Mention the name Herbert Hoover, the 31st president of the United States, and you probably

think great depression.

Here's how the usual narrative goes.

The stock market crashes in October of 1929.

Hoover, a Republican, refuses to intervene.

Instead, he lets the free market deal with the problem and the economic downturn morphs

into a catastrophic decline.

While the stock market did crash in 1929, and the economic downturn that followed did lead

into the Great Depression, but it wasn't because Hoover was a small government man like

his predecessor Calvin Coolidge.

It was just the opposite.

My research shows that it was Hoover's incisive meddling, not the mistaken view that he

did nothing that provoked the Great Depression.

Hoover, a good man with magnanimous instincts, was a successful mining engineer before he

got into government.

He believed that almost anything could be engineered, and he brought that philosophy

to the economic crisis of 1929.

As a result, he was the wrong man for the job at exactly the wrong time.

For starters, Hoover distressed at the free market.

He knew that unfettered competition forces companies to reduce prices.

But he believed lower prices lead to lower wages.

In November of 1929, shortly after the stock market swoon, Hoover called a meeting with

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