Herbert Hoover 1874 1964 The Early Years Hoover
Herbert Hoover 1874 -1964
The Early Years • Hoover was born in West branch, Iowa, the son of Quaker parents. His father was a blacksmith. • He was orphaned at age nine and went to live with an uncle in Oregon. • In 1891 he entered the first class at the new Stanford University where he received an engineering degree. • After graduation, Hoover worked in the gold mining districts of Nevada City and Grass Valley, California, before leaving for a job in Western Australia in 1897. • 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. • In 1908, Hoover became an independent mining consultant, traveling worldwide until the outbreak of World War I in 1914. • By that time, Hoover was a wealthy man, with an estimated personal fortune of $4 million
The Great Humanitarian • When WWI began in August, 1914, the American Consul General in Paris asked Hoover’s 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. • For the next two years, Hoover worked 14 -hour days from London, administering the distribution of over two million tons of food to nine million war victims. • After the United States entered the war in April 1917, President Woodrow Wilson appointed Hoover to head the U. S. Food Administration • Hoover established set days for people to avoid eating specified foods and save them for soldiers' rations: meatless Mondays, wheatless Wednesdays, and "when in doubt, eat potatoes". • After the war, Hoover organized shipments of food for millions of starving people in Central Europe and Russia. • . He used a newly formed Quaker organization, the American Friends Service Committee, to carry out much of the logistical work in Europe.
Secretary of Commerce • After the election of 1920, President Warren Harding named Hoover to be the Secretary of Commerce. • He turned that low level cabinet post into a position of authority and power. • His department oversaw and regulated everything from manufacturing statistics, the census and radio, to air travel. • In some instances he "seized" control of responsibilities from other Cabinet departments when he deemed that they were not carrying out their responsibilities well. • Hoover became one of the most visible men in the country, and was referred to as "the Secretary of Commerce. . . and Under. Secretary of Everything Else!“ • His efforts as Commerce Secretary centered on eliminating waste and increasing efficiency in business and industry. This included reducing labor losses from trade disputes and seasonal fluctuations, reducing industrial losses from accident and injury. • He promoted product standardizations and encouraged international trade by opening overseas offices to advise businessmen. He was especially eager to promote Hollywood films overseas.
The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 • In early 1027, a massive flood broke the banks and levees of the lower Mississippi River, from Illinois to Louisiana, resulting in flooding of millions of acres and leaving 1. 5 million people displaced from their homes. • The governors of six states along the Mississippi specifically asked for Herbert Hoover in the emergency and President Calvin Coolidge sent Hoover to mobilize state and local authorities, militia, army engineers, the Coast Guard, and the American Red Cross. • With a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, Hoover set up health units to work in the flooded regions for a year. These workers stamped out malaria, pellagra, and typhoid fever from many areas. • His work during the flood brought Herbert Hoover to the front page of newspapers almost everywhere, and he gained new accolades as a humanitarian.
A Return to Slavery? • The treatment of African-Americans during the disaster raises questions about Hoover's reputation as a humanitarian. • Local officials brutalized black farmers and prevented them from leaving relief camps; aid intended for African-American sharecroppers was often given instead to the landowners. • African American men were conscripted by locals into forced labor, sometimes at gun point. • In Greenville, Mississippi, plans to evacuate African Americans via steamers were cancelled. All the blacks in the area were forced to the levee, one of the few areas above water, where they were made to load and unload supplies without pay. Those who refused to work were cut off Red Cross relief rations. • They were held as virtual prisoners. The National Guard beat and brutalized African Americans with impunity. A pass was required to enter or leave. • As reports surfaced of the abuse of blacks by local authorities in the Delta region, Hoover appointed a commission of handpicked middle class blacks, headed by Robert Moton of the Tuskegee Institute, to investigate. • It issued a sanitized report, giving a prettified view of the relief work that covered up the horrific abuses suffered by African Americans. Source: John M. Barry, Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood and How it Changed America (1997)
The Presidential Election of 1928 • When President Calvin Coolidge announced in August 1927 that he would not seek a second full term of office, Hoover became the leading Republican candidate and received the Republican Party nomination. • His Democrat opponent was Alfred (Al) Smith, a four term Governor of New York State. • Historians agree that 1920 s prosperity, along with widespread anti-Catholic sentiment against Smith, made Hoover's election inevitable. [ • He defeated Smith by a landslide in the 1928 election, even carrying five southern states that traditionally voted Democrat. • However, Smith carried the ten most populous cities in the United States, the start of a voter realignment that later helped develop the New Deal coalition of Franklin D. Roosevelt. [
The Election of 1928 • "We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land. “ Herbert Hoover, 1928
Before the crash: an activist president • Hoover believed strongly in the Efficiency Movement, which held that the government and the economy were riddled with inefficiency and waste, and could be improved by experts who could identify the problems and solve them. • He also believed in the importance of volunteerism and of the role of individuals in society and the economy. • However, compared to Harding and Coolidge, Hoover was an activist president. • Hoover expanded civil service coverage of federal positions, canceled private oil leases on government lands, and by instructing the Justice Department and the Internal Revenue Service to pursue gangsters for tax evasion, he enabled the prosecution of mobster Al Capone. • He appointed a commission that set aside 3, 000 acres of national parks and 2, 300, 000 acres of national forests; advocated tax reduction for low-income Americans (not enacted); closed certain tax loopholes for the wealthy; doubled the number of veterans' hospital facilities; negotiated a treaty on St. Lawrence Seaway (which failed in the U. S. Senate); wrote a Children's Charter that advocated protection of every child regardless of race or gender; created an antitrust division in the Justice Department
Response to the Crisis • Hoover’s ideas on the role of government were put to the test with the onset of the Great Depression. • Although many people at the time and for decades afterwards denounced Hoover for taking a hands-off ("laissez-faire) approach he actually pursued an activist policy. • [Hoover initiated federally supported public works programs, most dramatically the expenditure of a giant $915 million public works program, including the Boulder Dam on the Colorado River. • Hoover also advocated strong labor regulation law, including the enactment of the Bacon-Davis Act, requiring a maximum eighthour day on construction of public buildings and the payment of at least the "prevailing wage" in the locality. • In the Banking sector, Hoover passed The Federal Home Loan Bank Act in July, 1932, establishing 12 district banks ruled by a Federal Home Loan Bank Board in a manner similar to the Federal Reserve System today/
Hoover’s limitations • Hoover’s response to the crisis was constrained by his conservative political philosophy. • He vetoed several bills that would have provided direct relief to struggling Americans. “Prosperity cannot be restored by raids upon the public Treasury, ” he explained in his 1930 State of the Union address. • In June 1930, Congress approved and Hoover reluctantly signed into law the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act. • The legislation raised tariffs on thousands of imported items. , with the intent to encourage the purchase of American-made products by increasing the cost of imported goods, while raising revenue for the federal government and protecting farmers. • However, other nations retaliated by raising tariffs on imports from the U. S. The result was to contract international trade, and worsen the Depression • The final attempt of the Hoover Administration to rescue the economy occurred in 1932 with the passage of the Emergency Relief and Construction Act, which authorized funds for public works programs and the creation of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) which secured loans to financial institutions, railroads and local governments to continue relief programs.
The Bonus Army • In 1924, Congress voted to give a bonus to World War I veterans - $1. 25 for each day served overseas, $1. 00 for each day served in the States. The catch was that payment would not be made until 1945. • In May of that year, some 15, 000 veterans, many unemployed and destitute, descended on Washington, D. C. to demand immediate payment of their bonus. • The veterans made their largest camp at Anacostia Flats across the river from the Capitol. Approximately 10, 000 veterans, women and children lived in the shelters built from materials dragged out of a junk pile nearby - old lumber, packing boxes and scrap tin covered with roofs of thatched straw. • On June 17, the Senate rejected a bill that would have given the veterans their bonus. • On July 28, Attorney General Mitchell ordered the evacuation of the veterans from all government property, Entrusted with the job, the Washington police met with resistance, shots were fired and two marchers killed. • Hoover ordered the army to clear out the veterans. Infantry and cavalry supported by six tanks were dispatched with Chief of Staff General Douglas Mac. Arthur in command. Major Dwight D. Eisenhower served as his liaison with Washington police and Major George Patton led the cavalry. • The Bonus Army marchers with their wives and children were driven out, and their shelters and belongings burned. • The Bonus Army incident proved politically disastrous for Hoover, and is considered to be a contributing factor leading to him losing the 1932 election in a landslide to Franklin D. Roosevelt.
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