Web Quotableonline.com Frasescelebres.org Greatbookscollection.org

Herbert Clark Hoover (August 10, 1874 –
October 20, 1964) is best known as being the 31st
President of the United States|President of the
United States (1929-1933). However, prior to that,
he was a successful mining engineer, humanitarian,
and administrator. He had the longest retirement
of any U.S. President and died 31 years after
leaving office, during the administration of
Lyndon Johnson — his fifth successor.

==Family background==
Hoover was born into a Quaker family in West
Branch, Iowa|West Branch, Iowa. He was the first
President to be born west of the Mississippi
River. Both of his parents, Jesse Hoover and Hulda
Minthorn, died when Hoover was young. His father
died in 1880, and his mother in 1884.  

In the summer of 1885 eleven-year-old "Bert"
Hoover boarded a Union Pacific Railroad|Union
Pacific train headed west to Oregon. Sewn into his
clothes were two dimes; he also carried a hamper
of his Aunt Hannah's homemade delicacies. Waiting
for him on the other end of the continent was his
Uncle John Minthorn, a doctor and school
superintendent whom Hoover recalled as "a severe
man on the surface, but like all Quakers kindly at
the bottom." The future president lived with his
uncle in Newberg, Oregon for several years
following his parents' deaths.


Hoover's six years in Oregon taught him
self-reliance. "My boyhood ambition was to be able
to earn my own living, without the help of
anybody, anywhere," he once reported. As an office
boy in his uncle's Oregon Land Company he mastered
bookkeeping and typing, while also attending
business school in the evening. Thanks to a local
schoolteacher, Miss Jane Gray, the boy's eyes were
opened to the novels of Charles Dickens and Sir
Walter Scott. David Copperfield (novel)|David
Copperfield, the story of another orphan cast into
the world to live by his wits, would remain a
lifelong favorite.

==Education==


In the fall of 1891 Hoover attended the new
Stanford University|Leland Stanford Junior
University at Palo Alto, California. Cutting a
wider swath outside the classroom than in, Hoover
managed the baseball and football teams, started a
laundry, and ran a lecture agency. Teaming up with
other poor boys against campus swells, the
reluctant candidate was elected student body
treasurer on the "Barbarian" slate, then wiped out
a student-government debt of $2,000.

Hoover earned his way through school by doing
typing chores for Professor John Casper Branner,
who also got him a summer job mapping the terrain
in Arkansas' Ozark Mountains. It was in Branner's
geology lab that he met Lou Henry Hoover|Lou
Henry, a banker's daughter born in Waterloo,
Iowa|Waterloo, Iowa, in 1874. Lou shared her
fellow Iowan's love of the outdoors and
self-reliant nature. "It isn't so important what
others think of you as what you feel inside
yourself," she told college friends.

Hoover graduated in May 1895, three months before
his 21st birthday. He left Stanford with $40 in
his pocket and no prospects for employment. But
from this college in a hayfield he had derived
much more than a degree in geology. Stanford gave
Hoover an identity, a profession, and a future
bride. Most of all, Stanford became for the orphan
from West Branch a surrogate family--a place to
belong.


In 1899 he married his Stanford sweetheart, Lou
Henry. They went to China, where he worked for a
private corporation as China's leading engineer.
In June 1900 the Boxer Rebellion caught the
Hoovers in Tianjin. For almost a month the
settlement was under heavy fire. While his wife
worked in the hospitals, Hoover directed the
building of barricades, and once risked his life
rescuing Chinese children.

Between 1907 and 1912, Lou and Hoover combined
their talents to create a translation of one of
the earliest printed technical treatises: Georg
Agricola's De re metallica, originally published
in 1556. At 670 pages with 289 woodcuts, the
Hoover translation remains the definitive English
language translation of Agricola's work.

==Hoover's humanitarian years==
Bored with making money, the Quaker side of Hoover
yearned to be of service to others. In August of
1914 he got his chance, when the assassination in
Sarajevo|assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz
Ferdinand touched off long-simmering rivalries
among the jealous nations of Europe. World War I
was at hand, and few Americans were prepared. An
estimated 120,000 of Hoover's countrymen,
penniless and confused, were trapped on the wrong
side of the Atlantic and needed help. The U.S.
Ambassador to Britain, Walter Hines Page, sent an
urgent request for assistance to Hoover on August
3rd. 

Within twenty-four hours, five hundred volunteers
were assembled and the grand ballroom of the Savoy
Hotel was turned into a vast canteen and
distribution center for food, clothing, steamer
tickets and cash. "I did not realize it at the
moment, but on August 3, 1914 my engineering
career was over forever. I was on the slippery
road of public life." During the next few weeks
Hoover assisted Chief White Feather of Pawhuska,
Oklahoma, and dowagers in jewels to get home. When
one woman angrily insisted on a written pledge
that no Germany|German submarine would attack her
vessel in mid-ocean, Hoover readily complied.
Furthermore, Hoover, together with nine engineer
friends, loaned desperate travelers a total of
$1.5 million. All but $400 of this was returned,
confirming the Great Engineer's faith in the
American character. The difference between
dictatorship and democracy, Hoover liked to say,
was simple: dictators organize from the bottom
down, democracies from the bottom up.


Trapped between German bayonets and a British
blockade, Belgium in the fall of 1914 faced
imminent starvation. Hoover was asked to undertake
an unprecedented relief effort for the tiny
kingdom dependent on imports for 80 percent of its
food. This would mean abandoning his successful
career as the world's foremost mining engineer.
For several days he pondered the request, finally
telling a friend, "Let the fortune go to hell." He
would assume the immense task on two
conditions--that he receive no salary, and that he
be given a free hand in organizing and
administering what became known as the Commission
for the Relief of Belgium (CRB).

The CRB became, in effect, an independent republic
of relief, with its own flag, navy, factories,
mills and railroads. Its $12-million-a-month
budget was supplied by voluntary donations and
government grants. More than once Hoover made
personal pledges far in excess of his total worth.
In an early form of shuttle diplomacy he crossed
the North Sea 40 times seeking to persuade the
enemies in London and Berlin to allow food to
reach the war's victims. He also taught the
Belgians, who regarded cornmeal as cattle feed, to
eat cornbread. In all, the CRB saved ten million
people from starvation.

Every day brought new crises. The British
investigated charges that he was a German spy.
Germans deported youthful CRB workers, including a
major of Salvation Army|The Salvation Army, on
similar charges. At home, Senator Henry Cabot
Lodge wanted to prosecute Hoover for dealing with
the enemy. Theodore Roosevelt promised to hold
Lodge at bay, informing Hoover that "the courage
of any political official is stronger in his
office than in the newspapers."

Despite the obstacles put before him Hoover
persisted, purchasing rice in Burma, Argentine
corn, China|Chinese beans and American wheat, meat
and fats. Long before the Armistice with Germany
(Compiègne)|Armistice of 1918 he was an
international hero, in the words of Ambassador
Page, "a simple, modest, energetic little man who
began his career in California and will end it in
heaven."

After the United States entered the war, President
Woodrow Wilson appointed Hoover head of the Food
Administration. He succeeded in cutting
consumption of foods needed overseas and avoided
rationing at home, yet kept the Allies fed. The
Armistice did not end Hoover's involvement with
relief. After the end of the war, Hoover, a member
of the Supreme Economic Council and head of the
American Relief Administration, organized
shipments of food for starving millions in Central
Europe. To this end he employed a new formed
Quaker organization, the American Friends Service
Committee to carry out much of the logistical work
in Europe. He extended aid to famine-stricken
Bolshevist Russia in 1921. When a critic inquired
if he was not thus helping Bolshevism, Hoover
retorted, "Twenty million people are starving.
Whatever their politics, they shall be fed!"

==Presidency==


After capably serving as United States Secretary
of Commerce|Secretary of Commerce under Presidents
Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge, and leading
relief efforts in the wake of the Great
Mississippi Flood of 1927, Hoover became the U.S.
presidential election, 1928|Republican
Presidential nominee in 1928. He said then: "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 Stock market
crash|crashed, and the nation's economy spiraled
downward into what became known as the Great
Depression.

After the crash Hoover announced that while he
would keep the Federal budget balanced, he would
cut taxes and expand public-works spending.
However, he signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act,
which raised tariffs on over 20,000 dutiable items
and later, the 1932 Revenue Act, which hiked taxes
and fees (including postage rates) across the
board. These acts are often blamed for deepening
the depression, and being Hoover's biggest
political blunders. Moreover, the Federal Reserve
System's tightening of the money supply (for fear
of inflation) is also regarded by most modern
economists as a mistaken tactic given the
situation.

Hoover's Secretary of the Treasury was Andrew
Mellon, a hold over from the Coolidge
administration. 

Hoover was nominated for a second term but was
defeated by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1932
election.  This was the first election in which
the Republican party did not receive a majority of
the African American vote since Abraham Lincoln
was elected in 1860. The trend continues to this
day, with a majority of African Americans voting
for the Democratic Party (United
States)|Democratic Party.

===Hoover and the economy===
Hoover's stance on the economy was based on
volunteerism. From before his entry to the
presidency, he was among the greatest proponents
of the concept that public-private cooperation was
the way to achieve high long-term growth. Hoover
feared that too much intervention or coercion on
behalf of the government would destroy
individuality and self-reliance, which he
considered to be important American values. Though
he was not averse to taking action which he
considered was in the public good - such as
regulating radio broadcasting and aviation, he
preferred a voluntary, non-government approach.

In June 1931, to deal with a very serious banking
collapse in Central Europe that threatened to
cause a world-wide financial melt-down, Hoover
issued the so-called Hoover Moratorium that called
for a one-year halt in reparations payments by
Germany to France and in the payment of Allied war
debts to the United States. The Hoover Moratorium
had the effect of temporarily stopping the banking
collapse in Europe. In June 1932, a conference was
held in Switzerland that cancelled all reparations
payments by Germany.

Hoover's economy was put to the test with the
onset of the Great Depression in 1929. It was his
vocal stance on non-intervention that led to
public perception that he was a laissez-faire, 'do
nothing' president, which his supporters deny.

The following is an outline of other actions
Hoover took to try to help end the depression
through government taxing and spending:  

#Signed the Emergency Relief and Construction Act,
the nation's first Federal unemployment
assistance.
#Increased public works spending. Some of Hoover's
efforts to stimulate the economy through public
works are as follows:
##Asked Congress for a $400 million increase in
the Federal Building Program
##Directed the Department of Commerce to establish
a Division of Public Construction in December
1929.
##Increased subsidies for ship construction
through the Federal Shipping Board
##Urged the state governors to also increase their
public works spending, though many failed to take
any action.
#Signed the Federal Home Loan Bank Act
establishing the Federal Home Loan Bank system to
assist citizens in obtaining financing to purchase
a home.
#Increased subsidies to the nation's struggling
farmers with the Agricultural Marketing Act, but
with only limited impact.
#Established the President's Emergency Relief
Organization to coordinate local, private relief
efforts resulting in over 3,000 relief committees
across the U.S.
#Urged bankers to form the National Credit
Corporation to assist banks in financial trouble
and protect depositor's money.
#Actively encouraged businesses to maintain high
wages during the depression. Many businessmen,
most notably Henry Ford, raised or maintained
their worker's wages early in the Depression in
the hope that more money into the pockets of
consumers would end the economic downturn. 
#Signed the Reconstruction Finance Act. This act
established the Reconstruction Finance
Corporation, which made loans to the states for
public works and unemployment relief. In addition,
the RFC made loans to banks, railroads and
agriculture credit organizations. 
#Raised tariffs to protect American jobs. After
hearings held by the House Ways and Means
Committee generated over 20,000 pages of testimony
regarding tariff protection, Congress responded
with legislation that Hoover signed despite some
misgivings. Instead of protecting American jobs,
the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act|Smoot-Hawley tariff is
widely blamed for setting off a worldwide trade
war which only worsened the country's economic
ills.


In order to pay for these and other government
programs, Hoover agreed to one of the largest tax
increases in American history. The Revenue Act of
1932 raised taxes on the highest incomes from 25%
to 63%. The estate tax was doubled and corporate
taxes were raised by almost 15%. Hoover also
encouraged Congress to investigate the New York
Stock Exchange and this pressure resulted in
various reforms.

For this reason, some hold that Hoover's economics
was in fact left-wing in character. During the
1932 elections, Franklin D. Roosevelt blasted the
Republican incumbent for spending and taxing too
much, increasing national debt, raising tariffs
and blocking trade, as well as placing millions on
the dole of the government. He attacked Herbert
Hoover for "reckless and extravagant" spending, of
thinking "that we ought to center control of
everything in Washington as rapidly as possible,"
and of leading "the greatest spending
administration in peacetime in all of history."
Roosevelt's running mate, John Nance Garner,
accused the Republican of "leading the country
down the path of socialism".

These policies pale beside the more drastic steps
taken as part of the New Deal, however, and
Hoover's opponents charge that they came too
little, and too late. Even as he legislated for
changes, he reiterated his view that while people
must not suffer from hunger and cold, caring for
them must be primarily a local and voluntary
responsibility.

Even so, New Dealer Rexford Tugwell
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/goldengate/sfeature/s
f_30s.html later remarked that although no one
would say so at the time, "practically the whole
New Deal was extrapolated from programs that
Hoover started."

Unemployment rose to 24.9% by the end of Hoover's
presidency in 1933, a year that is considered to
be the depth of the Great Depression. Even with
massive intervention by his successor Roosevelt,
the economy underwent only limited improvement,
with unemployment falling to 14.3% in 1937, and
then rising to 19% under a severe recession in
1937-1938 (a contraction labeled a depression by
some economists). It was not until the war in the
1940s that the economy recovered fully.
(Unemployment did not drop below 9.9% until 1942).

===The Bonus Army===
Thousands of World War I veterans and their
families demonstrated in Washington, D.C., during
June 1932, calling for immediate payment of a
bonus that had been promised by the Bonus Law of
1924 for payment in 1945. Hoover sent U.S. Army
forces, led by General Douglas MacArthur and aided
by junior officers Dwight D. Eisenhower and George
S. Patton Jr., to remove the "Bonus army" from the
capitol. This possible violation of the Posse
Comitatus Act of 1878, and the fact that only a
token payment was given to the veterans to pay for
their trip home, added to Hoover's image as a
cold-hearted president with little sympathy for
the suffering created by the Great Depression.

===Cabinet===
{| cellpadding="1" cellspacing="4"
style="margin:3px; border:3px solid #000000;"
align="left"
!bgcolor="#000000" colspan="7"|
|-
|align="left"|OFFICE||align="left"|NAME||align="le
ft"|TERM
|-
!bgcolor="#000000" colspan="3"|
|-
|align="left"|President of the United
States|President||align="left" |Herbert
Hoover||align="left"|1929–1933
|-
|align="left"|Vice President of the United
States|Vice President||align="left"|Charles
Curtis||align="left"|1929–1933
|-
!bgcolor="#000000" colspan="3"|
|-
|align="left"|United States Secretary of
State|Secretary of State||align="left"|Henry L.
Stimson||align="left"|1929–1933
|-
|align="left"|United States Secretary of the
Treasury|Secretary of the
Treasury||align="left"|Andrew
Mellon||align="left"|1929–1932
|-
|align="left"| ||align="left"|Ogden L.
Mills||align="left"|1932–1933
|-
|align="left"|United States Secretary of
War|Secretary of War||align="left"|James W.
Good||align="left"|1929
|-
|align="left"| ||align="left"|Patrick J.
Hurley||align="left"|1929–1933
|-
|align="left"|Attorney General of the United
States|Attorney General||align="left"|William D.
Mitchell||align="left"|1929–1933
|-
|align="left"|Postmaster General of the United
States|Postmaster General||align="left"|Walter
Folger Brown|Walter F.
Brown||align="left"|1929–1933
|-
|align="left"|United States Secretary of the
Navy|Secretary of the Navy||align="left"|Charles
F. Adams||align="left"|1929–1933
|-
|align="left"|United States Secretary of the
Interior|Secretary of the
Interior||align="left"|Ray L.
Wilbur||align="left"|1929–1933
|-
|align="left"|United States Secretary of
Agriculture|Secretary of
Agriculture||align="left"|Arthur M.
Hyde||align="left"|1929–1933
|-
|align="left"|United States Secretary of
Commerce|Secretary of
Commerce||align="left"|Robert P.
Lamont||align="left"|1929–1932
|-
|align="left"| ||align="left"|Roy D.
Chapin||align="left"|1932–1933
|-
|align="left"|United States Secretary of
Labor|Secretary of Labor||align="left"|James J.
Davis||align="left"|1929–1930
|-
|align="left"| ||align="left"|William N.
Doak||align="left"|1930–1933
|}



==Achievements of the Hoover Administration==
Even if the Hoover presidency has a negative
imprint on it, it must be noted that there were
some important reforms under the Hoover
administration. 

The President expanded civil service protection,
cancelled private oil leases on government lands
and led the way for the prosecution of gangster Al
Capone. He appointed a commission which set aside
3 million acres (12,000 km²) of national
parks and 2.3 million of national forests; he
appointed a Federal Farm Board that tried to fix
farm prices, advocated tax reduction for
low-income Americans, doubled the numbers of
veteran hospital facilities, negotiated a treaty
on St. Lawrence Seaway (which failed in the
Senate), signed an act that made The Star-Spangled
Banner the national anthem, wrote a Children's
Charter that advocated protection of every child
regardless of race and gender, built the San
Francisco Bay Bridge, created an antitrust
division in the Justice Department, required air
mail carriers to improve service, proposed federal
loans for urban slum clearances, organized the
Federal Bureau of Prisons, reorganized the Bureau
of Indian Affairs, proposed a federal Department
of Education, advocated fifty-dollar-a-month
pensions for Americans over 65, chaired White
House conferences on child health, protection,
homebuilding and homeownership. He also signed the
Norris-La Guardia Act that paved the way for the
New Deal's labor policy. 

In the foreign arena he helped to pave the way for
Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Good Neighbor Policy" by
withdrawing American troops from Nicaragua and
Haiti, he also proposed an arms embargo on Latin
America and a one-third reduction in the world's
naval forces - the Hoover Plan. He and Secretary
of State Henry Stimson outlined the Hoover-Stimson
Doctrine that said that the United States would
not recognize territories gained by force.

===Supreme Court appointments===
Hoover appointed the following Justices to the
Supreme Court of the United States:

* Charles Evans Hughes - Chief Justice - 1930
* Owen Josephus Roberts - 1930
* Benjamin Nathan Cardozo - 1932

==Post-Presidency==
His opponents in Congress, whom he felt were
sabotaging his program for their own political
gain, painted him as a callous and cruel
president. 

Hoover was badly defeated in the U.S. presidential
election, 1932|1932 presidential election. After
Roosevelt assumed the presidency, Hoover became a
critic of the New Deal, warning against tendencies
toward statism. His misgivings are in the book The
Challenge to Liberty where he talks of fascism,
communism, and socialism as enemies of traditional
American liberties.

In 1947, President Harry S. Truman appointed
Hoover to a commission, which elected him
chairman, to reorganize the executive departments.
This became known as the Hoover Commission. He was
appointed chairman of a similar commission by
President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1953. Many
economies resulted from both commissions'
recommendations. Over the years, Hoover wrote many
articles and books, one of which he was working on
when he died at the age of 90 in New York City on
October 20, 1964 at 11:35 AM, 31 years and seven
months after leaving office. By the time of his
death, he had rehabilitated his image and died
praised as a beloved statesman. His was the
longest retirement of any President. (Gerald Ford
is now a close contender, and as of 2005, he has
been out of office for 28 years). Hoover and his
wife are buried at Herbert Hoover Presidential
Library and Museum|his presidential library in
West Branch, Iowa.

The Lou Henry and Herbert Hoover House, built in
1919 in Palo Alto, is now the official residence
of the President of Stanford University, and a
National Historic Landmark.

==Quotes==
*"True American Liberalism utterly denies the
whole creed of socialism." The Challenge to
Liberty, pg 57.
*"A chicken in every pot and a car in every
garage" - Presidential Campaign Slogan 1928
*"I outlived the bastards" - answer to a question
of how he managed to survive the long ostrascism
under the Roosevelt administration.

==Writings of Hoover==
*  Agricola, G., De Re Metallica, tr. by Herbert
Clark Hoover and Lou Henry Hoover, The Mining
magazine, London,  1912
*The Challenge to Liberty, 1934
*Addresses Upon The American Road, 1933-1938,
Charles Scribner's Sons, NY, 1938
*The Problems of Lasting Peace, with Hugh Gibson,
Doubleday Doran, Garden City NY, 1942

==Media==
multi-video start
multi-video item |
  filename      =  Herbert Hoover video
montage.ogg|
  title         =  Herbert Hoover video montage|
  description   =Collection of video clips of the
president.  (3.2 Megabyte|MB, ogg/Theora format).
|
  format        = Theora

multi-video end

==Related articles==
* U.S. presidential election, 1928
* U.S. presidential election, 1932
* Hoover-Minthorn House
* Hoover Institution
* Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum -
located near Iowa City, Iowa|Iowa City in West
Branch, Iowa.
* Herbert Hoover National Historical Site - also
in West Branch, Iowa

==External links==
* http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi139.htm Hoover and
Agricola
*
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/presiden/inaug/h
oover.htm Inaugural Address
*
http://vvl.lib.msu.edu/showfindingaid.cfm?findaidi
d=HooverH Audio clips of Hoover's speeches
*
http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/hh31.
html White House Biography
*
http://www.americanpresident.org/history/herbertho
over/ American President.org Biography
*
http://www.usa-presidents.info/union/hoover-1.html
Herbert Hoover First State of the Union Address
*
http://www.usa-presidents.info/union/hoover-2.html
Herbert Hoover Second State of the Union Address
*
http://www.usa-presidents.info/union/hoover-3.html
Herbert Hoover Third State of the Union Address
*
http://www.usa-presidents.info/union/hoover-4.html
Herbert Hoover Fourth State of the Union Address
*
http://www.davidpietrusza.com/Herbert-Hoover-links
.html Herbert Hoover Links


start box
succession box|title=United States Secretary of
Commerce|before=Joshua W. Alexander|after=William
F. Whiting|years=1921–1928
succession box|title=United States Republican
Party|Republican Party President of the United
States|Presidential :