29, he signed
the "Agricultural Marketing Act". He believed that public works
projects were the solution to recessions and depressions, and
campagned for the building of Hoover Dam even before the crash. He
increased Federal spending by 60% and raised the top income tax
from 20% to 80%. He signed the Smoot Hawley Tariff Act.
Most disastrously, he pressured businesses to keep wages high
when their usual response to recessions was to cut wages and lower
prices (a necessary move when there has been monetary deflation.
There just isn't as much money to go around.) Lee Ohanian of UCLA
calculates that this was the cause of 2/3 of the unemployment
during the Hoover years of the Great Depression.