Herbert Clark Hoover

Herbert Clark Hoover 1874-1964, 31st President of the United States (1929-33), b. West Branch, Iowa.

Wartime Relief Efforts

After graduating (1895) from Stanford, he worked as a mining engineer in many parts of the world. He became an independent mining consultant and established offices in New York City, San Francisco, and London. When World War I broke out in 1914, Hoover, then in London, was made chairman of the American Relief Commission. In this post he arranged the return to the United States of some 150,000 Americans stranded in Europe. As chairman (1915-19) of the Commission for Relief in Belgium, he secured food and clothing for civilians of war-devastated Belgium and N France. After the United States entered the war, he became U.S. Food Administrator, a member of the War Trade Council, and chairman of the Interallied Food Council.

Appointed a chairman of the Supreme Economic Council and director of the European Relief and Reconstruction Commission at the Paris Peace Conference, he coordinated the work of the various relief agencies; he was given direct authority over the transportation systems of Eastern Europe in order to ensure efficient distribution of supplies. After the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, Hoover returned (1919) to the United States, although he continued to direct the American Relief Administration, which was to feed millions in the 1921-23 famine in the USSR.

Presidency

As Secretary of Commerce (1921-29) under Presidents Harding and Coolidge, Hoover reorganized and expanded the department, sponsored conferences on unemployment, fostered trade associations, and gave his support to such engineering projects as the St. Lawrence Waterway and the Hoover Dam. Hoover gained great popular approval, and he easily won the Republican nomination for President in 1928 and defeated Democratic candidate Alfred E. Smith .

In the first year of his administration Hoover established the Federal Farm Board, pressed for tariff revision (which resulted in the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act ), and appointed the National Commission on Law Observance and Law Enforcement, with George W. Wickersham as chairman, to study the problem of enforcing prohibition . The rest of his administration was dominated by the major economic depression ushered in by the stock market crash of Oct., 1929.

Hoover, believing in the basic soundness of the economy, felt that it would regenerate spontaneously and was reluctant to extend federal activities. Nonetheless he did recommend, and Congress gave the funds for, a large public works program, and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation was created (1932) to stimulate industry by giving loans unobtainable elsewhere. Congress, which had a Democratic majority after the 1930 elections, passed the Emergency Relief Act and created the federal home loan banks. As the Great Depression deepened, veterans demanded immediate payment of bonus certificates (issued to them in 1924 for redemption in 1945). In 1932 some 15,000 ex-servicemen, known as the Bonus Marchers , marched on Washington; Hoover ordered federal troops to oust them from federal property.

In foreign affairs Hoover was confronted with the problems of disarmament, reparations and war debts, and Japanese aggression in East Asia. The United States participated in the London Conference of 1930 (see naval conferences ) and signed the resulting treaty; it also took part in the abortive Disarmament Conference . In 1931, Hoover proposed a one-year moratorium on reparations and war debts to ease the financial situation in Europe. The administration's reaction to the Japanese invasion (1931) of Manchuria was expressed by Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson , who declared that the United States would not recognize territorial changes achieved by force or by infringement of American treaty rights. Hoover ran for reelection in 1932 but was overwhelmingly defeated by Franklin Delano Roosevelt .

The Hoover Commissions

Except for major speeches before the Republican conventions and a 1938 European tour, Hoover retired from public life until the close of World War II, when he undertook (1946) the coordination of food supplies to countries badly affected by the war. He then headed (1947-49) the Hoover Commission, a committee empowered by Congress to study the executive branch of government. Many of its recommendations were adopted, including establishment of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Under President Eisenhower he headed the second Hoover Commission (1953-55), which made recommendations on policy as well as organization. The Herbert Hoover Library was dedicated at West Branch, Iowa, in 1962. Hoover died on Oct. 20, 1964, in New York City.

Bibliography

Among Hoover's writings are Principles of Mining (1909), The Challenge to Liberty (1934), The Ordeal of Woodrow Wilson (1958), and An American Epic (3 vol., 1959-61). With his wife, Lou Henry Hoover (1875-1944), he translated Agricola's De re metallica (1912).

Hoover, Herbert Clark (1874–1964) 31st US President (1929–33). Acclaimed for his work with victims of war, he was secretary of commerce under presidents Harding and Coolidge. After winning the Republican nomination for president in 1928, Hoover easily defeated Alfred E. Smith. During his first year in office, the economy was shattered by the Wall Street Crash and the ensuing Great Depression. With his belief in individual enterprise and distrust of government interference, Hoover failed to provide sufficient government resources to deal with the Depression. In 1932, he was resoundingly defeated by Franklin D. Roosevelt's promise of a New Deal.

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Hoover, Herbert Clark (b. 10 Aug. 1874, d. 20 Oct. 1964). 31st US President 1929–33 A gifted administrator and self-made millionaire with an extensive knowledge of mining engineering, he was born at West Branch, Iowa, and graduated with an AB in engineering from Stanford in 1895. He directed the Belgian relief operations in 1917–19 and became Commerce Secretary in the Harding administration after being passed over for the Republican presidential nomination in 1920. His brief honeymoon after victory in 1929 over Al Smith, the Democratic candidate and the first serious Catholic candidate for the presidency, collapsed after the Wall Street Crash. Since then his name has been, perhaps somewhat unfairly, associated with the Great Depression (1929–38). His insistence that ‘prosperity was just around the corner’ caused his reputation to plummet, against the evidence of growing jobless queues and depending economic crisis. However, Hoover was deeply suspicious of government interference in the economy. Instead, he hoped to create inducements for private industry to stimulate growth, and encourage investment through extra lending from the private sector. In 1932 he authorized the creation of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to provide extra loans for banks. He authorized the building of the Colorado Dam project in Nevada (now named after him), but vetoed a similar programme for job creation and electricity generation in Tennessee. He also endorsed the Smoot–Hawley Tariff, which sought to protect US domestic markets from foreign competition. Unfortunately, they increased the price of imports at a time of low liquidity, and contributed materially to a slump in world trade. In 1932, an angry ‘Bonus Army’ of about 20,000 veterans gathered in Washington demanding premature payment of their bonuses. The dispersal of their temporary camp by troops commanded by Douglas MacArthur, who used excessive violence, fuelled the impression of Hoover as heartless. After leaving office, he chaired several important commissions on the reorganization of the federal government and executive for Presidents Truman and Eisenhower.