At any rate Coolidge wasn’t happy that the Asians were excluded from the immigration bill.

Count to 10 on February 17, 2013 at 8:10 PM

They were not excluded from the immigration bill — they were included in the immigration bill — and excluded from immigrating.

Whatever Coolidge felt about Asian immigration (“America must be kept American”) — he signed the bill into law.

In other words, Hoover’s methods meant a sharper but briefer depression. Roosevelt’s methods meant we were probably in for perpetual depression had WWII not come along.

crosspatch on February 17, 2013 at 9:39 PM

No. Hoover was FDR lite. He started off with “tax the rich” and tariffs — and FDR doubled down.

ninjapirate on February 17, 2013 at 7:26 PM

No. The Immigration Law of 1924 was designed to exclude individuals of Eastern European or Southern European extraction, as well as nearly all Asians (Indians/Chinese/Japanese/Koreans).

It was the Know Nothing wing of the Republican Party in action.

Look at this immigration act as the reason why the United States paid no attention to Golda Meir when she plead with the us in 1939 to admit the Jews. In fact, Adolf Hitler actually chortled at the results of the Convention held to address the plight of the Jews under his government:

I can only hope and expect that the other world, which has such deep sympathy for these criminals, will at least be generous enough to convert this sympathy into practical aid. We, on our part, are ready to put all these criminals at the disposal of these countries, for all I care, even on luxury ships.

Gustav Shroder, captain of the MS St. Louis, and his 937 Jewish passenger refugees, discovered first hand the meaning of “illegal alien” as well as the fact that Hitler’s sneer at the United States was absolutely correct. 254 of those later died at the hands of the Nazis.

This kind of thinking is why people from these ethnicities are no longer friendly to the Republican Party, and why any other ideas we might have about saving our nation are stilborn in their eyes.

something that worsened the Depression — out of fear of the “Wage Price Spiral”.

Count to 10 on February 17, 2013 at 8:12 PM

Initially, for a brief period, yes. But actually, it was starting to gain traction. Depression would have been over by ’35 had Roosevelt decided not to meddle.

In other words, Hoover’s methods meant a sharper but briefer depression. Roosevelt’s methods meant we were probably in for perpetual depression had WWII not come along.

Conservatives may be intent on excavating a hero, but Coolidge is no model for the present. He is a bleak omen from the past.

This article isn’t worth the comment, except to document how far the NYT has degraded intellectually

‘excavating’ a hero

a ‘bleak omen’ from the past

This is junior high level script. Maybe the author is a bleak omen of the dumbing down of the language. Perhaps his intentions should be excavated

When I went to school it was Hoover who was blamed, not Coolidge, but the truth is, had Roosevelt not meddled, the economy was already starting to turn around when he took office in 1933. Roosevelt’s actions, in particular wage controls, actually EXTENDED the Great Depression by another 7 years.

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/FDR-s-Policies-Prolonged-Depression-5409.aspx

crosspatch on February 17, 2013 at 7:46 PM

Hoover engaged in something of “voluntary” wage controls, talking CEOs into freezing wages instead of lowering them — something that worsened the Depression — out of fear of the “Wage Price Spiral”.

Not really. Japan’s entry into WWII was about oil, not about immigration policy. Japan needed oil, we refused to sell it to them because of their incursion into China. So Japan decided to take the Dutch East Indies (now known as Indonesia) to get their oil and coal. Japan needed to knock out the US Pacific fleet to do that. Japan would have succeeded, too, had they gone ahead with the third strike on Pearl Harbor which was supposed to take out the oil storage depots and dry docks. The US would have been forced to pull the fleet back to San Francisco because we did not have sufficient tanker capacity to maintain operations out of Hawaii if those tank farms were destroyed. The Japanese got cold feet, declared success after two waves, left the oil storage and dry docks intact, and lost the war.

crosspatch on February 17, 2013 at 7:42 PM

It’s all kind of convolved together — it was a snowballing of deteriorating relations. The inability of Japanese to immigrate to the US contributed to the Japanese impression that they would have to expand aggressively in order to gain respect from the West (and thus, some level of security against being colonized like China). At any rate Coolidge wasn’t happy that the Asians were excluded from the immigration bill.

http://www.amazon.com/Forgotten-Man-History-Great-Depression/dp/0060936428/

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/FDR-s-Policies-Prolonged-Depression-5409.aspx