Hoover, Herbert

Herbert Hoover
31st President of the United States
In office March 4, 1929 – March 4, 1933
Vice President	Charles Curtis
Preceded by	Calvin Coolidge
Succeeded by	Franklin D. Roosevelt
3rd United States Secretary of Commerce
In office March 5, 1921 – August 21, 1928
President	Warren G. Harding Calvin Coolidge
Preceded by	Joshua W. Alexander
Succeeded by	William F. Whiting
Born	August 10, 1874(1874-08-10) West Branch, Iowa
Died	October 20, 1964(1964-10-20) (aged 90) New York, New York
Birth name	Herbert Clark Hoover
Nationality	USA
Political party	Republican
Spouse(s)	Lou Henry Hoover
Children	Herbert Clark Hoover, Jr. Alan Henry Hoover
Alma mater	Stanford University and George Fox University (undergratuate school)[1]
Occupation	Engineer (Mining, Civil), Businessman, Humanitarian
Religion	Quaker
Signature

Herbert Clark Hoover (August 10, 1874 – October 20, 1964) was the 31st President of the United States (1929–1933). Hoover was a professional mining engineer and author. As the United States Secretary of Commerce in the 1920s under Presidents Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge, he promoted government intervention under the rubric "economic modernization". In the presidential election of 1928, Hoover easily won the Republican nomination, despite having no previous elected office experience. To date, Hoover is the last cabinet secretary to be directly elected President of the United States, as well as one of only two Presidents (along with William Howard Taft) to have been elected President without electoral experience or high military rank. America was prosperous and optimistic at the time, leading to a landslide victory for Hoover over Democrat Al Smith.

Hoover, a trained engineer, deeply believed in the Efficiency Movement, which held that government and the economy were riddled with inefficiency and waste, and could be improved by experts who could identify the problems and solve them. When the Wall Street Crash of 1929 struck less than eight months after he took office, Hoover tried to combat the ensuing Great Depression with volunteer efforts, none of which produced economic recovery during his term. The consensus among historians is that Hoover's defeat in the 1932 election was caused primarily by failure to end the downward economic spiral. As a result of these factors, Hoover is ranked poorly among former US Presidents.

[edit] Family background and early life

Tintype of Hoover circa 1877

Hoover birthplace cottage, West Branch, Iowa.

Reconstructed Jesse Hoover blacksmith shop, West Branch, Iowa.

Herbert Clark Hoover was born on August 10, 1874, in West Branch, Iowa. He was the first president born west of the Mississippi River, and remains the only Iowan President. His father Jesse Hoover was a blacksmith and farm implement store owner who was of German (Pfautz, Wehmeyer) and German-Swiss (Huber, Burkhart) descent. Herbert's mother, Hulda (Minthorn) Hoover, was born in Norwich, Ontario, Canada of English and Irish (probably Scots-Irish) descent. Both were Quakers.

His father died in 1880, and his mother in 1884, leaving Hoover an orphan at the age of nine. Fellow Quaker Lawrie Tatum was appointed as Hoover's guardian. After a brief stay with one of his grandmothers in Kingsley, Iowa, Herbert lived for the next 18 months with his uncle Allen Hoover in West Branch. In November 1885, he went to live in Newberg, Oregon with his uncle John Minthorn, whose own son had died the year before. For two and a half years, Herbert attended Friends Pacific Academy (now George Fox University), then subsequently worked as an office assistant in his uncle's real estate office in Salem. Though he did not attend high school, the young Hoover attended night school and learned bookkeeping, typing, and math.^[2]

Hoover entered Stanford University in 1891, the first year of the new California college. None of the first students were required to pay tuition.^[2] Hoover claimed to be the first student ever at Stanford, by virtue of having been the first person in the first class to sleep in the dormitory.^[3] While at the university he was the student manager of both the baseball and football teams, and was a part of the inaugural Big Game versus rival California (Stanford won).^[3] In one game in 1894, as manager of the baseball team, Hoover found the receipts were short. He went after the person who had failed to pay the twenty-five cents, former President Benjamin Harrison. Later in life, Hoover called his encounter with Harrison, "his first time with greatness". Hoover graduated in 1895 with a degree in geology.^[4]

[edit] Mining engineer

Hoover went to Australia in 1897 as an employee of Bewick, Moreing & Co., a London-based mining company. He served as a geologist and mining engineer while searching the Western Australian goldfields for investments. After being appointed as mine manager at the age of 23, he led a major program of expansion for the Sons of Gwalia gold mine at Gwalia, Western Australia, and brought in many Italian immigrants to cut costs and counter the union militancy of the Australian miners.^[5][6] He believed "the rivalry between the Italians and the other men was of no small benefit."^[5] He also described Italians as "fully 20 per cent superior"^[5] to other miners.

Hoover worked at gold mines in Big Bell, Cue, Leonora, Menzies and Coolgardie.^[7][8]

Hoover married his Stanford sweetheart, Lou Henry, in 1899. The Hoovers had two sons, Herbert Clark Jr. (1903–1969) and Allan Henry (1907–1993). They went to China, where Hoover worked for a private corporation as China's leading engineer. Hoover and his wife learned Mandarin Chinese while he worked in China and used it during his tenure at the White House when they wanted to foil eavesdroppers.^[9] The Boxer Rebellion trapped the Hoovers in Tianjin in June 1900. For almost a month, the settlement was under heavy fire. Hoover himself guided US Marines around Tianjin during the battle, using his extensive knowledge of the local terrain.^[10]

Hoover was made a partner in Bewick, Moreing & Co. in 1901 and assumed responsibility for various Australian operations. In August–September 1905, Hoover came up with a technological innovation. When visiting the mines at Broken Hill, New South Wales, he noticed considerable zinc in the Broken Hill lead-silver ore, which could not be recovered and was lost as tailings. Hoover devised a practical and profitable method to use the then-new froth flotation process to treat these tailings and recover the zinc.^[11] With William Baillieu and others, he founded the Zinc Corporation (later, following various mergers, a part of Rio Tinto Group).

In 1908, he became an independent mining consultant, traveling worldwide until the outbreak of World War I in 1914. His lectures at Columbia and Stanford universities were published in 1909 as Principles of Mining,^[12] which became a standard textbook. Hoover and his wife also published their English translation of the 1556 mining classic De re metallica in 1912. This translation from the Latin of Renaissance author Georgius Agricola is still the most important scholarly version and provides its historical context.^[13] It is still in print.

[edit] Humanitarian

When World War I began in August 1914, he helped organize the return of 120,000 Americans from Europe: tourists, students, executives, etc. Hoover led five hundred volunteers in the distribution of food, clothing, steamship tickets, and cash. "I did not realize it at the moment, but on August 3, 1914, my career was over forever. I was on the slippery road of public life." Hoover liked to say that the difference between dictatorship and democracy was simple: dictators organize from the top down, democracies from the bottom up.

Belgium faced a food crisis after being invaded by Germany. Hoover undertook an unprecedented relief effort with the Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB). As chairman of the CRB, Hoover worked with the leader of the Belgian Comite National de Secours et Alimentation (CN), Emile Francqui, to feed the entire nation for the duration of the war. The CRB obtained and imported millions and millions of metric tons of foodstuffs for the CN to distribute, and watched over the CN to make sure the German army didn't appropriate the food. The CRB became a veritable independent republic of relief, with its own flag, navy, factories, mills, and railroads. Private donations and government grants supplied an $11-million-a-month budget.

For the next two years, Hoover worked 14-hour days from London, administering the distribution of over two and one-half million tons of food to nine million war victims. In an early form of shuttle diplomacy, he crossed the North Sea forty times to meet with German authorities and persuade them to allow food shipments, becoming an international hero. The Belgian city of Leuven named a prominent square Hooverplein after him.

After the United States entered the war in April 1917, President Woodrow Wilson appointed Hoover head of the U.S. Food Administration. Hoover believed "food will win the war." He established set days to encourage people to avoid eating particular foods to save them for soldiers' rations: meatless Mondays, wheatless Wednesdays, and "when in doubt, eat potatoes." This program helped reduce consumption of foodstuffs needed overseas and avoided rationing at home. It was dubbed "Hooverizing" by government publicists, in spite of Hoover's continual orders that publicity should not mention him by name.

After the war, as a member of the Supreme Economic Council and head of the American Relief Administration, Hoover organized shipments of food for millions of starving people in Central Europe. He used a newly formed Quaker organization, the American Friends Service Committee, to carry out much of the logistical work in Europe.

Hoover provided aid to the defeated German nation after the war, as well as relief to famine-stricken Bolshevik-controlled areas of Russia in 1921, despite the opposition of Senator Henry Cabot Lodge and other Republicans. When asked if he was not thus helping Bolshevism, Hoover retorted, "Twenty million people are starving. Whatever their politics, they shall be fed!" At war's end, the New York Times named Hoover one of the "Ten Most Important Living Americans".

Hoover confronted a world of political possibilities when he returned home in 1919. Democratic Party leaders looked on him as a potential candidate for President. (President Wilson privately preferred Hoover as his successor.) "There could not be a finer one," asserted Franklin D. Roosevelt, then a rising star from New York. Hoover briefly considered becoming a Democrat, but he believed that 1920 would be a Republican year. Also, Hoover confessed that he could not run for a party whose only member in his boyhood home had been the town drunk.

Hoover realized that he was in a unique position to collect information about the Great War and its aftermath. In 1919, he established the Hoover War Collection at Stanford University. He donated all the files of the Commission for Relief in Belgium, the U.S. Food Administration, and the American Relief Administration, and pledged $50,000 as an endowment. Scholars were sent to Europe to collect pamphlets, society publications, government documents, newspapers, posters, proclamations, and other ephemeral materials related to the war and the revolutions that followed it. The collection was later renamed the Hoover War Library and is now known as the Hoover Institution.

[edit] Secretary of Commerce

In this 1926 photo, William P. McCracken, assistant secretary of commerce for civil aviation, is shown with Secretary Hoover (center) and assistant secretary of commerce Walter Drake.

Hoover rejected Democratic overtures in 1920. He had been a registered Republican before the war, though in 1912 he had supported Theodore Roosevelt's "Bull Moose" Progressive Party. Now he declared himself a Republican, and a candidate for the Presidency.

He placed his name on the ballot in the California state primary, where he came close to beating popular Senator Hiram Johnson. But having lost in his home state, Hoover was not considered a serious contender at the convention. Even when it deadlocked for several ballots between Illinois Governor Frank Lowden and General Leonard Wood, few delegates seriously considered Hoover as a compromise choice. Although he had personal misgivings about the capability of the nominee, Warren G. Harding, Hoover publicly endorsed him, and made two speeches for Harding.

After being elected, Harding rewarded Hoover for his support, offering to appoint him either Secretary of the Interior or Secretary of Commerce. Hoover ultimately chose Commerce. Commerce had existed for just eight years, since the division of the earlier Department of Commerce and Labor. Commerce was considered a minor Cabinet post, with limited and somewhat vaguely defined responsibilities.

Hoover aimed to change that, envisioning the Commerce Department as the hub of the nation's growth and stability. He demanded from Harding, and received, authority to help coordinate economic affairs throughout the government. He created many sub-departments and committees, overseeing and regulating everything from manufacturing statistics, the census, and radio to air travel. In some instances, he "seized" control of responsibilities from other Cabinet departments when he deemed that they were not carrying out their responsibilities well enough. Hoover became one of the most visible men in the country, often overshadowing Presidents Harding and Calvin Coolidge. Washington wags were soon referring to Hoover as "the Secretary of Commerce... and Under-Secretary of Everything Else!"

As secretary and later as President, Hoover revolutionized the relations between business and government. Rejecting the adversarial stance of Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson, he sought to make the Commerce Department a powerful service organization, empowered to forge cooperative voluntary partnerships between government and business. This philosophy is often called "associationalism".

Many of Hoover's efforts as Commerce Secretary centered on the elimination of waste and the increase of efficiency in business and industry. This included reducing labor losses from trade disputes and seasonal fluctuations, reducing industrial losses from accident and injury, and reducing the amount of crude oil spilled during extraction and shipping. One major achievement was to promote progressive ideals in the areas of the standardization of products and designs. He energetically promoted international trade by opening offices overseas that gave advice and practical help to businessmen. Hoover was especially eager to promote Hollywood films overseas.^[14]

His "Own Your Own Home" campaign was a collaboration to promote ownership of single-family dwellings, with groups such as the Better Houses in America movement, the Architects' Small House Service Bureau, and the Home Modernizing Bureau. He worked with bankers and the savings and loan industry to promote the new long-term home mortgage, which dramatically stimulated home construction.^[15]

Hoover listening to the radio.

It has been suggested that Herbert Hoover was the best Secretary of Commerce in United States history.^[16][17] Hoover was the last President to have held a full cabinet position.

[edit] Radio conferences

Hoover's radio conferences played a key role in the early organization, development and regulation of radio broadcasting. Hoover played a key role in major projects for navigation, irrigation of dry lands, electrical power, and flood control. As the new air transport industry developed, Hoover held a conference on aviation to promote codes and regulations. He became president of the American Child Health Organization, and he raised private funds to promote health education in schools and communities.

Although he continued to consider Harding ill-suited to be President, the two men nevertheless became friends. Hoover accompanied Harding on his final trip out West in 1923. It was Hoover who called for a specialist to tend to the ailing Chief Executive, and it was also Hoover who contacted the White House to inform them of the President's death. The Commerce Secretary headed the group of dignitaries accompanying Harding's body back to the capital.

By the end of Hoover's service as Secretary, he had raised the status of the Department of Commerce. This was reflected in its modern headquarters built during the Roosevelt Administration in the 1930s in the Federal Triangle in Washington D.C.

[edit] Traffic conferences

As Commerce Secretary, Hoover also hosted two national conferences on street traffic, in 1924 and 1926 (a third convened in 1930, during Hoover's presidency). Collectively the meetings were called the National Conference on Street and Highway Safety. Hoover's chief objective was to address the growing casualty toll of traffic accidents, but the scope grew and soon embraced motor vehicle standards, rules of the road, and urban traffic control. He left the invited interest groups to negotiate agreements among themselves, which were then presented for adoption by states and localities. Because automotive trade associations were the best organized, many of the positions taken by the conferences reflected their interests. The conferences issued a model Uniform Vehicle Code for adoption by the states, and a Model Municipal Traffic Ordinance for adoption by cities. Both were widely influential, promoting greater uniformity between jurisdictions and tending to promote the automobile's priority in city streets.^[18]

[edit] Mississippi flood

The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 broke the banks and levees of the lower Mississippi River in early 1927, resulting in flooding of millions of acres and leaving one and a half million people displaced from their homes. Although such a disaster did not fall under the duties of the Commerce Department, the governors of six states along the Mississippi specifically asked for Herbert Hoover in the emergency. President Calvin Coolidge sent Hoover to mobilize state and local authorities, militia, army engineers, the Coast Guard, and the American Red Cross.

With a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, Hoover set up health units to work in the flooded regions for a year. These workers stamped out malaria, pellagra, and typhoid fever from many areas. His work during the flood brought Herbert Hoover to the front page of newspapers almost everywhere, and he gained new accolades as a humanitarian. The great victory of his relief work, he stressed, was not that the government rushed in and provided all assistance; it was that much of the assistance available was provided by private citizens and organizations in response to his appeals. "I suppose I could have called in the Army to help," he said, "but why should I, when I only had to call upon Main Street."

The treatment of African Americans during the disaster endangered Hoover's reputation as a humanitarian. Local officials brutalized blacks and prevented them from leaving relief camps, aid meant for African-American sharecroppers was often given to the landowners instead, and many times black males were conscripted by locals into forced labor, sometimes at gun point.^[19] Knowing the potential ramifications on his presidential aspirations if such knowledge became public, Hoover struck a deal with Robert Moton, the prominent African-American successor to Booker T. Washington as president of the Tuskegee Institute. In exchange for keeping the suffering of African Americans out of the public eye, Hoover promised unprecedented influence for African Americans if he was elected president. Moton agreed, and consistent with the accommodationist philosophy of Washington, worked actively to suppress information about mistreatment of blacks from being revealed to the media. Following election, Hoover broke his promises. This led to an African-American backlash in the 1932 election that shifted allegiance from the Republican party to the Democrats.^[20]

[edit] Presidential election of 1928

[edit] Southern strategy

To gain Republican votes in Southern states, Hoover pioneered an electoral tactic later known as the "Southern Strategy". Hoover ousted many African American leaders in the Republican party, and replaced them with whites.^{[citation needed]} Hoover's appeal to white voters yielded substantial results, including Republican victories in Tennessee, North Carolina, Florida, Virginia, and Texas. It marked the first time a Republican candidate for president carried Texas. This outraged the black leadership, which largely broke from the Republican Party, and began seeking candidates who supported civil rights within the Democratic Party.^[21]

[edit] Republican primaries

When Calvin Coolidge declined to run for a second full term of office in 1927, Herbert Hoover became the leading Republican candidate for the 1928 election, despite the fact Coolidge was lukewarm on Hoover (Coolidge often derided his ambitious and popular Commerce Secretary as "Wonder Boy").^[22] His only real challenger was Frank Lowden. Hoover received much favorable press coverage in the months leading up to the convention. Lowden's campaign manager complained the newspapers were full of "nothing but advertisements for Herbert Hoover and Fletcher's Castoria." Hoover’s reputation, experience, and popularity coalesced to give him the nomination on the first ballot, with Senator Charles Curtis named as his running mate.

[edit] General election

Hoover campaigned for efficiency and prosperity against Democratic candidate Alfred E. Smith. Smith was the target of anti-Catholicism from some Protestant communities, much to Hoover's advantage. Both Hoover and Smith positioned themselves as pro-business, and each promised to improve conditions for farmers, reform immigration laws, and maintain America's isolationist foreign policy. Where they differed was on the Volstead Act. Smith was a "wet" who called for its repeal, whereas Hoover gave public support for Prohibition, calling it an "experiment noble in purpose."^[23] What few voters knew, however, was that Hoover was lukewarm in his support for Volstead in private, and for years after work at the Commerce Department would stop by the Belgian Embassy for a visit with friends. While there, as it was technically foreign soil, he was able to enjoy an alcoholic drink before heading for home. Hoover used to grumble that all Prohibition successfully did was to force him to dispose of his celebrated wine cellar.^{[citation needed]}

Prohibition provided a means for Hoover's supporters to attack the Democratic candidate Al Smith. This was because the major attacks on Smith relied upon his being a Catholic. Because the First Amendment guarantees freedom of religion these attacks were frowned upon politically. Being labeled as an "anti-Prohibitionist drunkard" was allowed politically. Hoover also relied on the support of the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and the Anti-Saloon League to bolster prohibition.^[24]

Historians agree Hoover's national reputation and the booming economy, combined with the deep splits in the Democratic Party over religion and Prohibition, guaranteed his landslide victory of 58% of the vote. Hoover managed to crack the so-called "Solid South," winning such traditionally Democratic states as Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Texas and Tennessee from Smith. As advertising executive Bruce Barton put it, "Americans knew they may have more fun with Smith, but that they would make more money with Hoover."

Unlike previous first ladies, when Hoover's wife, Lou Henry Hoover, came to the White House, she had already carved out a reputation of her own, having graduated from Stanford as the only woman in her class with a degree in geology. Although she had never practiced her profession formally, she remained very much a new woman of the post-World War I era: intelligent, robust, and possessed of a sense of female possibilities.

On poverty, Hoover promised: "We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land." Within months, the Stock Market Crash of 1929 occurred, and the nation's economy spiraled downward into what became known as the Great Depression.

[edit] Presidency 1929–1933

Issue of 1965 To date the US Post office has issued only two postage stamps honoring Hoover.

Hoover began his presidency on an optimistic note, saying during his inauguration speech:

Hoover then held a press conference on his first day in office, promising a "new phase of press relations".^[25] He told the group of journalists to elect a committee to recommend improvements to the White House press conference. Hoover declined to use a spokesman, instead asking reporters to directly quote him and giving them handouts with his statements ahead of time. In his first 120 days in office, he held more regular and frequent press conferences than any other President, before or since. He changed his press policies after the 1929 stock market crash, screening reporters and greatly reducing his availability.^[25]

Hoover invented his own sport to keep fit while in the White House, a combination of volleyball and tennis, which he played every morning.^[26]

[edit] Policies

Hoover entered office with a plan to reform the nation's regulatory system, believing that a federal bureaucracy should have limited regulation over a country's economic system.^[27] A self-described Progressive and Reformer, Hoover saw the presidency as a vehicle for improving the conditions of all Americans by regulation and by encouraging volunteerism. Long before entering politics, he had denounced laissez-faire thinking.^[28] As Commerce Secretary, he had taken an active pro-regulation stance. As President, he helped push tariff and farm subsidy bills through Congress.

Hoover expanded civil service coverage of Federal positions, canceled private oil leases on government lands, and by instructing the Justice Department and the Internal Revenue Service to pursue gangsters for tax evasion, he enabled the prosecution of Al Capone. He appointed a commission that set aside 3 million acres (12,000 km²) of national parks and 2.3 million acres (9,000 km²) of national forests; advocated tax reduction for low-income Americans (not enacted); closed certain tax loopholes for the wealthy; doubled the number of veterans' hospital facilities; negotiated a treaty on St. Lawrence Seaway (which failed in the U.S. Senate); wrote a Children's Charter that advocated protection of every child regardless of race or gender; created an antitrust division in the Justice Department; required air mail carriers to adopt stricter safety measures and improve service; proposed federal loans for urban slum clearances (not enacted); organized the Federal Bureau of Prisons; reorganized the Bureau of Indian Affairs; instituted prison reform; proposed a federal Department of Education (not enacted); advocated $50-per-month pensions for Americans over 65 (not enacted); chaired White House conferences on child health, protection, homebuilding and homeownership; began construction of the Boulder Dam (later renamed Hoover Dam); and signed the Norris-La Guardia Act that limited judicial intervention in labor disputes.

On November 19, 1928, Hoover embarked on a seven-week goodwill tour of several Latin American nations to outline his economic and trade policies to other nations in the Western Hemisphere.

[edit] Foreign relations

While in Argentina, Argentine anarchists led by Severino Di Giovanni plotted to destroy the railroad car in which Hoover was traveling, but the bomber was arrested before he could place the explosives on the rails.^[29] Hoover never mentioned the incident, and his complimentary remarks on Argentina were well-received in both the host country and in the press.^[30]

Following the release in 1930 of the Clark Memorandum, Hoover began formulating what later became Roosevelt's Good Neighbor policy. He began withdrawing American troops from Nicaragua and Haiti; he also proposed an arms embargo on Latin America and a one-third reduction of the world's naval power, which was called the Hoover Plan. The Roosevelt Corollary ceased being part of U.S. foreign policy. In response to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, he and Secretary of State Henry Stimson outlined the Hoover-Stimson Doctrine that said the United States would not recognize territories gained by force.^{[citation needed]}

During his presidency, Hoover mediated between Chile and Peru to solve a conflict on the sovereignty of Arica and Tacna, that in 1883 by the Treaty of Ancón had been awarded to Chile for ten years, to be followed by a plebiscite that had never happened. By the Tacna-Arica compromise at the Treaty of Lima in 1929, Chile kept Arica, and Peru regained Tacna.

[edit] Civil rights

Hoover seldom mentioned civil rights while he was President. Hoover believed that African-Americans and other races could improve themselves with education and wanted the races assimilated into white culture.^[31] Hoover attempted to appoint John J. Parker to the Supreme Court in 1930 to replace Edward Sanford. The NAACP claimed that Parker made many court decisions against African-Americans and fought the nomination. The NAACP was successful in gaining Senator Borah's support and the nomination was defeated in the Senate.^[32]

First Lady Lou Hoover defied custom and invited an African-American Republican, Books By This Author

• American Individualism