By Charles Dawes’s term as vice president of the United States ended in March 1929. The new president, Herbert Hoover, got along with Dawes much better than had his predecessor, Calvin Coolidge.

Consequently, Hoover appointed Dawes U.S. ambassador to Great Britain – a job that Dawes held from June 1929 through December 1931. In the meantime, however, the country had been plunged into the Great Depression.

The Hoover administration, in an effort to boost the flagging economy, created an agency called the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which made government loans to banks and other business...