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Introduction to Prosperity and Thrift

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[Herbert Hoover, three-quarter length portrait, seated, facing slightly right, listening to radio].

Coolidge's economic themes were given concrete form by the initiatives of Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon and Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover. Mellon's term of office spanned the administrations of Presidents Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover (1921-31). His policies, enacted in the Revenue Acts of 1924, 1926, and 1928, reduced the national debt and aided business and consumption by cutting federal taxes. Hoover conducted a "war on waste" in government and industry and cut business costs through standardization and simplification of industrial parts and procedures. He also reorganized the Department of Commerce, creating seventeen internal divisions, each with a specific area of economic responsibility.

The use of social science research methods was an important component of government information gathering in the 1920s. Secretary of Commerce Hoover actively promoted scientific research undertaken with the cooperation of business, government, organized philanthropy, and social science research agencies. Among the most ambitious government-sponsored studies of the Coolidge era, partially represented in Prosperity and Thrift, were Recent Economic Changes in the United States (1929) and Recent Social Trends in the United States(1933). These massive works focus on the interrelationship of social and economic trends during the 1920s, surveying such subjects as invention and the new technologies, agencies of communication, taxation and finance, labor, rural life, consumers, racial and ethnic groups, and the activities of women outside the home. Many other government reports and private-sector studies are included in the collection as well.

For further information, see the following entries in the "Guide to People, Organizations, and Topics in Prosperity and Thrift" or use these terms to search the collection:

On the Coolidge administration: Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, Federal Reserve Board, Federal Trade Commission, Charles Sumner Hamlin, Standardization, Frederick W. Taylor.

On legislation: Agricultural Credits Act of 1923, Budget and Accounting Act of 1921, James Couzens, McNary-Haugen Farm Legislation, Truth-in-Fabric Legislation.

On social science research: Herman Hollerith, Robert Staughton Lynd.