In 1928, Coolidge retired to civilian life, leaving office as a highly popular figure among the American people. Coolidge's Republican successor in the White House was Herbert Hoover, a former mining engineer, war-relief administrator, and Secretary of Commerce considered by many to be the greatest man of his generation.
Hoover was a self-made millionaire but no rigid adherent of laissez-faire. Hoover might be considered the last Progressive, a believer in the potential of the private market to achieve beneficial results through voluntary cooperation encouraged (but not enforced) by the government. As Commerce Secretary in 1920, Hoover had helped to stave off a postwar depression by successfully encouraging leading businessmen voluntarily to pursue policies of growth rather than retrenchment. As a presidential candidate in 1928, Hoover confidently declared, "We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land... we shall soon, with the help of God, be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this nation."
Hoover won more electoral votes than any previous presidential candidate in American history, but his optimistic vision of a future of universal affluence was soon shattered.
"We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land... we shall soon, with the help of God, be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this nation."
In October 1929, just months after Hoover assumed office, the stock market collapsed, ushering in the Great Depression, the worst economic crisis in American history, which Hoover's policies of voluntary cooperation proved utterly unable to solve.