Figure 1.--Here Herbert (center) is at about age 7. He is with his sister and brother in 1881. Their farther had died a year earlier. Their mother, a school teacher, died 2 years later leaving the children orophans. |
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Herbert C. Hoover was the 30th President of the United States. His was a failed presidency. Hoover has to be ranked as perhaps the greatest failure as an American president. Surely there were several less than competent presidents. Hoover was, however, higly competent. HJis failure was that he was locked in by his ideological view on the proper role of the government. So often in American history, presidents have risen to the occasion in times of national crises. Hoover did not. It was not because of lack of competence. It
was not that he was a mean-spirited man, in fact Hoover's record of service abroad and at home spanned half a century. Hoover brought to the Presidency an unparalleled reputation for public service as an engineer, administrator, and
humanitarian. His policies, however, left Americans to fight the full furry of the Great Depression with little assistance from their government. Lives were ruined, and people went hungry. Americans asked why a man who had saved so many European children was now allowing American children go hungary. Many dispaired and the very survival of the republic was in question when President Hoover turned over the presidency to Franklin Roosevelt.
Herbert was the son of a Quaker blacksmith, Herbert Clark Hoover was died at age 34 in 1880, leaving his wife with three young children. His mother ??? was an activist in the sufferagette movement. Hoover was to say that his earliest memory was beng taken by his mother to a polling place to protest the fact that women could not vote. (When he ran for president in 1928, he became known as the woman's candidate. He won 65 percent of the women's vote in the 1928 election.) His mother was a school teacher and taught Sunday school as well. She took in sewing to support herself, but she died 2 years later, also at the age of 34, leaving the children oephans.
Herbert was born in an Iowa village during 1874. After their mother's death, Herbert was sent west to Oregon. He had 20 cents for the trip. In oregon he was raised my his mother's brother. He was a strict Quaker and a country doctor.
Herbert was never able to finish highschhol. His uncle insisted that he laeve school and work in his land office. (His favorite book was Dickens' David Copperfield, another orphan who had to go to work as a boy.) He continued his education by studyoing at night by klearming to type and keep books at a night school. A visit to a mine got him interested in engineering. He was illprepared for college and failed most of the entrance tests, but a Quaker professor managed to get him. He was part of the Stanford 1891 class--the fitst year of operations. A tutor helped bring him up to the level of the other students. At Stanford, Hoover was a dynamo earning money not only for his tuition, but for school activities as well. There was even a campus battle with the elitist franternaties. He graduated a mining engineer.
Hoover had quite an impressive career before he became president, although it was not a political career. He was the only president to win the office with out apolitical background, with the exception of military figures. His greatest achievement was his humnitarian work which save millions of European children from starving following World War I.
Hoover married his Stanford sweetheart, Lou Henry, and 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 Tientsin. 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. Lou was later to say that her husband took her to the Boxer Rebellion for their honeymoon. Of course that was not his intention, but that is precisely what he did. Lou was an amazing oman and learned Chinese while there.
It is said of Herbert Hoover that no one in history saved the lives of more European children. Some Americans might have added during the 1930s that few people did less to save the lives of American children during the Depression. One week before Hoover celebrated his 40th birthday in London, Germany declared war on France (1914). The American Consul General in London asked Hoover to help get stranded tourists home. Hoover's committee in 6 weeks helped 120,000 Americans return to the United States. Then Hoover turned to a far more daunting task, how to feed Belgium, which had attacked France through neutral Belgium and overrun most of the country. When the United States entered the war, President Wilson appointed Hoover head of the Food Administration (1917). Hoover succeeded in cutting consumption of foods needed overseas and avoided rationing at home, yet kept the Allies fed. Europe had been devestated by the War. The desestation and the battlefield losses significantly affected agricultural production. After the Armistice, 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. He extended aid to famine-stricken Soviet Russia (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!" This was the greatest exercise in international relief in world history. Had it not been for American food aid after the War, millions mostly children would have starved throughout Europe.
Hoover capably served as Secretary of Commerce under Presidents
Harding and Coolidge.
President Coolidge was very popular and could have easily secured the Republican nomination. He decided, however, not to run. This threw the Republican nomination wide open. The Republicas at Kansas City nominated Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover. The Democrats with little optimism nominated long-time candidate Governor Al Smith of New York. He was the first Catholic nominated by a major party and this became a major issue in the Democratic stringhold of the South. The Republicans in the early 20th century were the majority party. Ands short of a split in the Party or a major scandal, the Republicans were the odds on favorite. Economic prosperity made a Republican victory a virtual foregone conclussion. Secretary Hoover set the tone of the campaign in his acceptance speech, "We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of this land... We shall soon with the help of God be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this land." In the end it was the economic properity that led to Hoover's victory. Protestant attitudes toward Catholics made it a landslide. Secretary Hoover received 21.4 million (58 percent) popular votes and a commanding 444 electoral votes. Governor Smith received only 15 million popular votes (41 percent) and 87 electoral votes. Smith managed to carry only Rhode Island and Massachsetts and the Deep South. Several Southern states like Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina for the first time since Reconstruction went Republican. Here Smith's Catholcism hurt him badly. And his home state of New York went Republican. Desguised in the landslide was the fact that the Democrats carried most large northern industrial cities. One of the few Democratic bright spots was the election of Franklin Roosevelt to replace Govenor Smith in New York.
Hoover's presidency will for ever be associated with the Depression. Hoover did not cause the Depression. The stock market crash that brought on the Depression had been the immediate result of a decade of building speculation. The Depression that followed was deepened by a range of inequities and mismanagement in the American economy. Hoover was not only unwilling to address these problems, but some Government policies even worsened economic conditions.
Herbert Hoover told Americans, "We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land." His election to many Americans seemed to ensure prosperity. Hoover was the only non-military president who gained the office without previously seeking public office. Yet within months the stock market crashed, and the Nation spiraled downward the most severe depression in its history. After the crash Hoover announced that while he would keep the Federal budget balanced, he would cut taxes and expand public works spending. In 1931 repercussions from Europe deepened the crisis, even though the President presented to Congress a program asking for creation of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to aid business, additional help for farmers facing mortgage foreclosures, banking reform, a loan to states for feeding the unemployed, expansion of public works, and drastic governmental economy. At the same time 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. Hoover's opponents in Congress, who he felt were sabotaging his program for their own political gain, unfairly painted him as a callous and cruel President. He was neither. He was, however, unwilling to use government to address the people's needs. Hoover became the scapegoat for the depression and he and the Republican Party were badly defeated in 1932. He left the White House a bitter man.
It is an irony of history that Hoover, a pennyless orphan as a boy would not vigorously address the needs of those impoverished by the Depression. And even more so that their needs wee addressed by Roosevelt, a member of the elite class raised in luxury. The difference between the two men was not compasion. Hoover was a compasionate man with a record of humanitarianism. Hoover despite his early poverty was aself-made man and like many self-made men was convinved that the American economy and society was essentially sound and was thus opposed to experimentation or a significant expansion of the role of government. Here Roosevely was prepared to make major changes and experiment with major social reforms.
America less than a year after Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover's impressive victory was struck by the Wall Street Crash (1929). President Hoover's unwillingness to act decisevely meant that America lapsed into the Great Depression. The Republicans stuck with President Hoover, but withoyt enthusiam--in sharp contrast to 1928. The economic devestation virtusally preordained that the Democrats would win the 1932 election. The question was only who would win the Democratic nomination. Following his reelection as governor in 1930, Roosevelt began to campaign for the presidency. While the economic depression damaged Hoover and the Republicans, Roosevelt's bold efforts to combat it in New York enhanced his reputation. In Chicago in 1932, Roosevelt won the nomination as the Democratic Party candidate for president. He broke with tradition and flew to Chicago to accept the nomination in person. He then campaigned energetically calling for government intervention in the economy to provide relief, recovery and reform. His activist approach and personal charm helped to defeat Hoover in November 1932 by seven million votes. The land-slide Democratic election victory resulted in a major realignment of American politics,
Hoover never changed his views. He was extreemly embittered with his electoral defeat in 1932. In the 1930's he became a vocal critic of FDR's New Deal, warning against tendencies toward statism. Even more disastorously for his reputation, he joined the isolationists and argued against President Roosevelt's efforts to aid the Allies seeing it as drawing America into World War II. He seems to have not seen the danger that the mortal danger that NAZIs posed for America and the inevitability that America would have to eventually fight them. President Truman in 1947 appointed Hoover to a commission, which elected him chairman, to reorganize the Executive Departments. He was appointed chairman of a similar commission by President Eisenhower in 1953. Many economies resulted from both commissions' recommendations. Hoover published a ponderous three volume memoir (1951). Much of it was a critique of the New Deal. Even more diffivult to explain, however, was his support of isolationsism when World war II broke out in Europe. Over the years, Hoover wrote many articles and books, one of which he was working on when he died at 90 in New York City on October 20, 1964. Politically the Hoover Administration was a watershed in American politics. Since the Civil War the United States was an essentially Republican country. After the Hoover administration, America with the rise of organized labor would be a largely Democratic nation until the Regan Revolution of the 1980s.
Lou Henry Hoover is not a First Ladt often mentioned, presumably because her husband was such a failed president. First Ladies rightly or wrongly are assessed in part as a part of their huband's presidency. And Hoover's efforts to deal with the Depression were wholely inadequate. Mrs. Hoover herself was quite an admirable person. She was in every way a partner to her husband.
She worked with him in all his persuits, sharing his many interests. Lou Hoover had it not been for the Depression might have been considered one of the more notable First Ladies. She night be considered the first feminist First Lady for her work with the Girl Scouts and women's athletics. The Hoovers while acquiring the image as uncaring about the plight of the unemployed were in fact involved in charitable activities. What we do not understand about Mrs. Hoover is why she did not publically emerse herself in charitable work to help those adversely affected by the Depression. Was it that this work with the down trodden did not appeal to her or did her husband not want her to get involved. Of course this would have had little affect on the Depression, it might have affected the public perception of the Hoovers. It would have also incouraged more women to do the same. Here we just do not know. It seems particularly difficult to understand given their history of organizing relief progams diring and after World War I.
Two sons, Herbert and Allan, were born during their parents' adventurous life abroad.
Hervert attended Stanford and for a time taught at the Harvard Business School. He married Margaret Watson and they had three children. He persued a career in geology. He was also an inventor and diplomat.
Allan married Margaret Coberly. They had three children. He made a fortune ranching in California. As an older man he moved to Connecticut and devoted himself to reserecting his father's reputation which had been destroyed by his inadequate response to the Depression.
Wead, Doug. All the President's Children: Triumph and Tragedy in the Lives of America's First Families (Atria: New York, 2003), 456p.
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