31. HERBERT HOOVER 1929-1933
Son of a Quaker blacksmith, Herbert Clark Hoover brought to the
Presidency an unparalleled reputation for public service as an
engineer, administrator, and humanitarian.
Born in an Iowa village in 1874, he grew up in Oregon. He
enrolled at Stanford University when it opened in 1891, graduating
as a mining engineer.
He 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.
One week before Hoover celebrated his 40th birthday in London,
Germany declared war on France, and the American Consul General
asked his help in getting stranded tourists home. In six weeks his
committee helped 120,000 Americans return to the United States.
Next Hoover turned to a far more difficult task, to feed Belgium,
which had been overrun by the German army.
After the United States entered the war, President 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.
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 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!"
After capably serving as Secretary of Commerce under Presidents
Harding and Coolidge, Hoover became the 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." His election seemed to ensure prosperity. Yet within
months the stock market crashed, and the Nation spiraled downward
into depression.
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.
His opponents in Congress, who he felt were sabotaging his
program for their own political gain, unfairly painted him as a
callous and cruel President. Hoover became the scapegoat for the
depression and was badly defeated in 1932. In the 1930's he became
a powerful critic of the New Deal, warning against tendencies
toward statism.
In 1947 President Truman 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. 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.
For more information about President Hoover, please visit
Herbert Hoover Library and Museum
Information is from the whitehouse.org website.