Fun Fact: Parties at the White House during Herbert Hoover's
term were big events. As many as 4,000 invitations to a gala would
be loaded on trucks and hand delivered around Washington.
Fast Fact: Herbert Hoover's record of service abroad and
at home spanned half a century.
Biography: 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.
(This material on President Hoover is courtesy of the White House
web site.)
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