Hoover did quite a lot to try to stimulate the economy. He spent $3.5 billion on public works, including several projects for which we may thank him yet—notably the Golden Gate Bridge and Hoover Dam. He even donated his own salary to charity. An aide to President Roosevelt once confessed, “Practically the whole New Deal was extrapolated from programs that Hoover started.” But nothing could overcome his absence of lovability. At the 1931 World Series, he was “lustily” booed—the first time that that had ever happened to a president at a World Series game.
