A couple months after he was elected, the stock market crashed and the Great Depression was beginning. Unlike Andrew Mellon and Calvin Coolidge who believed that the federal government should keep its hands off the economy, Herbert Hoover believed that some action from the federal government is necessary.
To gain support for the revolutionaries. The story was exaggerated, but the American people bought it. It was used as a recruitment/propaganda campaign to turn as many people against the British occupation as possible.
