Herbert Hoover

Herbert Hoover I INTRODUCTION Herbert Hoover (1874-1964), 31st president of the United States (1929-1933). Hoover was a highly successful mining engineer and a relief administrator in warravaged countries. His election in 1928 as president won the overwhelming approval of the American people, yet within two years Hoover was condemned by most as a reactionary unable or unwilling to soften the effects of the Great Depression. In fact Hoover was the first president to use the federal government to fight the effects of a depression, even though he was not successful, which helped prepare the country for the government intervention of the New Deal policies of President Franklin Roosevelt when he succeeded Hoover in 1933. II EARLY LIFE Herbert Clark Hoover was born in West Branch, Iowa, on August 10, 1874. He was the son of Jesse Clark and Huldah Minthorn Hoover, both of whom were Quakers. His father worked as a blacksmith and storekeeper, and died when the boy was six. His mother died two years later. Relatives cared for Herbert, his brother Theodore, and his sister, May. When Herbert was ten, his uncle took him to live in Newberg, a Quaker settlement in Oregon's Willamette Valley, where he worked on a farm and attended school. Later he worked as office boy in a land settlement business in nearby Salem, and studied mathematics in a business school. A chance meeting with an engineer in Salem resulted in his determination to study engineering. A professor of mathematics, Joseph Swain, helped Hoover gain admittance to the new Leland Stanford Junior University in Palo Alto, California. In 1891, Hoover was admitted as a freshman to Stanford's first class. He supported himself by typing, operating a laundry agency, and working as a secretary for a geology professor. In 1895, Hoover received his bachelor's degree in mining engineering. III EARLY CAREER In 1896 and 1897, Hoover worked for a leading engineer in San Francisco, California. On his recommendation the 23-year-old Hoover got a job with a London mining firm, Bewick, Moreing and Company, to introduce California methods to the company's gold mines in western Australia. In Australia, Hoover recommended that the firm purchase an outstandingly productive gold mine, and his salary rose quickly. He turned from technical work to administration, bargaining with labor and negotiating with the Australian government. The mining company then transferred Hoover to China. During his senior year at Stanford, Hoover had met Iowa-born Lou Henry, a young woman who was also studying geology at Stanford. On his way to China in 1899 he stopped in California and they married. The couple had two sons, Herbert, Jr., and Allan Henry. A Foreign Assignments Hoover became chief engineer in the Chinese government's imperial bureau of mines. In China a group known in the West as the Boxers opposed European and Japanese influence in that country. In 1900 these Chinese nationalists launched the Boxer Uprising, an attack upon foreigners living in Beijing, and the Hoovers were nearby in Tianjin (Tientsin) when the rebellion broke out. The foreign residents took refuge in their district of the city, and Hoover and fellow engineers built a protective wall against the attackers. He and his wife risked their lives to transport food and medical supplies to the wounded and besieged. Later in 1900 the Hoovers went to England. There he was given a one-fifth interest in Bewick, Moreing and Company, which then possessed gold, silver, tin, copper, coal, and lead mines in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, and Nevada. They also owned a turquoise mine in Egypt. Hoover became a world-renowned consulting engineer, accepting commissions to revive unproductive mines. By 1914 he was managing director or chief consulting engineer in a score of mining companies, and he was becoming a wealthy man. B Author Hoover also wrote numerous articles for engineering journals. In 1909 these articles were published in book form under the title Principles of Mining, which became a standard engineering school text on ore extraction. In collaboration with Mrs. Hoover he translated Georgius Agricola's De Re Metallica into English. Originally published in Latin in 1556, this treatise dealt with mining and metallurgical processes. Hoover checked and deciphered the symbols, and his wife translated the text. C Humanitarian "I am interested in some kind of public service," Hoover often declared, and his public-spirited wife agreed with his desire to aid his fellow citizens. Hoover's opportunity came with the outbreak of World War I in 1914, when he was in London looking after his business affairs. The U.S. ambassador asked Hoover to organize the return of Americans stranded in Europe. So efficiently did he perform this work that he was assigned the gigantic task of getting food, shelter, and clothing to thousands of homeless and hungry European civilians. Hoover resigned from all his executive positions, and for the next five years paid his own expenses and accepted no salary or fee. C1 Belgian Relief Commissioner As chairman of the commission for relief in northern France and Belgium, which were overrun by German armies, Hoover supervised the distribution of millions of tons of food and clothing to French and Belgian refugees. He operated behind the lines of hostile armies and moved through naval blockades. As he put it, "I moved constantly in and out behind the trenches on both sides ... My duties required that I meet constantly with high military and civil officials in England, Germany, France, and the neutral countries." D U.S. Food Administrator After the United States entered the war in 1917, President Woodrow Wilson summoned Hoover from Europe to be U.S. food administrator. Military victory depended largely on the American capacity to feed the Allied armies. Although he was given wide powers, Hoover depended more on propaganda and voluntary cooperation than on coercion. Americans became used to words like "to hooverize," which meant conserving important foods like meat and wheat. His organization and administration of the Grain Corporation, the Food Purchase Board, and the Sugar Equalization Board conserved and encouraged production of agricultural products. E Postwar Work Even after the armistice, the Allies continued their blockade around Germany. Hoover, in Europe again, worked to have it relaxed. He was appointed chairman of the American Relief Administration to assist in the economic restoration of Europe, receiving from the U.S. Congress $100 million to fight famine and plague. In this official role, and afterward as a private citizen, Hoover oversaw the distribution of 46 million tons of food to people in 30 countries. He controlled shipping, directed railways and coal mines, and reopened ports and canals closed by war. When the American Relief Administration was terminated, Hoover organized the European Children's Fund to care for millions of orphaned children in central and eastern Europe. F Secretary of Commerce When Ohio Senator Warren G. Harding became president in 1921, he appointed Hoover secretary of commerce, a small office that Hoover strengthened until he resigned in 1928. During his seven years as head of the Department of Commerce, Hoover extended its control over mines and patents. He promoted the growth of trade associations and chambers of commerce to make industry more efficient. Hoover did not believe in either the traditional laissez-faire policy, in which the state had no involvement in the economy, or in government intervention in the economy. Instead he preached a doctrine of voluntary cooperation in which private citizens would organize to achieve a goal. The government would support but not control these organizations. He did, however, expand government regulation in two areas involving new technology, radio broadcasting and commercial aviation. He made federally collected statistics more available and encouraged manufacturers to standardize parts and supplies. Hoover saw the Department of Commerce as an important support for the expansion of American business overseas, and in the area of foreign commerce the department expanded its operations tremendously--at the expense, some felt, of the State Department's traditional role. Hoover did not lose his reputation as a humanitarian. During the Russian famine of 1922 and 1923 he organized the distribution of millions of dollars' worth of American food, and he directed relief after the Mississippi River flood of 1927. G Election of 1928 President Calvin Coolidge's withdrawal from the 1928 presidential race left the Republican Party nomination wide open. Hoover had been making plans to seek the presidency, and his personal organization began an active hunt for delegates. When the national convention assembled in Kansas City, Missouri, in June 1928, the delegates and their bosses recognized the attractiveness of Hoover's name to voters and nominated him for president on the first ballot. Hoover received 837 votes to only 74 for his nearest rival, former Illinois Governor Frank O. Lowden. The convention adopted a conservative platform and chose United States Senator Charles Curtis of Kansas as the Republican candidate for vice president. Hoover had previously declared himself in favor of vigorous enforcement of the 18th Amendment (which banned alcoholic drinks) "a great social and economic experiment, noble in motive and far-reaching in purpose." (see Prohibition). Opposing Hoover was the Democratic nominee, Governor Alfred E. Smith of New York. Smith was a product of New York City's Tammany Hall, a political organization whose name had become synonymous with corruption. He was also Roman Catholic, considered a handicap in the preponderantly Protestant nation. Smith also opposed the 18th Amendment, which made him unacceptable to numerous rural regions in the South and West. In contrast, Hoover's name was known everywhere, and he rode on the crest of Republican prosperity, for which Hoover, as secretary of commerce, was the symbol. In November, Hoover won in a landslide, with 444 electoral votes to Smith's 87, and 21,437,277 popular votes to Smith's 15,007,698. Hoover carried every Northern state except Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He also broke the traditional hold of the Democratic Party on the South by winning five Southern states: Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Tennessee, and Texas. IV PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES A Farm Legislation Hoover was inaugurated on March 4, 1929, and during the first six months of his administration, the economic prosperity that had characterized the country during the 1920s continued. One industry, however, did not enjoy the fruits of this economic success: agriculture. An increase in efficiency and in the amount of land being farmed around the world had driven prices down. Farmers desperately tried to produce more crops to maintain their standard of living, but further increases in efficiency only made prices lower. In response to the plight of farmers, Hoover called Congress into special session in April 1929 to enact farm relief legislation and to revise the tariff. His farm program, embodied in the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1929, established the first large-scale government system to aid the farmer in peacetime, but it avoided production control. The act set up the Federal Farm Board of eight members to make loans to marketing cooperatives. The board could also establish corporations to buy farm surpluses and thus to raise prices. Within six months, however, the Great Depression sent farm prices to new lows. Until the summer of 1931, wheat and cotton prices were kept slightly higher than world levels. By 1932, government funds had been spent, and the Farm Board warehouses were full. Farm prices plunged to a new low. B Hawley-Smoot Tariff Congress also passed the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act, which raised agricultural duties and tariffs, or import taxes, on manufactured goods. Economists generally protested against the Hawley-Smoot tariff, warning that it would invite retaliation by European powers, but Hoover signed the tariff into law in June 1930. C Stock Market Crash Following a short recession after World War I (1914-1918), the United States had enjoyed an economic boom in which both production and consumption increased. During this period many citizens had invested savings and earnings in speculative ventures, particularly the buying of stocks "on margin." In these cases, the buyer put up as little as 3 percent of a stock's price in cash and borrowed the remainder from the broker. The growing demand for stocks and the prosperous state of the nation as a whole caused stock prices to rise, which in turn encouraged more stock purchases. Stock prices reached their height in the so-called "Hoover bull market" during the first six months of the Hoover administration. Individuals invested billions of dollars in the stock market, obtaining money by borrowing from banks, mortgaging their homes, and selling solid government securities, such as Liberty Bonds. Buying stock on margin was a risky bet that the price of that stock would continue to increase. In August 1929 approximately 300 million shares of stock had been purchased on margin. During normal business periods a share of stock would be purchased mostly for the dividend it paid, but during the bull market, people bought stocks in order to sell at a higher price. Unfortunately, industry sales had begun to slow down, an indication that stock prices might drop because companies would pay smaller dividends. In September 1929 some investors began selling stocks, and stock prices began to fall. The decline in prices especially threatened those who had purchased on margin, because they owed their broker the amount of the original price of the stock--even if that stock was now worth only half as much. By October the feverish buying had given way to desperate selling. Prices dropped rapidly, and thousands of people lost all they had invested. Many were completely ruined financially. On October 29 the New York Stock Exchange, the largest in the world, had its worst day of panic selling. By the end of the day stock values had declined by $10 billion to $15 billion. D Great Depression Hoover had been in office less than eight months when the Wall Street crash occurred. At first the president treated this financial catastrophe and the decline in business and employment that followed as a speculative panic, and said that the economy was sound and would soon be normal again. In March 1930 he assured the nation that the crisis would be over in 60 days. He repeated similar opinions to restore public confidence in the face of business failures and mounting unemployment. Public confidence was not restored. Although earlier declines in the stock market had not caused depressions (periods with low sales and production, many business failures and high unemployment), this stock market crash highlighted important weaknesses in the economic structure of the country. In the agricultural sector prices for farm goods dropped, and farmers were less able to purchase manufactured goods. Although industrial productivity had increased, industrial wages had not kept pace with the rise in efficiency. Here, too, more products were produced, but not many more could be purchased. Finally, the benefits of the economic growth of the 1920s were distributed unequally. Farmers were losing ground and industrial workers were improving their standard of living only slowly, while the top 5 percent of the population received 30 percent of the income of the entire country. These wealthy families could not purchase all of the goods that were being produced by the increasingly efficient industries or all the food grown by the increasingly efficient farms. Democrats found in the Great Depression the issue they had been lacking two years earlier. They campaigned vigorously in the fall elections of 1930, won a small majority in the House of Representatives, and elected several governors. From this point on, Congress began to harass the president. By the time Congress met in December 1931, Hoover had abandoned his reliance of private measures and began proposing direct action by the government to defeat the depression. The Reconstruction Finance Corporation was created in 1932 to provide emergency financing for troubled banks, insurance companies, and other associations, and by the end of 1932, it had loaned out $1.5 billion. The Glass-Steagall Act extended more credit and released some of the government's gold reserves to aid industry. The Federal Home Loan Bank Act created discount banks to help refinance private homes and prevent foreclosures. Hoover also encouraged the reform of bankruptcy laws to aid the speedy reorganization of businesses and the settlement of overwhelming debts. He supported a loan of $300 million to states for direct relief, further expansion of public works, and drastic cutbacks in the federal government. However, Hoover refused the demand of Democrats in Congress, who pleaded for government to distribute money to the unemployed. E Bonus Army Hoover's worst mistake may have been the way he dealt with the so-called Bonus Army. In 1924 World War I veterans had been given certificates that the government promised to redeem with money in 1945. When the Great Depression hit, however, many veterans demanded immediate payment, and in June 1932 about 17,000 veterans marched on Washington to press their case. The Senate refused to pay off the certificates, and most servicemen went home. About 2,000, however, refused to leave the capital, and Hoover sent federal troops under General Douglas MacArthur, who evicted those remaining by using tear gas and bayonets. F Foreign Affairs As a Quaker humanitarian and a man who had seen the ravages of war, the president strove for peace in his pursuit of foreign affairs. His Secretary of State, Henry L. Stimson, cooperated with the disarmament efforts of the League of Nations, but Hoover did not favor U.S. membership in the league. At the London Naval Conference of 1930, the United States, Britain, and Japan agreed to limit the number and size of warships they would build. Under Hoover the nation also attended a world disarmament conference at Geneva, Switzerland, in 1932, but the meeting was less successful than the London conference. When a financial crisis developed in Austria and spread to Germany in 1931, Hoover proposed a one-year moratorium on the payment of debts to foreign governments and on war reparations, which Germany had been forced to pay to the victors of World War I as compensation for the damage caused by the war. President Hoover initiated toward Latin America what was to be called the good-neighbor policy under his successor. Hoover wanted to persuade Latin American countries that the United States took their interests into consideration as well as its own. To do that he paved the way for the removal of U.S. Marines from Haiti, and he withdrew them from Nicaragua. As the depression toppled numerous regimes throughout Latin America, Hoover recognized the new regimes without questioning the means by which they came into power. Hoover did not agree with Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson over the best response to Japan's invasion of Manchuria. The president did not believe that the United States should go beyond expressions of disapproval, but the secretary of state wanted to initiate strong sanctions against Japan, whatever the consequences. The League of Nations finally agreed with Stimson, but in response Japan withdrew from the league. G Election of 1932 When Hoover ran for reelection against Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt of New York in 1932, the outcome was a foregone conclusion. For two years the Democrats had conducted a vigorous campaign, blaming the president and his Republican supporters for the depression. The Republicans were branded as the "party of hard times" and burdened by an ambiguous stand on the 18th Amendment, which the Democrats favored repealing. In November, Roosevelt captured 472 electoral votes to Hoover's 59. The popular vote was: Roosevelt, 22,829,501; Hoover, 15,760,684. As president the world-renowned and financially successful Hoover could neither adapt to the give-and-take necessary to political life, nor could he completely embrace the transition to a government-regulated economy, a move he had reluctantly initiated. Never having campaigned for elective office before 1928, he never learned to reach the people at large, but it was the depression that doomed his administration. V LAST YEARS Retired from the presidency, Hoover settled in his Palo Alto, California, home. He built up the Hoover Library on War, Revolution, and Peace to 200,000 volumes and donated it to Stanford University. Hoover did not forget politics, however. He attacked President Roosevelt's New Deal in his book The Challenge to Liberty (1934). Early in 1938 the former president visited Europe. He talked with German dictator Adolf Hitler and became convinced that Germany had designs on territory to the east. The following year, Hoover organized a relief fund to help Finland defend itself against the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). He figured prominently in the 1940 Republican National Convention, but he remained cool to the presidential candidacy of Republican Wendell Willkie. During 1940 and 1941, Hoover publicly criticized President Roosevelt's policy toward World War II. In 1942, after America entered the conflict, he published two books on foreign policy, America's First Crusade and, with Hugh Gibson, The Problem of Lasting Peace. After the war, Hoover made several trips abroad, at the request of President Harry S. Truman, to assess the need for food and to recommend ways of averting a postwar famine. In 1947, Truman again made use of the former president by appointing Hoover chairman of the Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government, commonly called the Hoover Commission. Its purpose was to recommend ways of simplifying and economizing the administrative structure of the government. Two years later the Hoover Commission issued several reports, and Congress enacted some of its recommendations into law. Several years later, Hoover published his Memoirs (1951-1952) in three volumes. In 1953 President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed a second Hoover commission, with the former president as chairman. When the commission completed its work in 1955, Hoover, at 81, retired from public service. Hoover maintained his lifelong interest in young people. In 1962, excerpts from his correspondence with boys and girls appeared in his book On Growing Up. Hoover died in New York City on October 20, 1964. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.