The government represented by president Hoover in the fall of 1929, responded to the Great Depression; wide spreading unemployment during the 1930s and exacerbating an already difficult situation. The government spent millions of dollars on various relief programs. Most, however, were ineffective. Dole rations, for example, were heavily policed and much too small to live on; land settlement also ended in failure. At the same time the government increased relief spending, it also contributed to the crisis by laying off employees and making cuts to health care, education, and other social programs.
President Warren Harding's secretary of state, Charles Evans Hughes, was the one who called for a ten-year moratorium on warship construction. Britain, France, Japan, Italy, and US were the countries that helped Hughes to create the ten-year moratorium on new warships.
