dole (economics)

Dôle , city (1990 pop. 28,860), Jura dept., E France, in Franche-Comté, on the Doubs River. There are metallurgical, food, and other industries. Dôle was the capital of Franche-Comté until Louis XIV conquered the region; he shifted the parlement from Dôle to Besançon. The university, founded (1422) by Philip the Good of Burgundy, was also transferred to Besançon at that time. Louis Pasteur was born in Dôle; his home is now a museum.

Forbes, George William (1869–1947) New Zealand statesman. A Member of Parliament for the Liberal (later United) Party, Forbes succeeded the Prime Minister, J. G. WARD, in 1930. He attempted to meet the DEPRESSION by balancing the budget and paying “the dole” only to men who worked on labour-intensive public works schemes. In 1931 Forbes, in coalition with the more dynamic J. G. COATES, won the election on a policy of retrenchment, but in 1935 was swept out of office by Labour with its policy of economic expansion.

Hoover, Herbert Clark (1874–1964) 31st president of the United States (1929–33), born in West Branch, Iowa. As a mining engineer with multiple foreign investments, Hoover became a millionaire by the age of forty. He came to public attention through his active leadership role in various relief efforts during and following World War I, primarily in the area of food distribution. He was sought as a presidential nominee by both parties in 1920, but refused to run. As secretary of commerce in the administrations of Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge, Hoover made that department one of the most important and well publicized by developing advanced economic theories about business cycles, promoting government regulation of radio and aviation, and supporting federal supervision of foreign loans. By 1928 he was viewed as a postwar economic superman and he easily defeated Democrat Alfred E. Smith for the presidency. But implementation of his progressive principles, which included cooperative economic organization, self-regulation by business, and voluntary activity through American society, was almost immediately thwarted by the stock market crash in October 1929. Remedial legislation failed to deal with the growing problem of the unemployed, but Hoover remained adamantly opposed to direct federal relief. Though he signed the Emergency and Relief Construction Act (1932), he placed many restrictions on its implementation. Perhaps Hoover's greatest blunder was accepting responsibility for Douglas MacArthur's burning of the veterans' camps that had been set up outside Washington, D.C., to protest the government's refusal to redeem veteran certificates, which Hoover considered equivalent to the dole. He left office in disgrace, blamed for the Depression and the routing of the veterans, which had been done in violation of his orders. His conservative fiscal policies, aversion to direct federal relief, and failure of relief initiatives (such as the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and the earlier Federal Farm Board) left millions unemployed at the end of his term. In foreign relations Hoover met with better success. Drawing on his early Quaker training, he relied on negotiation rather than the use of force, and supported arms limitation as well as international arbitration, positions which he continued to advocate after leaving office. Throughout the 1920s, World War II, and into the 1940s and 1950s, he supported various ways to avoid military conflict. His belief in the superiority of American capitalism made him fear neither fascism nor communism. Both Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower called upon Hoover's administrative skills to head up the reorganization of the executive branch of government, resulting in two Hoover Commission reports (1949 and 1955), many of whose recommendations were adopted.