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HOOVER, HERBERT

Herbert Clark Hoover (August 10, 1874–October 20, 1964) was an engineer, financier, humanitarian, public servant, president of the United States, and elder statesman. Born in West Branch, Iowa, he was the second of three children of Jesse Clark Hoover, a blacksmith, inventor, and seller of farm implements, and his wife, Huldah Minthorn, a minister of the Society of Friends. Both parents died before "Bertie" was ten. He spent his adolescence in Oregon in the household of his maternal uncle and attended the Quaker academy his uncle superintended before going to work as an office boy in his uncle's land development office.

At age seventeen, Hoover became the youngest member of the "pioneer class" of Leland Stanford Junior University in Palo Alto, California. He studied geology, engaged in campus politics as an antifraternity "barbarian," was elected treasurer, introduced fiscal responsibility in the football program, and met his future wife, Lou Henry, a fellow Iowan. He graduated in May 1895, not yet twenty-one years old. Always a loyal alumnus and generous contributor, in 1912 Hoover began half a century of service on Stanford's board of trustees. His benefactions included the Stanford Union, the Food Research Institute, and the Graduate School of Business. In 1919, he founded at Stanford the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, a vast archive of records relating to political events of the early and mid-twentieth century.

Hoover worked briefly as a common miner before joining a prestigious San Francisco engineering firm. In 1897, Bewick, Moreing and Company of London hired him as an "inspecting engineer" to find and develop new properties in Australia, the most spectacular of which was the Sons of Gwalia mine. Success led to an assignment to China as technical consultant to the director-general of mines in Chihli province, at a substantial increase in salary. En route, Hoover stopped in Monterey, California, to marry Lou Henry. In Tientsin, they came under fire during the Boxer Rebellion. Again, success earned promotion, a partnership in Bewick, Moreing, which lasted until he established his own firm in 1908. As an engineer and financier, Hoover became known as the "doctor of sick mines," traveling around the world five times with his wife and two sons. In addition, Hoover and his wife collaborated in the translation of a sixteenth-century Latin mining text, De Re Metallica, by Georg Bauer (known as Agricola). Hoover also published extensively in mining journals and lectured at the Columbia School of Mines. By 1914, he had made a considerable fortune and was looking for a way to enter public life, perhaps as the publisher of an American newspaper.

FOOD RELIEF DURING WORLD WAR I

When war broke out in Europe in August 1914, both Hoovers aided the repatriation of stranded Americans. Herbert Hoover next established the Commission for Relief in Belgium, which provided millions of tons of food to starving people in Belgium and France from 1914 until the American declaration of war in 1917. Hoover then returned to the United States as food administrator in the Wilson administration. Orchestrating a massive but decentralized campaign for voluntary cooperation in food conservation to support the war effort, Hoover became a master of public relations as well as a valued member of Wilson's war cabinet. At the end of the war, he resumed international food relief with the American Relief Administration, which combined humanitarian aid with major contributions to the economic reconstruction of Europe.

SECRETARY OF COMMERCE

Although briefly considered by both parties as a presidential nominee in 1920, Hoover became secretary of commerce in the cabinet of Warren G. Harding, remaining in that post through most of the administration of Calvin Coolidge as well.

Hoover energetically reorganized and expanded the Department of Commerce from a minor agency into a complex organization with farsweeping domestic and international influence. Major divisions dealt with industry, trade, and transportation. A new bureau collected and distributed statistics, consistent with Hoover's belief that business efficiency depended on accurate and shared information. The Bureau of Standards encouraged systematization of industrial technology. Appropriations for the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce increased by nearly half, its branch offices at home and abroad doubled, and personnel grew five-fold. The workforce was racially desegregated. New divisions supervised aviation, radio, and housing.

With an engineer's concern for efficiency and a progressive's dedication to community responsibility, Hoover advocated a form of capitalism based on associationalism and cooperation. Believing that waste, selfishness, and destructive competition led to inefficiency and unemployment, he sought to make government a servant of self-regulating economic units. He favored diversification of stock ownership, attacked the twelve-hour workday in the steel industry, and encouraged trade associations and individual firms to standardize products and processes to eliminate waste. The Department of Commerce undertook massive educational campaigns to convince business leaders and the public to embrace fact-based planning, voluntary cooperation, and community responsibility. More than two hundred conferences addressed topics ranging from unemployment to highway safety, housing, conservation, and child health. Experts highlighted conditions, disseminated information, and rallied public support for already-developed solutions.

In 1927 when the Mississippi River flooded a 20,000 square mile area, leaving 600,000 people homeless, Hoover took personal charge, mobilizing local and state resources, the Red Cross, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Coast Guard, and countless volunteers to evacuate, shelter, and feed flood victims; to provide sanitation and combat epidemics; and to finance low-cost rehabilitation loans. In another example of federal, local, and private partnership, he negotiated an interstate agreement for access to the waters of the Colorado River and federal construction of a dam in Boulder Canyon that would provide hydroelectric power to municipal and private distributors. He advocated a network of waterways that eventually became the Saint Lawrence Seaway.

Hoover articulated his philosophy of "American Individualism" in a small book published in 1922. A unique combination of individual enterprise and community obligation, it called for education, competition, individual liberties, and "voluntary organizational cooperation for the common good."

PRESIDENCY

When Calvin Coolidge did not "choose to run" for another term as president in 1928, Hoover rode "Republican prosperity" to an easy victory over Alfred E. Smith, who also suffered the political liabilities of being a Roman Catholic and an opponent of prohibition. The president-elect then made a "good neighbor" tour of eleven Latin American countries.

Hoover hoped for a presidency in which American individualism, associationalism, expertise, and technology would bring greater rationality, efficiency, humanity, and more widespread prosperity to the American people. As he had during his years as secretary of commerce, he recruited experts and commissioned extensive research, expecting that their data and analysis would form the basis for enlightened public policy. The White House Conference on Child Health and Protection produced a nineteen-point Children's Charter as well as a 35-volume report that influenced social workers for many years and inspired much local legislation. Ironically, a major set of findings, published in 1933 as Recent Social Trends documented the extraordinary modernization of the United States at precisely the time when public belief in the "American dream" was at its lowest.

Events forced Hoover's administration to focus primarily on the domestic economy rather than foreign affairs. He welcomed the London Treaty of 1930, which reduced all categories of naval armaments, but he failed to obtain abolition of offensive weapons, such as bombers and chemical warfare, by participants at the World Disarmament Conference in Geneva in 1932. In Latin America, he renounced dollar diplomacy, repudiated the Roosevelt Corollary, removed the Marines from their twenty-year occupation of Nicaragua, and prepared for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Haiti. When Japan invaded China, Hoover's belief in voluntary international cooperation, collective persuasion, and moral force led him to insist on a doctrine of nonrecognition of territorial acquisitions obtained by force in violation of treaty rights.

As one of the few who had recognized economic imbalances and warned about a runaway stock market in the 1920s, Hoover anticipated that he would have to oversee remedies and corrections. To combat the long-standing agricultural depression, the Federal Farm Board encouraged creation of farmers' organizations to withhold surpluses until prices became more favorable. The stock market crash of 1929 revealed serious structural weaknesses in the domestic and international economies. Depressed farm incomes, values, and purchasing power led to failures of country banks that gradually expanded to undermine larger financial institutions. Sales declined; manufacturers stockpiled inventories of durable goods. Overproduction in industries like automobiles had an impact on collateral production, such as steel. Building stagnated. European financial dependence on the United States required an increase in exports or a decrease in debt, but the Hawley-Smoot tariff proved an insurmountable obstacle.

Hoover struggled to persuade industrial, labor, agricultural, utility, and financial leaders to maintain wages, hence purchasing power, and plan for renewed business progress. Believing that the nation suffered from a crisis in confidence, he worked tirelessly to restore faith in the spiritual and economic strength of the country. He appealed to the traditions of voluntary cooperation, private charity, and community responsibility to combat human suffering and launched an anti-hoarding campaign to encourage Americans to spend their way out of the Depression. His efforts failed. Employers furloughed first a few and then more workers. Bankers refused to risk loans without full collateral. Relief needs outstripped the resources of private and local relief agencies. And frightened Americans hid cash they might soon need if conditions worsened. Hoover's own optimistic statements rang hollow in the face of mounting unemployment. A devastating drought in the summer of 1930 accelerated farm problems and rural bank closings. Hoover resisted demands for direct federal relief because he feared undermining the character of independent, self-reliant Americans. He hoped that construction of public works that would eventually pay for themselves would provide employment until the economy revived. He left direct relief to local and state governments, but their resources proved insufficient to stem the tide of economic decline and human suffering.

Hoover traced the origins of America's Depression to Europe. American loans, German reparations, and Allied war debts formed a vicious cycle. Federal Reserve manipulation of credit to aid European countries had created too-easy money in the United States during the 1920s. And, beginning in 1931, a series of European financial debacles marched inexorably toward the United States. French withdrawals from Central European banks brought them to the verge of collapse. Hoover countered with a one-year moratorium on inter-governmental debts and reparations to provide a respite for retrenchment. That September, however, Britain was forced to abandon the gold standard, and the gold drain shifted to New York. The Glass-Steagall Act of 1932 shored up American currency, but bank failures escalated.

At this point, Hoover substantially modified his resistance to federal government intervention. To stem the tide of bank failures, he first encouraged private bankers to form the National Credit Corporation to make loans to industrial concerns and banks. When their efforts proved perfunctory and problems increased, he proposed the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC), primarily funded by the Treasury, for the same purposes. RFC loans significantly reduced the number of bank failures in 1932. He would soon support RFC financing of public works and loans to states for direct relief.

But Hoover labored under serious political handicaps. He had never run for public office before winning the presidency. His previous experiences with public persuasion had been fueled by wartime patriotism or 1920s optimism. During his presidency, however, even when the Republicans controlled both houses of Congress in the first two years, he proved too progressive for the conservatives and too conservative for the progressives. The 1930 interim election brought about a Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, where presidential hopeful John Nance Garner presided as speaker. Garner obstructed the Hoover administration whenever possible, most particularly by delaying passage of the Relief and Reconstruction Act until July 1932. Although Hoover's analysts claimed that the Depression was coming to an end that summer, it would take six months for the impact to "trickle down" to the ordinary citizen. The presidential election was four months away.

By summer 1932, in an effort to boost prices, farmers were using roadblocks to prevent delivery of milk and livestock to markets. Cities such as Detroit saw hunger marches and demonstrations demanding half-wages for those laid off. The destitute lived in tarpaper shacks in "Hoovervilles" and existed on handouts or scraps from garbage cans. Veterans journeyed to Washington to demand early payment of a war service bonus but were routed by the army commanded by General Douglas MacArthur. Hoover received the blame. Meanwhile, Democratic Party publicist Charles Michaelson orchestrated a highly effective smear campaign against Hoover. The 1932 election was less a victory for Franklin D. Roosevelt than a resounding defeat for Hoover.

The lame-duck administration remained in office for nearly four months, an interregnum that was nearly as calamitous as that in 1860 to 1861. Hoover tried to tie his successor to his repudiated policies. Roosevelt avoided that contamination, while appearing ignorant of economics and the international situation. European countries defaulted on their World War I debts in December. Publication of RFC loans, at the initiative of Speaker and Vice President-elect Garner, precipitated new and disastrous runs on the banks in January. Revelations before the Senate Banking and Currency Committee in February uncovered gross improprieties by major banks and bankers during the 1920s that further undermined public morale. Roosevelt first ignored and then rejected Hoover's proposal of a joint statement to bolster public confidence. On March 3, 1933, the eve of the inauguration, even the biggest New York and Chicago banks were in peril. Despite pleas from the Federal Reserve Board and others, Hoover refused to act without an endorsement from Roosevelt, which the president-elect refused to give. The governors of New York and Illinois declared bank holidays, bringing to thirty-four the number of states that had closed their banks rather than face ruin. Roosevelt subsequently declared a national bank holiday and holdovers from Hoover's administration crafted the plans for reopening the banks.

POST-PRESIDENTIAL YEARS

After he left office on March 4, 1933, Hoover remained publicly silent for eighteen months, primarily out of concern that his criticism of the new administration's policies might be blamed for impeding economic recovery. During this time, however, he arranged for publication of collections of public papers to demonstrate the effectiveness of the policies of his presidency. In the fall of 1934, he broke his silence with the publication of The Challenge to Liberty. Originally conceived as an updated reissue of American Individualism, The Challenge reaffirmed Hoover's belief in American liberalism and expressed his alarm at the social and economic changes he perceived in "National Regimentation" in fascist regimes abroad and, by implication, in the New Deal at home. Liberty, liberalism, and the sanctity of the United States Constitution became recurring themes as Hoover spoke out during the 1930s. He became a major critic of the New Deal, arguing that it failed to bring the United States out of the Great Depression while undermining both the capitalist economic system and the independent initiative of American citizens.

Simultaneously, Hoover pursued his own re-entry into the political arena, unsuccessfully seeking the 1936 and 1940 Republican presidential nominations. Hoping to persuade Republicans to vindicate his anti-Depression activities as president and to affirm his political philosophy, he tried to persuade the party to initiate a new "interim convention" in 1938 to craft a platform for the next national contest that would shape the choice of a candidate in 1940. The party resisted transformation according to the Hoover model. Meanwhile, the Democrats established a pattern of running against Hoover in every presidential election from 1932 onwards, while Republican candidates did their best to avoid association with him.

Facing continued rejection at home, Hoover returned to Europe in 1938, his first visit since Versailles. Lauded by governments and those he had fed, he also received a first-hand education in European politics. He returned home convinced that another great war was coming and that the United States should stand aside from the conflagration. He devoted himself to that position from the out-break of war in Europe in 1939 until the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Hoover loyally supported the declaration of war and hoped that he might be of service. Ignored again, he and his longtime associate, former ambassador Hugh Gibson, were among the many prominent persons who published plans for a framework of postwar peace.

The new war produced new human suffering, and Hoover tried to recreate his feeding activities of the 1914 to 1917 period, but he failed in the face of resistance by Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. Hoover would have to wait for Roosevelt's successor to recall him to national service. In 1946, President Harry Truman dispatched the "Great Humanitarian" on a worldwide mission to assess the needs of the hungry and the capabilities of food-producing nations to contribute to postwar relief. The following year, he went abroad again to address hunger in Germany and Austria. His reports also contributed to the mitigation of harsh postwar treatment of defeated Germany.

Truman, and his successor, Dwight Eisenhower, also drafted Hoover to address the enormous growth of federal bureaucracy resulting from the New Deal and the war. In both cases, the Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government, known as the Hoover Commission, concluded in 1949 and in 1955 with recommendations for increasing efficiency, streamlining federal bureaucracy, and rolling back New Deal encroachments. Some of its proposals, such as the creation of a Department of Defense, were enacted.

After his presidency, Hoover devoted himself to the preservation and propagation of the historical record of his public life. Virtually every speech and public statement between 1933 and 1960 was reprinted in eight volumes called Addresses upon the American Road. He published three volumes of memoirs and edited several collections of documents, ranging from The Ordeal of Woodrow Wilson about Versailles to An American Epic, a four-volume annotated collection of papers from his long career in international relief. At the end of his life, he had completed a volume tentatively entitled Freedom Betrayed, as yet unpublished, dealing with the foreign policy of the Roosevelt administration.

Hoover also devoted himself to gentler subjects. As chairman of the Boys' Clubs of America, he took particular pleasure in establishing clubs for a million of those he described as "pavement boys." He published a collection of his correspondence with children under the title On Growing Up. He wrote a slim volume of his observations on angling, called Fishing for Fun and to Wash Your Soul. He was the force behind the creation of the humanitarian organization CARE and the United Nations agency UNICEF.

Herbert Hoover—orphan boy from West Branch, self-made millionaire, public servant more than politician—personified the American dream. If his presidency was blighted by the crisis of that dream in the Great Depression, he lived long enough to be acknowledged as both an elder statesman and a world humanitarian.

See Also: ELECTION OF 1928; ELECTION OF 1932; HOOVER, LOU HENRY; PRESIDENT'S EMERGENCY COMMITTEE FOR EMPLOYMENT (PECE); PRESIDENT'S ORGANIZATION FOR UNEMPLOYMENT RELIEF (POUR); REPUBLICAN PARTY.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Best, Gary Dean. Herbert Hoover: The Postpresidential Years, 1933–1964. 1983.

Best, Gary Dean. The Politics of American Individualism: Herbert Hoover in Transition, 1918–1921. 1975.

Burner, David. Herbert Hoover: A Public Life. 1978.

Dodge, Mark M., ed. Herbert Hoover and the Historians. 1989.

Fausold, Martin L. The Presidency of Herbert C. Hoover. 1985.

Fausold, Martin L., and George T. Mazuzan, eds. The Hoover Presidency: A Reappraisal. 1974.

Gelfand, Lawrence E., ed. Herbert Hoover: The Great War and Its Aftermath, 1914–23. 1979.

Hawley, Ellis, ed. Herbert Hoover as Secretary of Commerce: Studies in New Era Thought and Practice. 1981.

Herbert Hoover Reassessed: Essays Commemorating the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Inauguration of our Thirty-first President. 1981.

Hoover, Herbert. Addresses upon the American Road, 8 vols. 1938–1961.

Hoover, Herbert. An American Epic, 4 vols. 1959–1964.

Hoover, Herbert. American Individualism. 1922.

Hoover, Herbert. The Challenge to Liberty. 1934.

Hoover, Herbert. The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover, 3 vols. 1951–1952.

Hoover, Herbert. The Ordeal of Woodrow Wilson. 1958.

Hoover, Herbert, and Hugh Gibson. The Problems of Lasting Peace. 1942.

Hoover, Herbert, and Lou Henry Hoover, trans. De Re Metallica. 1912.

Myers, William Starr, ed. The State Papers and Other Public Writings of Herbert Hoover, 2 vols. 1934.

Myers, William Starr, and Walter H. Newton, eds. The Hoover Administration: A Documented Narrative. 1936.

Nash, George H. The Life of Herbert Hoover: The Engineer, 1874–1914. 1983.

Nash, George H. The Life of Herbert Hoover: The Humanitarian, 1914–1917. 1988.

Nash, George H. Herbert Hoover and Stanford University. 1988.

Nash, George H. The Life of Herbert Hoover: Master of Emergencies, 1917–1918. 1996.

Nash, Lee, ed. Understanding Herbert Hoover: Ten Perspectives. 1987.

Robinson, Edgar Eugene, and Vaughn Davis Bornet. Herbert Hoover: President of the United States. 1975.

Smith, Richard Norton. An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover. 1984.

Smith, Richard Norton, and Timothy Walch, eds. Farewell to the Chief: Former Presidents in American Public Life. 1990.

Thalken, Thomas T., ed. The Problems of Lasting Peace Revisited. 1986.

Wilbur, Ray Lyman, and Arthur Mastick Hyde, eds. The Hoover Policies. 1937.

Wilson, Joan Hoff. Herbert Hoover: Forgotten Progressive. 1975.

SUSAN ESTABROOK KENNEDY