Herbert Hoover: A Thumbnail Sketch
Here's a thumbnail sketch on Herbert Hoover:
Hoover lost his father when he was 6 years old, and his mother when he was 9. He went to live with a relative in Oregon
He never attended or finished high school. Accepted in Stanford U. as a geology major. Met his future wife there, also a geology student. Together they translated a Latin text on metals.
He worked in mines in Australia and China. Eventually became a partner in a mining company. Instituted safe practices and fair wages for workers. Became a self-made millionaire.
Although a Republican, he accepted a position with Pres. Woodrow Wilson as a dollar a year man to manage food relief for millions in Europe.
He served as Secretary of Commerce in the Harding and Coolidge administrations. He instituted standardization of weights and measures that immensely streamlined industrial operations country-wide.
As President-elect he took his family on a U.S. Battleship and toured all the South American countries, visiting the capitals and the heads of state. Thus was born America's Good Neighbor Policy, which many people erroneously credit to Franklin Roosevelt.
Charles Curtis, Hoover’s vice president, was the only nonwhite person to be elected vice president of the U.S. He was a Kaw Indian.
One of his first orders when he got his Attorney General confirmed was to instruct him that he wanted no Red Scares. If the Communists wanted to peacefully picket the White House, they should be permitted to do so.
He donated his Presidential salary to the Boys' Clubs of America. From the day he organized the Belgian relief efforts in 1914 until his death 50 years later, Hoover never accepted any payment for public service.
He was officially denounced by the state legislature of Texas when his wife invited a black congressman's wife to tea at the White House.
(When he and his wife wished to communicate privately in the company of others they would speak in Chinese.)
He worried about what was going on in Wall Street, but felt that the Federal Government could not intrude on New York State institutions such as the Stock Exchange, and the New York banks. He appealed to Roosevelt who was Governor of NY at the time, but nothing happened to forestall the crash. When the depression started he felt the country could withstand the temporary shock and recover without government intervention. But he had not reckoned on Europe's going into a tailspin, causing a world- wide depression. In statesman-like manner he proposed to all the parties concerned that if France and England held up demands for reparations from Germany for one year, the U.S. would suspend loan payments from France and England for that period. He knew that European recovery depended on Germany's recovery.
When the veterans marched on Washington demanding payment of their second bonus, and camped outside the capital, it was when they moved forward and occupied some abandoned and condemned buildings that Hoover instructed the Superintendent of the District, and the Army Chief of Staff to move them back. However, those two characters exceeded their orders and brought out tanks and fire hoses that became a national scandal. When he heard of what was going on Hoover tried to get the two to back off, but they ignored the messengers, and they never acknowledged their culpability, so Hoover accepted the blame. Hoover should have fired that Chief of Staff, as Truman did 20 years later.
By now it was 1931, and Hoover tried to take some positive steps to boost the economy, but the damage had been done.
After he left office, Hoover was twice called back to reorganize the Executive Branch, once by Truman and again by Eisenhower.
During his lifetime, he authored 16 books.
“Probably Armenia was known to the American school child in 1919 only a little less than England. The association of Mount Ararat and Noah, the staunch Christians who were massacred periodically by the Mohammedan Turks, and the Sunday School collections over 50 years for alleviating their miseries—all cumulate to impress the name Armenia on the front of the American mind.” …Herbert Hoover, memoirs, Years of Adventure, 1874-1920 (New York, 1951)