#31 Herbert Hoover (1874-1964)

When I think of Hoover, I immediately think of Annie, the musical. In the musical, not the movie, there is a song called “We Want to Thank You, Herbert Hoover,” and it goes something like this:
Today we're living in a shanty
Today we're scrounging for a meal
Today I'm stealing coal for fires
Who knew I could steal?
I used to winter in the tropics
I spent my summers at the shore
I used to throw away the paper--
We'd like to thank you: Herber Hoover
For really showing us the way
We'd like to thank you: Herbert Hoover
You made us what we are today
Prosperity was 'round the corner
The cozy cottage built for two
In this blue heaven
That you gave us Yes!
We're turning blue!
They offered us Al Smith and Hoover
We paid attention and we chose
Not only did we pay attention
We paid through the nose.
In ev'ry pot he said "a chicken"
But Herbert Hoover he forgot
Not only don't we have the chicken
We ain't got the pot!
Hey Herbie
You left behind a grateful nation
So, Herb, our hats are off to you
We're up to here with admiration
Come down and have a little stew
Come down and share some Christmas dinner
Be sure to bring the missus too
We got no turkey for our stuffing
We'd like to thank you, Herbert Hoover
For really showing us the way
You dirty rat, you Bureaucrat, you
Made us what we are today
Come and get it, Herb!

So yes, I just included an entire song in my PRP. However, it’s not everyday that there’s an available song about a president so I’m excited. Also after reading the Coolidge bio, I was more interested than ever about getting to the bottom of the Great Depression debacle. Whose fault was it anyways? So I went to a rather reliable source: Herbert Hoover: The American Presidents Series by William Leuchtenburg (New York: Times Books, 2009). I was impressed because this author, Leuchtenburg, wrote a crapload of books on the Great Depression and the New Deal eras, giving him a fine insight, I felt, into Herbert Hoover.

Herbert Clark Hoover was born on August 10, 1874 in West Branch, Iowa to a family of
Quakers. “To a degree, the Society of Friends left lasting imprints on Hoover’s character and temperament—his self-reliance, his disdain for show, and his capacity for toil—and on his view of the world: his dutiful commitment to good works, his trust in a community of neighbors to sustain the needy, his pursuit of peace, and his conception of ‘ordered freedom’” (p. 3). Unfortunately, young Bert did not have a great childhood. When Bert was six years old, his father died which lead to him being shunted from uncle to uncle to live. Shortly after this, his mother also died leaving him and his two other siblings as orphans. They were split up between the family and Bert was sent to Oregon to live with another uncle.

His uncle, another Quaker, was quite a cold individual so Bert grew up striving to make his own way. “Bert engaged in hard labor—felling trees, splitting logs, clearing stumps—six days a week, with all of each Sabbath given over to religious observance” (p. 4). For schooling, he attended Friends Pacific Academy but in 1888, dropped out to become an office boy and hustler. “Hardworking and a quick study, he picked up bookkeeping and typing during the day and attended business college in the evening” (p. 5).

Although Bert was not a great scholar, he was eventually accepted (barely) to the new Stanford University in Palo Alto, CA. He began as a business major but eventually changed to geology instead. During his time at Stanford, he was known for being unfriendly and terse but he did have a core group of friends that would stick together for years. “By the end of his four years, Hoover had collected a number of life-long buddies who would one day count themselves loyal followers of the Stanford alum they were designate ‘the Chief’” (p. 8). It was at college that Hoover met and fell in love withLou Henry, a female geology major, although he would be too poor to marry her for many years.

In 1895, he graduated. He was dirt poor so he did whatever jobs he could find, including work in a gold mine. One year later he was confronted with an interesting opportunity—to work for a British firm and move to Australia as a mining scout. He accepted and left for Australia to manage the mines of the Sons of Gwalia (gold.) “Over the next eighteen months, he logged more than five thousand miles in the bush, probing strata for veins of gold” (p. 10). Despite his unpopularity with his coworkers, he did a great job and was promoted to junior partner in the firm of Bewick, Moreing.

By 1989, Hoover was quite wealthy and he took the opportunity to finally marry Lou Henry. It was after this event that Hoover was promoted to supervise the new engineering operations in China. The Hoovers arrived in China in 1900 just in time to be held under siege by the rebelling ‘Boxers’. The combined European forces won and Hoover was able to begin his work locating workable mines. His greatest discovery was the Kaiping mines. “By skillful administration and an infusion of capital, he turned the immense Kaiping coal deposits into a flourishing enterprise. He was duly rewarded” (p. 15). In fact, he was made full partner in the British firm. Due to this promotion, he was transferred to London where he and his family (including his two sons) lived while he traveled around the globe on business.

In 1908, he sold out his shares for a variety of reasons, such as the fact that he was being sued, he wanted a bigger fortune, and he was dealing with health issues. The Hoover family moved back to the northern California area where he began his own business of ‘consulting,’ i.e. he was hired by ailing mines and then help revive them. He also got involved in investing. “He owned shares in the Brazilian Iron Syndicate, Russo-Asiatic Consolidated, and the Inter-Argentine Syndicate, and he reorganized oil explorations in Peru and Trinidad. His most unpromising venture—in the forbidding terrain of Burma—would eventually become the main source of his income” (p. 17-18).

Hoover was in London in 1914 when World War I began which left him admirably placed to aid thousands of Americans caught in Europe at the start of hostilities. He immediately created the “Committee of American Residents in London for Assistance of American Travellers”(p. 24) and was promoted, unofficially, to chair the Commission for Relief in Belgium. “An organization with no legal standing and no stable source of funds, the Commission for Relief in Belgium crossed national frontiers in the midst of the world’s first global war, plunged into markets on two continents, and spent unheard-of sums” (p. 26). Hoover won world renown through his efforts on behalf of the starving Belgians. In fact, “’By the end of 1916,’ George Nash has written, Hoover ‘stood preeminent in the greatest humanitarian undertaking the world has ever seen’” (p. 30).

By 1917, his reputation had grown so large that Wilson brought him back to the United States to head the Food Administration department as America entered the war. He used PR to convince the public to conserve food while also lobbying in Washington for Congress to pass the Lever Act. When the war ended, he was placed in control of the American Relief Association in Europe. “He controlled traffic on the Danube, Rhine, Vistula, and Elbe; coordinated railways in eighteen countries; rebuilt bridges and highways; reordered currencies; combated typhus; and reopened mines” (p. 42).

Due to Hoover’s international popularity, it just made sense for Harding to include Hoover on his cabinet as Secretary of Commerce. As secretary, Hoover created three new departments: aeronautics, radio, and housing. He also wrote the pamphlet American Individualism which defined the new American form of individuality.

After Harding’s death, Coolidge kept Hoover on in the Department of Commerce. This was a very good move because Hoover was available to assist after the worst natural disaster (up to that time) hit: the 1927 Mississippi River floods. “He sparked a fundraising drive that brought in $17 million; gathered an armada of six hundred vessels; and put together 150 tent cities as havens for multitudes of evacuees” (p. 68).

Though not all Republicans liked Hoover, his popularity was such that he won the Republican presidential nomination in 1928 to run against the Democrat, Al Smith. In his acceptance speech, Hoover rashly promised to banish poverty from the United States of America. Economic prosperity was still booming and this helped Hoover become the 31st President of the United States with little problem.

During the initial days of his administration, he focused on crime, on penal reform, on the Veterans Administration, and on water power and conservation. He had passed the Agricultural Marketing Act through Congress, the Norris-La Guardia Act and the Hawley-Smoot Tariff, the highest tariff the United States had passed to date. The stock market was booming and the lax governmental controls on business were virtually nonexistent.

And then the bottom fell out. On Thursday, October 24, 1929, stock prices began to waver and by “Black Tuesday” stocks had plunged into a freefall. “October 29, ‘Black Tuesday,’ was far worse: $30 billion in securities self-destructed. The next morning, the New York Times reported: ‘Stock prices virtually collapsed yesterday, swept downward with gigantic losses in the most disastrous trading day in the stock market’s history” (p. 103). Faced with this enormous crisis, Hoover initially tried to help the situation but events soon spiraled out of control due to a combination of events: a serious drought, thousands of banks failing, and unemployment rising.

Hoover, however, refused to face reality. “When in June a delegation that included bankers as well as bishops arrived at the White House to alert him to the accelerating decline, Hoover, visibly annoyed, told them that the economy was on the upswing and the ranks of the unemployed were dwindling. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘you have come sixty days too late. The depression is over.’” (p. 107). Instead the economy worsened leaving millions of people homeless and living in shanty towns called Hoovervilles (the song at the beginning of the blog was set in a Hooverville) or empty freight cars named Hoover Pullmans.

The situations for famers had becoming increasingly dire. Crop prices had fallen to an all-time low while the drought produced horrible dust storms that swept across the Great Plains and the Midwest. Hoover did little to help. “Before Hoover’s term was over, one-fourth of American farmers lost their holdings—their fields, their stock, their barns, their homes—some of which had been in one family for generations” (p. 115).

The problems that the United States faced were soon affecting the rest of the world. Hoover had to deal with foreign issues that were slowly worsening as depression raged and world order broke down. Hoover had to deal with anti-American issues in South America and Asia and Hoover would be blamed for not confronting the Japanese and Chinese before the trouble began.

By 1932 found Hoover scrambling to try and rectify things as the next election loomed. The Revenue Act passed as did the Emergency Relief and Construction Act. It didn’t matter though. Hoover had become anathema to the American public and they resoundingly elected Franklin Roosevelt instead.Hoover was not happy about the election results. He hated FDR and thought that most Americans had been persuaded away from him by duplicitous means.

After the Hoovers retired to a suite at the Waldorf-Astoria, he spent most of his time writing books, memoirs, and articles in an effort to uphold his policies. Hoover also spent a lot of time traveling throughout Europe where he continued to be haled as the hero of World War I. Years passed and he continued to try to get back into politics, berating FDR for his New Deal practices and running roughshod over fellow Republicans.

His world changed in 1944 when Lou died but he himself was still alive and kicking. Only John Quincy Adams would live longer as a former president. Truman, as president, decided to use Hoover’s legendary managerial skills by placing him as a food ambassador around the world after the war ended. Hoover also helped begin UNICEF and was placed on the Hoover Commission. He published his final book, The Ordeal of Woodrow Wilson, in 1958 and died on October 20, 1964 of an upper intestinal tract hemorrhage.