Herbert Clark Hoover

Herbert Clark Hoover (1874-1964), thirty-first president of the United States, could not halt the severest economic depression in American history because his governmental theories prevented him from taking drastic steps.

On Aug. 10, 1874, Herbert Hoover was born at West Branch, Iowa, of Quaker ancestry. His father died when he was 6 and, after his mother's death less than 3 years later, he went to live with an uncle in Oregon. In 1891 he entered Stanford University, where he specialized in geology.

After graduating, Hoover worked as a mining engineer in the western United States, Australia, and China. In 1901 he became a junior partner in a London-based mining firm and 7 years later set up on his own. During these years he amassed a fortune estimated at $4 million. On Feb. 10, 1899, he married his college sweetheart, Lou Henry; they had two sons, Herbert, Jr., and Allan.

In London when World War I broke out, Hoover was asked to head the Belgian relief program. He was so successful that in May 1917 President Woodrow Wilson called him back to head the U.S. Food Administration. After the armistice he was placed in charge of the American Relief Administration, organized to feed war-ravaged Europe. When the congressional appropriation ran out, Hoover successfully appealed for private contributions to keep the work going.

Hoover was talked of as a possible 1920 presidential candidate by admirers in both parties. Although he publicly declared himself a Republican, the party's Old Guard disliked him because he was a late convert, and its isolationist wing disapproved of his advocacy of the League of Nations. Republican president Warren G. Harding, however, appointed him secretary of commerce, a post he held through the following administration of Calvin Coolidge.

Secretary of Commerce

During the 1920s Hoover set forth the basic philosophy that would guide him throughout his career. His central tenet was individualism, by which he meant equality of opportunity for each man to make the fullest possible use of his abilities. But he insisted that individualism be tempered by a sense of social responsibility and voluntary cooperation for the general good; he rejected old-fashioned free competition as wasteful. He believed that the government's function was to conserve natural resources, protect equality of opportunity, encourage business efficiency, promote scientific research, and build major public works.

Hoover transformed the Commerce Department into an effective instrument for implementing his philosophy. He fostered the growth of trade associations to bring improved efficiency and stability to industry, promoted American foreign trade, and expanded the Department's information and statistical services. He also set up a Division of Housing to encourage home building, built the Bureau of Standards into one of the country's leading scientific research institutions, and successfully pushed for stronger government regulation of the commercial aviation and radio industries.

Hoover's influence became increasingly important in all economic questions facing the Federal government. Believing that management and labor must cooperate for the good of all, he favored collective bargaining (though not the closed shop), worked behind the scenes to resolve labor disputes, and encouraged development of privately financed unemployment insurance. For relief to farmers he opposed government price-fixing of agricultural products, instead favoring increased Federal assistance to farm marketing cooperatives.

After Coolidge decided not to run again in 1928, Hoover was the popular choice of the party rank and file and won the Republican presidential nomination on the first ballot. In the election he defeated Democrat Alfred E. Smith by over 6 million votes, even breaking the "solid South."

Foreign Affairs

Hoover's record in foreign affairs was mixed. Immediately after his election he made a successful goodwill tour of Latin America, and throughout his term he actively worked for a good-neighbor policy south of the border. He was interested in promoting international disarmament, but the London Naval Conference of 1930 was only partly successful, and his efforts at the Geneva Disarmament Conference (which met in 1932 to secure abolition or reduction of offensive weapons) failed. His administration's worst mistake concerned the Japanese invasion and occupation of Manchuria in 1931. Secretary of State Henry Stimson was willing to impose economic sanctions against Japan, but Hoover, fearful of instigating a war, limited the American response to the ineffectual Stimson Nonrecognition Doctrine.

Domestic Policy

Domestically, Hoover expanded the national forests and parks, laid the groundwork for many of the later New Deal accomplishments in water-resource development, increased Federal highway spending, was instrumental in setting up the privately financed Research Committee on Social Trends, reorganized the Federal prison system, promoted the growth of civilian aviation, and even approved a bill which drastically limited the use of injunctions in labor disputes.

On the other hand, Hoover's opposition to government competition with business led him to veto a bill for government operation of the hydroelectric facilities at Muscle Shoals, Ala. And despite warnings from economists of its disastrous consequences for international trade and economic stability, he signed legislation which raised the average level of tariff duties from roughly 30 to about 59 percent. But what most damaged his reputation was the inadequacy of his response to the depression that followed the stock market crash of October-November 1929.

Voluntarism versus Federal Intervention

Although previous chief executives had taken the position that the business cycle would simply have to run its course, Hoover believed that the government could and should act to cushion economic shocks. When the Depression hit, he made repeated optimistic statements about the economy to bolster business confidence, had the Federal Reserve Board follow an "easy money" policy, and accelerated work on Federal projects. However, his major emphasis was on voluntary action rather than government intervention: he exhorted industry to maintain employment and wages, induced bankers to establish the National Credit Corporation to assist threatened banks, and relied upon the traditional agencies of private charity and local government to provide relief for the unemployed.

But this voluntarism was a failure. The business community lacked the discipline and sense of social responsibility for effective cooperation. Yet, despite increasing hardship in all sectors, Hoover was convinced that the country was basically sound. He held that the causes of the Depression lay outside the United States. To prevent the threatened breakdown of the German economy under the burden of reparations payments—which would have jeopardized millions of dollars of American loans—he arranged a one-year moratorium on payment both of reparations and inter-Allied war debts.

By late 1931 Hoover was driven to embrace more direct Federal intervention. He established the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to make emergency loans to financial institutions and certain corporations. He supported the Glass-Steagall Act, which liberalized the Federal Reserve System's credit requirements; and the Federal Home Loan Bank Act, to assist building and loan societies, savings banks, and insurance companies in expanding loans for residential construction. Hoover's program rested on the assumption that infusing additional credit into the economy would be enough to revive business activity. Still the economy continued its downward slide.

Nevertheless, Hoover stood firm against the massive public-works spending that Democrats and progressive Republicans increasingly demanded. He was adamantly against any direct Federal relief for the unemployed, not only for budgetary reasons, but because he was determined to preserve what he regarded as the fundamental American principles of individual and local responsibility.

Despite sharp Republican losses in the 1930 congressional elections, Hoover largely had his way. He successfully fought a proposal to strengthen the ineffective U.S. Employment Service. And the Relief and Construction Act (1932), which authorized loans of $1.5 billion to state and local agencies for self-liquidating public works and $300 million to the states for relief purposes, was watered down to meet his specifications. He suffered only two major legislative defeats: a proposed sales tax for balancing the budget and an overridden veto on the bill permitting veterans to borrow up to 50 percent of the face value of their bonus certificates.

"Bonus Army" Blunder

In his personal relations Hoover was affable and genial, a sensitive and humane idealist—qualities he was unable to project to the public. His sensitivity to criticism led to poor relations with the press, and his resistance to direct Federal relief made him appear callous to the suffering around him.

Perhaps Hoover's worst blunder was his handling of the "bonus army." An estimated 17, 000 former servicemen flocked to Washington in the spring of 1932 to demand that Congress authorize the immediate payment in full of their bonus certificates. When the Senate, under Hoover's prodding, defeated the measure, most returned to their homes. An attempt by Washington police to evict those remaining resulted in the death of two veterans and two policemen. Hoover then called out Federal troops on July 28, 1932—an action that made him even more unpopular.

New Deal Triumphs

In the 1932 campaign Hoover warned that the program of Democratic nominee Franklin D. Roosevelt threatened a "radical departure" from the American way of life. His efforts to cooperate with the president-elect came to naught, because Roosevelt and his "Brain Trust" correctly suspected that Hoover wanted to commit the new administration to a continuation of his own policies. When Hoover left office in March 1933, nearly the entire United States economy was paralyzed.

In the years that followed, Hoover remained politically active, attacking Roosevelt's New Deal policies, which he blamed for prolonging the Depression by destroying business confidence. Prior to Pearl Harbor, Hoover was a strong isolationist; after World War II he was a leading exponent of the "Fortress America" theory.

Elder Statesman

When Hoover left office, he was probably the most hated president in American history. Only the passage of time led to a fairer judgment. In 1947 President Harry S. Truman appointed him chairman of the Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government. In 1953 President Dwight Elsenhower appointed him to the same job. The work of these two Hoover commissions provided the basis for a major reorganization of the executive branch. When he died on Oct. 20, 1964, Hoover was widely respected as one of the nation's foremost elder statesmen.

Hoover did more than any previous chief executive to combat a depression, but the limitations of his political and social philosophy proved his undoing. Perhaps the most significant result of his experiment in voluntarism was that its failure prepared the public to accept the farreaching expansion of Federal authority under the New Deal.

Further Reading

Before his death Hoover completed his Memoirs (3 vols., 1951-1952), covering the years up to 1941. There is no adequate biography. Eugene Lyons, Herbert Hoover: A Biography (1964), is superficial and eulogistic. Harris Gaylord Warren, Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression (1959), and Albert U. Romansco, The Poverty of Abundance: Hoover, the Nation, the Depression (1965), are useful, but both suffer from lack of access to the Hoover papers. See also Harold Wolfe, Herbert Hoover, Public Servant and Leader of the Loyal Opposition: A Study of his Life and Career (1956). A discussion of foreign policy is Robert H. Ferrell, American Diplomacy in the Great Depression: Hoover-Stimson Foreign Policy, 1929-1933 (1957). □

HOOVER, HERBERT CLARK

Herbert Clark Hoover was the thirty-first president of the United States, serving from 1929 to 1932. A wealthy mining engineer, Hoover directed humanitarian relief efforts during and after World Wars I and II. His presidency was devastated by the stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression.

Hoover was born August 10, 1874, in West Branch, Iowa. His father and mother died when he was young, and he was raised by an uncle in Oregon. He entered the first first-year class at Stanford University and graduated in 1895 with a degree in mining engineering. He became an expert on managing and reorganizing mines throughout the world. He spent time in Australia and China before setting up his own engineering firm in London in 1908. By 1914 Hoover had become a millionaire.

Hoover became involved in relief work during world war i. In 1914 he served as director of the American Relief Commission in England, which helped one hundred twenty thousand U.S. citizens return home after being stranded at the outbreak of the war. The British government then asked him to lead the Commission for Relief in Belgium. His main achievement during this period was the distribution of supplies to civilian victims of the war in Belgium and France.

After the United States entered the war in 1917, President woodrow wilson named Hoover U.S. food administrator. In this capacity Hoover coordinated the production and conservation of food supplies that could be used for the war effort. Hoover also chaired the European Relief and Reconstruction Commission, directing activities of numerous relief departments and organizing the distribution of provisions. After the war Hoover coordinated the American Relief Administration. This agency provided food to millions during the famine of 1921 in the Soviet Union.

"Free speech does not live many hours after free industry and free commerce die."
—Herbert Hoover

Hoover's humanitarian efforts made him an international figure. Democrats and Republicans sought to make him a presidential candidate in 1920, but Hoover rejected their offers. Instead, in 1921 he accepted the position of secretary of commerce in the administration of President warren g. harding, a Republican.

Hoover was an energetic administrator, reorganizing the department and expanding its oversight into commercial aviation, highway safety, and radio broadcasting. He chaired commissions that established the Hoover Dam and the St. Lawrence Seaway.

In 1928 Hoover won the Republican presidential nomination. He easily defeated Democrat Alfred E. Smith, on a platform of continued economic prosperity and support for prohibition.

Hoover devoted the early days of his presidency to improving the economic conditions of farmers. He advocated foreign tariffs on imported farm products as a way to protect domestic farm prices. Congress went beyond Hoover's recommendation and in 1930 enacted the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act (19 U.S.C.A. § 1303 et seq.), which placed tariffs on nonfarm products as well. The act severely damaged U.S. foreign trade.

The control of Prohibition pursuant to the eighteenth amendment and the volstead act (41 Stat. 305 [1919]) had become a serious problem by 1929. organized crime had seized the opportunity to sell illegal alcohol. The only way large-scale liquor and speakeasy traffic could flourish was with the cooperation of law enforcement, so state and local law enforcement agencies were tainted with corruption. In 1929 Hoover established the National Commission on Law Observance and Law Enforcement, appointing george w. wickersham to direct an investigation of the effectiveness of law enforcement practices in the United States. The wickersham commission report was an important inquiry into the practices of the U.S. criminal justice system. The report examined all facets of police work and, for the first time, discussed police brutality and the "third degree" method of interrogating suspects. The report called for the professionalization of police.

The U.S. economy appeared to be robust in 1929, but a rising stock market had been built on stock purchases financed by widespread borrowing. When the stock market crashed on October 29, individuals, banks, and other economic institutions were devastated. Hoover sought to inspire public confidence by meeting with business leaders and by proclaiming that the economic downturn would be brief.

Hoover's prediction was wrong. The United States slid into the worst economic depression in

its history. Hoover resisted massive federal intervention because he believed that the economy would correct itself. He did approve some federal public works projects that provided jobs, but he opposed federal aid to the unemployed. In his view private charity should help those who had fallen on hard times.

In 1932, with 12 million people out of work and hundreds of banks failing, Hoover created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) to extend loans to revitalize industry and to keep banks from going into bankruptcy. Congress authorized the RFC to loan up to $300 million to states for relief. Many persons viewed these actions as too little and too late.

The troubles of the Hoover administration culminated in the Bonus Army March on Washington, D.C. In 1932 World War I veterans demanded monetary bonuses that had been promised them in 1924, even though the bonuses were not scheduled to be paid until 1945. The House of Representatives had passed a bill authorizing early payment, and the veterans sought to pressure the Senate to follow suit. More than fifteen thousand veterans, in desperate need of funds, organized a march on Washington, D.C., to secure immediate payment from the government. The "bonus army" constructed a makeshift city and declared that its members were ready to stay until their goal was achieved. Hoover dispatched federal troops to destroy the encampment and drive the veterans out of the nation's capital. For doing so he received nationwide criticism.

The republican party nominated Hoover for a second term in 1932, but his candidacy attracted little enthusiasm. The democratic party nominee, New York Governor franklin d. roosevelt, mounted a vigorous campaign against Hoover's economic policies, calling for a "new deal" for U.S. citizens. Roosevelt promised to balance the budget, provide relief to the unemployed, help the farmer, and repeal Prohibition. He carried forty-two of the forty-eight states.

Hoover was angered by Roosevelt's new deal, which made the federal government the dominant player in the national economy. In 1934 he published The Challenge to Liberty, which attacked Roosevelt and his policies. He then withdrew from public life until 1946, when President harry s. truman asked him to return to relief work. Hoover subsequently directed the Famine Emergency Commission, which distributed food supplies to war-torn nations. In 1947 Truman authorized him to investigate the executive department of the U.S. government. The resulting Hoover Commission proposed changes in the executive branch that saved money and streamlined government.

Hoover had a continuing interest in the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, which he founded at Stanford in 1919 and which remains an important research center. He published his memoirs in three volumes (1951–52) and The Ordeal of Woodrow Wilson (1958).

Hoover lived longer after leaving the presidency than did any other president. He died at age ninety on October 20, 1964, in New York City.

further readings

Walch, Timothy, ed. 2003. Uncommon Americans: The Lives and Legacies of Herbert and Lou Henry Hoover. West-port, Conn.: Praeger.

Hoover, Herbert (1874–1964), thirty‐first president of the United States.Born in West Branch, Iowa, of Quaker parents, Herbert Clark Hoover was orphaned at the age of nine and subsequently reared by relatives in Oregon, where he attended Friends Pacific Academy. After graduating from the newly founded Stanford University in 1895, he entered the employ of mining engineer Louis Janin. Hoover next joined the British firm of Bewick, Moering, initially as a manager in Australia, later as a company representative in China, and after 1901 as a partner. In business for himself after 1908, he specialized in reorganizing and refinancing “sick” mining enterprises. He married Lou Henry, a fellow Stanford graduate in 1899; they had two sons.

During World War I, Hoover achieved world stature as both an engineer and a humanitarian. His role in rescuing stranded Americans and feeding starving Belgians made him the “master of relief.” As food administrator in the Woodrow Wilson administration he engaged in “Hooverizing” U.S. consumption habits to conserve scarce commodities and became the best known of America's wartime domestic managers. He remained in the limelight after the war, first as director of American relief abroad, then as a progressive leader of the engineering profession, and, after 1921, as an active and highly visible secretary of commerce in the Republican presidential administrations of Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge. In 1928 a legion of admirers helped him secure the Republican presidential nomination, and in November he easily defeated Democratic opponent Alfred E. Smith.

During his pre‐presidential government career, Hoover had launched regulatory and welfare agencies heavily reliant on private‐sector resources, and in the process had worked out a progressive social agenda to be realized through government‐encouraged “associational action” rather than through public administration. In 1928 he spoke of a New Day to be ushered in by this “cooperative system.” As president, Hoover made extensions of this ideology the basis of his reform agenda and his battle against the Great Depression, which set in after the stock market crash of October 1929. Rejecting laissez‐faire prescriptions, including those of Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, he tried to raise spending levels through government‐sponsored cooperative action by business leaders and through federalization of parts of the credit system, creating in 1932 the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, modeled on the federal lending agency of World War I, to extend credit to major economic institutions such as banks and insurance companies. But he rejected allegedly “dangerous” forms of federal investment, financing, relief, and market control. Perversely, his success in raising tariffs in 1930 and other taxes in 1932 worked at cross purposes with his economic recovery aims. Moreover, the Depression's persistence undercut most of the reform agenda he kept trying to implement. The construction of Hoover Dam on the Colorado River, begun in 1931, and passage of the Federal Home Loan Bank System Act in 1932, designed to help hard‐pressed homeowners avoid foreclosure, were lasting achievements. But most of Hoover's attempts to promote cooperative, private‐sector recovery and relief efforts, including those involving agricultural marketing associations, oil and timber conservation, and social‐welfare organizations, eventually failed.

Abroad, Hoover's administration made only limited responses to the Depression's corrosive effects on international order. Disarmament initiatives produced only the ineffectual London Naval Treaty of 1930. Concerns about international debts brought only the one‐year Hoover Debt Moratorium of 1931 and a renunciation of forced debt collection in Latin America. Japan's aggression in China produced only a policy of not recognizing Japan's puppet state in Manchuria. Proposals for war‐debt cancellation, economic sanctions against aggressors, and the United States's becoming the international lender of last resort were all ruled out. These options were not only politically difficult but beyond the limits of Hoover's internationalism.

Meanwhile, the deepening Depression was also sparking political realignment and a growing anti‐Hoover national mood. The one‐time “great engineer” and “great humanitarian” now became a national scapegoat. The floating communities of jobless men in the nation's cities were dubbed Hoovervilles. Making matters worse were such public relations fiascoes as Hoover's opposition to more generous drought relief, his continued support for prohibition, and his administration's 1932 military action against a “bonus army” of veterans in the nation's capital. Hoover won renomination in 1932, but in the November election he carried only six states. In March 1933, after a four‐month interregnum marked by governmental stalemate and collapse of the banking system, his presidency gave way to Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal.

After leaving the White House, Hoover remained active in Republican party politics and in debates concerning the New Deal. As World War II approached, he backed the noninterventionist cause and tried unsuccessfully to establish food relief programs in German‐occupied countries. After the war, he gradually attained elder‐statesman status, advising on postwar relief problems, heading commissions on governmental reorganization, and publishing his memoirs and other works. He is buried in West Branch, Iowa, near the Hoover presidential library.

A man of immense energy, a sincere commitment to public service, legendary organizational and administrative skills, and enduring Quaker sensibilities, Hoover served his nation well as a relief director, wartime food czar, commerce department secretary, and promoter of executive reorganization. But he lacked the political skills, charisma, and capacity for economic learning needed to lead a nation caught in the throes of the Great Depression. And while scholars now reject the older label of “do‐nothingism” and see his presidency as activist, reformist, intellectually sophisticated, and in some ways anticipatory of the New Deal, most still judge it a failure overall.
See also Corporatism; Depressions, Economic; Federal Government, Executive Branch: Other Departments (Department of Commerce); Federal Government, Executive Branch: The Presidency; Foreign Relations; New Deal Era, The; Society of Friends; Taxation; Temperance and Prohibition; Twenties, The.

Bibliography

Craig Lloyd , Aggressive Introvert: A Study of Herbert Hoover and Public Relations Management, 1912–1932, 1972.
Joan Hoff Wilson , Herbert Hoover: Forgotten Progressive, 1975.
David Burner , Herbert Hoover: A Public Life, 1979.
George H. Nash , The Life of Herbert Hoover, 3 vols., 1983, 1988, 1996.
William J. Barber , From New Era to New Deal: Herbert Hoover, the Economists, and American Economic Policy, 1921–1933, 1985.
Martin L. Fausold , The Presidency of Herbert C. Hoover, 1985.

Ellis W. Hawley

HOOVER, HERBERT 1874-1964

President of the united states (1929-1933)

Depression-Era President

The thirty-first president of the United States, Herbert Hoover was chief executive at the beginning of the worst economic depression in American history. His was a serious, incorruptible, and independent intellect. He lacked the personal charm and charisma of other politicians, but there was probably little that any sitting president could have done to win the popularity contest at the polls in 1932, and he lost the election to Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Background

Born in Iowa on 10 August 1874, Herbert Clark Hoover was orphaned as a child. A Quaker known from his childhood as "Bert" to his friends, he began a career as a mining engineer soon after graduating from Stanford University in 1895. Within twenty years he had used his engineering knowledge and business acumen to make a fortune as an independent mining consultant.

Public Service

In 1914 Hoover administered the American Relief Committee, which assisted more than one hundred thousand Americans trapped in Europe at the outbreak of World War I. During the war he was praised for his efficiency as head of the Commission for Relief in Belgium, as U.S. Food Administrator, and as chairman of the Interallied Food Council. After the war he directed the American Relief Administration. All told, Hoover was responsible for distributing more than $5 billion worth of food, clothing, and supplies during and after the war, and he was deservedly acclaimed worldwide as a great humanitarian. From 1918 into the early 1920s Europeans sent him tens of thousands of cards, letters, and drawings to express their gratitude for their "Hoover lunches." In Finland to "hoover" came to mean to act in a kindly and helpful manner. In the United States to "hooverize" came to mean to ration one's food and supplies, because while he was U.S. Food Administrator in 1917-1918, Hoover importuned the nation to conserve voluntarily resources and comply with meatless and wheatless days. Franklin D. Roosevelt said of Hoover in 1920, "He is certainly a wonder and I wish we could make him President of the United States. There could not be a better one." In 1919 Hoover founded the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University. As secretary of commerce in the Harding and Coolidge administrations (1921-1929), Hoover was widely celebrated for his leadership. In 1928 he defeated Democrat Al Smith for the presidency.

The Great Depression

Inaugurated on 4 March 1929, Hoover had been president only seven months when the stock market crashed. Ironically, at the start of his campaign he had declared that Americans were approaching "the final triumph over poverty," and he praised Americans' "rugged individualism" as a solution to the nation's economic problems. When it became clear that the Depression could not be ended without government intervention, Hoover reversed his stand and initiated a series of innovative federal programs in an attempt to counteract the economic downturn. But the economy continued to worsen, and he was handily defeated by Roosevelt in the presidential election of 1932. During Hoover's 1932 campaign one of his critics, Walter Lippmann, observed: "Mr. Hoover has long since abandoned his old faith in rugged individualism. His platform is a document of indefatigable paternalism. Its spirit is that of the Great White Father providing help for all his people. Every conceivable interest which has votes is offered protection, or subsidies, or access of some kind to the Treasury."

Out of Office

After his defeat Hoover kept silent on public policy for two years. In late 1934 he began his attack on the New Deal with The Challenge to Liberty', a book in which he articulated his ideological views. He remained active in the Republican Party, quietly and unsuccessfully seeking his party's presidential nomination in 1936 and 1940. As an elder statesman he headed government commissions under Presidents Harry'S Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower. After years of service to the nation, Herbert Hoover died on 29 October 1964.

Sources:

David Burner, Herbert Hoover: The Public Life (New York: Knopf, 1978);

Joan Hoff-Wilson, Herbert Hoover, Forgotten Progressive (Boston: Little, Brown, 1975).

Hoover, Herbert Clark (1874–1964) 31st president of the United States (1929–33), born in West Branch, Iowa. As a mining engineer with multiple foreign investments, Hoover became a millionaire by the age of forty. He came to public attention through his active leadership role in various relief efforts during and following World War I, primarily in the area of food distribution. He was sought as a presidential nominee by both parties in 1920, but refused to run. As secretary of commerce in the administrations of Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge, Hoover made that department one of the most important and well publicized by developing advanced economic theories about business cycles, promoting government regulation of radio and aviation, and supporting federal supervision of foreign loans. By 1928 he was viewed as a postwar economic superman and he easily defeated Democrat Alfred E. Smith for the presidency. But implementation of his progressive principles, which included cooperative economic organization, self-regulation by business, and voluntary activity through American society, was almost immediately thwarted by the stock market crash in October 1929. Remedial legislation failed to deal with the growing problem of the unemployed, but Hoover remained adamantly opposed to direct federal relief. Though he signed the Emergency and Relief Construction Act (1932), he placed many restrictions on its implementation. Perhaps Hoover's greatest blunder was accepting responsibility for Douglas MacArthur's burning of the veterans' camps that had been set up outside Washington, D.C., to protest the government's refusal to redeem veteran certificates, which Hoover considered equivalent to the dole. He left office in disgrace, blamed for the Depression and the routing of the veterans, which had been done in violation of his orders. His conservative fiscal policies, aversion to direct federal relief, and failure of relief initiatives (such as the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and the earlier Federal Farm Board) left millions unemployed at the end of his term. In foreign relations Hoover met with better success. Drawing on his early Quaker training, he relied on negotiation rather than the use of force, and supported arms limitation as well as international arbitration, positions which he continued to advocate after leaving office. Throughout the 1920s, World War II, and into the 1940s and 1950s, he supported various ways to avoid military conflict. His belief in the superiority of American capitalism made him fear neither fascism nor communism. Both Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower called upon Hoover's administrative skills to head up the reorganization of the executive branch of government, resulting in two Hoover Commission reports (1949 and 1955), many of whose recommendations were adopted.

HOOVER, HERBERT 1874-1964

Secretary of commerce, 1921-1929

President of the united states, 1929-1933

From Rags to Riches

Herbert Hoover was one of the most admired public figures in the United States before his reputation was tarnished by the onset of the Great Depression during his presidency. Hoover's life seemed like that of a Horatio Alger hero. Son of an Iowa farmer and orphaned at age ten, Herbert Clark Hoover earned a degree from Stanford University, became a mining engineer, and was a self-made millionaire before he reached forty. During World War I he directed the Belgian Relief Commission and headed the U.S. Food Administration, an arm of Woodrow Wilson's war mobilization effort. Hoover spent most of the 1920s as secretary of commerce under Presidents Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge.

Secretary of Commerce

Known to insiders as "Secretary of Commerce and Under Secretary of Everything Else," Hoover made Commerce one of the most active cabinet departments. Not a doctrinaire conservative like many other Republican cabinet officers of the decade, Hoover championed progressive capitalism, attempting to balance laissez-faire dogma with humanitarian values. Hoover strove to implement his principles of "cooperative capitalism" by forging an alliance between government and business that relied on experts and volunteers to promote efficiency and self-regulation. To accomplish these goals he organized hundreds of national conferences to study business and economic trends, bringing together experts, amassing information, and disseminating new ideas for making business more efficient and profitable. One of Hoover's crowning achievements was his encouragement of western states to cooperate in building a major dam, later named in his honor, on the Colorado River. He also coordinated relief efforts after the Mississippi River flood of 1927, one of the worst natural disasters of the decade.

President Hoover

Hoover's success as secretary of commerce helped in his campaign for the presidency in 1928, when he handily defeated Gov. Alfred E. Smith of New York. During the first eight months of his presidency Hoover exhibited his progressive tendencies through conservation policy, prison reform, a conference on child welfare, and the promotion of humanitarian treatment of African Americans. After the stock-market crash of October 1929 ushered in the Great Depression of the 1930s, however, Hoover's philosophy of self-help and voluntary cooperation proved inadequate to resolve the nation's economic problems and left the once-revered Hoover one of the nation's most criticized political figures for decades to come.

Source:

David Burner, Herbert Hoover: The Public Life (New York: Knopf, 1978).

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.

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.

http://archives.gov; http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents

Hoover, Herbert C(lark) (1874–1964) US Republican statesman, 31st President of the USA (1929–33). He first gained prominence for his work in organizing food production and distribution in the USA and Europe during and after World War I. As President he was faced with the long-term problems of the Depression which followed the stock market crash of 1929. He returned to relief work after World War II as coordinator of food supplies to avert the threat of postwar famine.