US statesman and 31st president (192933), born in West Branch, Iowa, USA. He studied at Stanford, then worked abroad as an engineer. During and after World War 1 he was associated with the relief of distress in Europe. In 1921 he became secretary of commerce, and in 1928 received the Republican Party's presidential nomination. As president, his opposition to direct governmental assistance for the unemployed after the world slump of 1929 made him unpopular, and he was beaten by Roosevelt in 1932. He assisted Truman with the various AmericanEuropean economic relief programmes which followed World War 2. The Hoover Dam is named after him.
Herbert Clark Hoover|
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| 31st President of the United States | |
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In office March 4, 1929 – March 4, 1933 |
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| Vice President(s) | Charles Curtis |
| Preceded by | Calvin Coolidge |
| Succeeded by | Franklin D. Roosevelt |
| Born |
August 10, 1874 West Branch, IA |
| Died |
October 20, 1964 New York City, New York |
| Political party | Republican |
| Spouse | Lou Henry Hoover |
| Religion | Quaker |
| Signature | |
Herbert Clark Hoover (August 10, 1874 – October 20, 1964), the 31st President of the United States (1929-1933), was a successful mining engineer, and administrator.
Family background
Hoover (whose family's name was originally Huber) was born into a Quaker family of distant German (Pfautz, Wehmeyer) and Swiss (Huber, Burkhart) descent, in West Branch, Iowa. Both of his parents, Jesse Hoover and Hulda Minthorn, died when Hoover was young.
In 1885, eleven-year-old "Bert" Hoover went to Newberg, Oregon to become the head leader over his uncle John Minthorn, a doctor and real estate developer whom Hoover recalled as "a severe man on the surface, but like all Quakers kindly at the bottom."
At a young age, Hoover was self-kept and goalgetting.
Mining Engineer
In August and September 1905 Herbert Hoover visited the mines at Broken Hill, NSW Australia, to judge the activity to extract zinc from tailings left after the concentrating process had taken a lead and silver concentrate. Hoover, through his workers Bewick, Moreing and Company, had been sent by the embryonic "Collins House" group of entrepreneurs and financiers. Judging that the on going technology of froth floatation, froth floatation process would be able to treat the zinc tailings Hoover acted to make contracts with the leading mines at Broken Hill to buy their tailings. Hoover became a director of the Zinc Corporation at its foundation.
Herbert Hoover was also the mining engineer at the Prince of Wales Mine, Gundagai in around 1900.. In 1902 Hoover travelled to Big Bell, Cue, Menzies and Coolgardie.
Humanitarian
Bored with making money, the Quaker side of Hoover was very anxious to be of service to others. Hoover led five hundred volunteers to pass out food, clothing, steamship tickets and cash. The difference between dictatorship and democracy, Hoover liked to say, was simple: dictators organize from the top down, democracies from the bottom up. Hoover undertook an unprecedented relief effort as head of the Commission for the Relief of Belgium (CRB).
After the United States entered the war in April 1917, President Woodrow Wilson appointed Hoover head of the American Food Administration, with headquarters in Washington, D.C. After the end of the war, Hoover, a member of the Supreme Economic Council and head of the American Relief Administration, organized shipments of food for millions of starving people in Central Europe. When a critic inquired if he was not thus helping Bolshevism, Hoover retorted, "Twenty million people are starving.
During this time, Hoover realized that he was in a unique position to collect information about the Great War and its aftermath. In 1919, he pledged US$50,000 to Stanford University to support his Hoover War Collection and donated to the University the extensive files of the Commission for Relief in Belgium, the U.S. Food Administration, and the American Relief Administration. The collection was later renamed the Hoover War Library and is now known as the Hoover Institution.
Commerce Secretary
Hoover was touted as a possible Democratic Party presidential candidate in 1920, but he announced his support for Warren G. Harding, and in 1921, Hoover became Secretary of Commerce. As Secretary of Commerce, Hoover became one of the most visible men in the country, often overshadowing Presidents Harding and Calvin Coolidge. As secretary and as President, Hoover revolutionized the relations between business and government.
Many of Hoover's efforts as Commerce Secretary centered on the elimination of waste and the increase of efficiency in business and industry.
Among Hoover's other successes were the radio conferences, which played a key role in the early organization, development and regulation of radio broadcasting. Hoover played a key role in major projects for navigation, irrigation of dry lands, electrical power, and flood control. As the new air transport industry developed, Hoover held a conference on aviation to promote codes and regulations. The governors of six states along the Mississippi asked for Herbert Hoover in the emergency, so President Coolidge sent Hoover to mobilize state and local authorities, militia, army engineers, Coast Guard, and the American Red Cross. His work during the flood brought Herbert Hoover to the front page of newspapers almost everywhere.
Election of 1928
In 1928, when President Coolidge declined to run for a second term of office, Herbert Hoover was urged to become the Republican Party candidate. Although Smith was the target of anti-Catholicism from the Baptist and Lutheran communities, Hoover avoided the religious issue. Historians agree that Hoover's national reputation and the booming economy, combined with the deep splits in the Democratic party over religion and prohibition, guaranteed his landslide victory.
Presidency 1929-1933
Policies
Even if the Hoover presidency has a negative imprint on it, it must be noted that there were some important reforms under the Hoover administration.
Hoover's humanitarian and Quaker reputation—along with a Native American vice president—gave special meaning to his Indian policies. Hoover supported Rhoads' commitment to Indian assimilation and sought to minimize the federal role in Indian affairs.
In the foreign arena, Hoover began formulating what would be known as the Good Neighbor policy by withdrawing American troops from Nicaragua and Haiti; he also proposed an arms embargo on Latin America and a one-third reduction of the world's naval power, which was called the Hoover Plan.
Great Depression
The economy was put to the test with the onset of the Great Depression in 1929. It is not accurate, as was routinely claimed by his Democratic opponents, that Hoover "did nothing" in the face of the crisis, nor that he was a believer in laissez-faire policies. However, Hoover opposed direct relief from the federal government, seeking instead to organize voluntary measures and encourage state and local government responses. Except for accelerating public works expenditures, Hoover largely shunned legislative relief proposals until late in his term.
Soon after the stock market crash, Hoover summoned industrialists to the White House and secured promises to maintain wages. From the nation's utilities, Hoover won commitments of $1.8 billion in new construction and repairs for 1930. In February, Hoover announced—prematurely—that the preliminary shock had passed and that employment was on the mend. Hoover's hold-the-line policy in wages lasted little more than a year.
In 1930, Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which raised tariffs on over 20,000 dutiable items. The tariff, combined with the 1932 Revenue Act, which hiked taxes and fees (including postage rates) across the board, is often blamed for deepening the depression, and are considered by some to be Hoover's biggest political blunders. Hoover's stance on the economy was based on volunteerism. Hoover feared that too much intervention or coercion by the government would destroy individuality and self-reliance, which he considered to be important American values.
In June 1931, to deal with a very serious banking collapse in Central Europe that threatened to cause a worldwide financial meltdown, Hoover issued the Hoover Moratorium that called for a one-year halt in reparations payments by Germany to France and in the payment of Allied war debts to the United States. The Hoover Moratorium had the effect of temporarily stopping the banking collapse in Europe.
The following is an outline of other actions Hoover took to try to help end the Depression through government taxing and spending:
Signed the Emergency Relief and Construction Act, the nation's first Federal unemployment assistance. Some of Hoover's efforts to stimulate the economy through public works are as follows: Asked Congress for a $400 million increase in the Federal Building Program Directed the Department of Commerce to establish a Division of Public Construction in December 1929 Increased subsidies for ship construction through the Federal Shipping Board Urged the state governors to also increase their public works spending, though many failed to take any action. After hearings held by the House Ways and Means Committee generated more than 20,000 pages of testimony regarding tariff protection, Congress responded with legislation that Hoover signed despite some misgivings.Economy
In order to pay for these and other government programs, Hoover agreed to one of the largest tax increases in American history. Hoover also encouraged Congress to investigate the New York Stock Exchange, and this pressure resulted in various reforms.
For this reason, libertarians hold that Hoover's economics were statist. Roosevelt attacked Hoover for "reckless and extravagant" spending, of thinking "that we ought to center control of everything in Washington as rapidly as possible," and of leading "the greatest spending administration in peacetime in all of history." However, Hoover's opponents charge that they came too little, and too late.
Even so, New Dealer Rexford Tugwell later remarked that although no one would say so at the time, "practically the whole New Deal was extrapolated from programs that Hoover started."
Unemployment rose to 24.9% by the end of Hoover's presidency in 1933, a year that is considered to be the depth of the Great Depression.
1932 campaign
Hoover was nominated by the Republicans for a second term. In his nine major radio addresses Hoover primarily defended his administration and his philosophy. The apologia approach did not allow Hoover to refute Franklin Roosevelt's charge that he was personally responsible for the depression.
Bonus Army
Thousands of World War I veterans and their families demonstrated and camped out in Washington, D.C., during June 1932, calling for immediate payment of a bonus that had been promised by the Adjusted Service Certificate Law for payment in 1924. Hoover sent U.S. Army forces led by General Douglas MacArthur and aided by junior officers Dwight D. The incident was another negative for Hoover in the 1932 election.
Administration and Cabinet
| OFFICE | NAME | TERM | ||||
| President | Herbert Hoover | 1929–1933 | ||||
| Vice President | Charles Curtis | 1929–1933 | ||||
| Secretary of State | Henry L. Stimson | 1929–1933 | ||||
| Secretary of the Treasury | Andrew Mellon | 1929–1932 | ||||
| Ogden L. Mills | 1932–1933 | |||||
| Secretary of War | James W. Good | 1929 | ||||
| Patrick J. Hurley | 1929–1933 | |||||
| Attorney General | William D. Mitchell | 1929–1933 | ||||
| Postmaster General | Walter F. Brown | 1929–1933 | ||||
| Secretary of the Navy | Charles F. Adams | 1929–1933 | ||||
| Secretary of the Interior | Ray L. Wilbur | 1929–1933 | ||||
| Secretary of Agriculture | Arthur M. Hyde | 1929–1933 | ||||
| Secretary of Commerce | Robert P. Lamont | 1929–1932 | ||||
| Roy D. Chapin | 1932–1933 | |||||
| Secretary of Labor | James J. Davis | 1929–1930 | ||||
| William N. Doak | 1930–1933 | |||||
Supreme Court appointments
Hoover appointed the following Justices to the Supreme Court of the United States:
Charles Evans Hughes (Chief Justice) – 1930 Owen Josephus Roberts – 1930 Benjamin Nathan Cardozo – 1932Post World War II
Based on Hoover's previous experience with Germany at the end of World War I, in the winter of 1946 - 47 President Harry S. Truman selected Hoover to do a tour of Germany in order to ascertain the food status of the occupied nation. Hoover toured what was to become West Germany in Field Marshall Herman Goering's old train coach and produced a number of reports sharply critical of U.S. occupation policy. As the Cold War deepened, Hoover expressed reservations about some of the activities of the American Friends Service Committee, which he had previously strongly supported. A total of 40,000 tons of American food was made available during the Hooverspeisung (Hoover meals). Truman appointed Hoover to a commission, which elected him chairman, to reorganize the executive departments. This became known as the Hoover Commission. Dewey offered Hoover the Senate seat vacated by Herbert Lehman.
Hoover died at the age of 90 in New York City at 11:35 a.m. on October 20, 1964, 31 years and seven months after leaving office. Hoover and his wife are buried at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum in West Branch, Iowa. Hoover was honored with a state funeral, and it was America's third in a span of 12 months following John F.
Heritage and memorials
The Lou Henry and Herbert Hoover House, built in 1919 in Palo Alto, California, is now the official residence of the president of Stanford University, and a National Historic Landmark. Hoover's rustic rural presidential retreat, Rapidan Camp (also later known as Camp Hoover) in the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, has recently been restored and opened to the public. The Hoover Dam was also named in his honor. (Hoover also outlived every member of his own Cabinet, as well as the Harding and Coolidge Cabinets).
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