Herbert Hoover: A Life
It is the last Sunday in the month, meaning it’s time for the next president, making this weeks book of the week, Herbert Hoover: A Life by Glen Jeansonne.
Our 31st President, Herbert Clark Hoover was born around midnight on the night of August 10/11, 1874. These days, they’d mark an exact time of birth and that would be his birthdate, but back in 1874, he could pick a day and go with that, so while history usually says he was born August 10. Hoover himself usually celebrated August 11 as his birth date. He was born in West Branch, Iowa to Jesse Hoover and Hulda Randall Minthorn. Hoover had an older brother, Tad, with whom he was quite close, and a younger sister May, with whom he was not close. The Hoover kids were sixth generation quakers and were raised in a close knit quaker community. Bertie, as he was known as a kid, was 6 when his father died in 1880 and 9 and his mother died in 1874. The three Hoover children were split among relatives in the Quaker community in Iowa and the estate was split equally among the three, with each inheriting about $784 in 1884 dollars.
Approximately one year later, his mothers brother, Dr. Henry John Minthorn, who had once saved Berties life by administering CPR when Bertie stopped breathing as a result of a Croup coughing fit, determined he wanted to adopt Bertie. Minthorn’s son had died recently and the Minthorn family was looking to fill the void left, not as a replacement per se, but they were suddenly able to afford it, and family helps family. Additionally, as a Dr., Minthorn was in a position to offer more education to Bertie, and that clinched the deal. Bertie was sent west and picked up in Portland, OR to live with his Uncle’s family.
Bertie eventually became Bert, and was raised with the very best of all that the Quaker community had to offer, firmly believing that all beings were equal…men, women, children, black, white, Chinese, indigenous…he was raised to treat everyone the same, and that early teaching stood him in very good stead over the absolutely incredible career he would lead. Buckle up kids, it gets fucking crazy from here.
In 1891, Hoover learned that a new school was opening up in Palo Alto, CA, opened up by millionaire US Senator Leland Stanford. While Hoover’s family wanted him to go to a solid Quaker school back east, Hoover wanted to study mining engineering, and the school in Indiana the family wanted him to attend did not offer a degree in mining engineering. Lucky for Hoover, Dr. David Starr Jordan, a quaker, left the Indiana University to become the first president of Stanford, and that clinched the deal. Unluckily for Hoover, while he passed most of the required entrance exams, he failed English composition. Luckily, he showed so much promise that it was determined he could study and test again just before classes started. Then he failed that test too. But again, he did so well on everything else and showed so much promise that it was determined that as long as he passed English comp in the next four years, he was in.
There was still the problem of money. His Uncle had NOT charged him any room or board for adopting him, which sound like a no duh situation in the 21st century, but in the 19th century was unusual. Half the time people would adopt to get free labor. But his uncle had taken the $784 of his inheritance and saved it for Hoover, which certainly helped, but was not enough, even for an Ivy League in the making. Hoover had to work his way through college, which he did with joy. His professors LOVED him, Hoover made life long friends, and his good nature and willingness to work, earned him advocates in his corner. Advocates, that when he was still failing English Comp at year four, went to bat for him, and pointed out that he was so profoundly precise in all his scientific papers, that the problem was that he simply didn’t TEST well in English Comp. They had him re-edit one of his scientific papers and granted him a pass in English Comp, and thus Hoover joined the first class to graduated from Stanford University, Class of 1895.
Unfortunately, the country was still in a financial panic when Hoover graduated and he couldn’t find a job as a mining engineer. So he became a miner. Like, literally, in the mines, swinging a pickax, miner. This didn’t last long before he began working for Louis Janin, a French born mining engineer, and Hoover’s work ethic so impressed Janin that in October 1897, when the British mining firm Bewick-Moreing asked Janin for a recommendation for mining engineer of at least 35 years of age to manage 10 gold mines in Australia, Janin didn’t even hesitate. He recommended Hoover, advising Bewick-Moreing that Hoover “was not quite 35” but was definitely who they wanted. Hoover, for the record, was 23 years old. And without even interviewing him, Bewick-Moreing offered him the job at $150 per week, which, adjusted for inflation and put in 2024 dollars, comes to $5,573 per week.
It was money well spent, for Bewick-Moreing, as in the very short time Hoover was in Australia, he located and recommended they purchase a 2/3 interest in the Sons of Gwalia mine. Basically, it was a hunch. For which Bewick-Moreing was able to extract $55 million in gold bullion while the mine was in operation, which was until 1963. This made Hoover a legend. It was while he was working in Australia that he earned one of the nicknames that would follow him all his life, Chief. The other nicknames were The Great Humanitarian and Napoleon of Mercy, and Samaritan to a Continent….but those nicknames are in the future.
Hoover began moving up the ranks of Bewick-Moreing and in November 1898 he was appointed managing director of all mines under control of the Chinese Government, which came with a salary increase plus 1/5 of all profits from all Chinese mines. This job included a food stipend, lodging, transportation, and servants. Before taking up his new position, Hoover returned to Stanford and picked up his bride, Lou Henry. Lou was a few years behind Hoover at Stanford and in his same field of study, making her one of the first women, and absolutely the first First Lady, to graduate with a degree in a STEM field.
Lou would follow Hoover for the remainder of her life, and I do not say this as a bad thing. Believe me…this was very much a love match and a match made in heaven. She didn’t just follow him, she worked beside him, including going into the mines when needed. And she was an outstanding asset, as she was gifted in languages, and would often translate for him in China…yeah, she learned Chinese and learned to speak it fluently enough to act as her husband’s translator.
Now, for anyone remotely in the know with history, about the time Hoover actually got to China, via ship because planes were not even a thing in 1898/1899 while he was traveling TO China, the Boxer Rebellion started. Mostly this did not impact him as his job had him traveling all over China, checking out various mines, which he found good sources of lesser metals like lead, tungsten, but no active gold. And Imperial China wanted gold mines only. So he just kept traveling. But eventually, the Boxer Rebellion caught up with him at Tientsen. So this is kind of intense. Hoover, recognizing the danger of the Boxer forces, set about creating rudimentary fortifications.
It was a tight spot to be in, the Boxers were not professional soldiers by any metric, but they were absolutely dangerous just from their sheer numbers. And that didn’t stop Hoover from making daily trips outside the fortifications to fetch enough drinking water for everyone inside the walls…including all the Chinese workers that were stuck inside with them, and he would have projectiles lobbed at him the entire time he was retrieving water. One of those volleys once made it over the wall and blew out the side of the building where Lou was playing solitaire…and she just kept playing. The Hoovers are my new favorite It couple.
Eventually the rebellion was put down, and the Hoover’s managed to hang in there long enough for the USMC to roll in and save the day as part of a joint military operation. And by 1901, the Hoovers had relocated to England, where Hoover was offered a partnership in Bewick-Moreing. And even there, his reputation preceded him in all the best possible ways.
When one of the company accountants committed fraud and embezzlement, while the company was found legally not liable and were in fact termed victims, Hoover and the other partners determined they were morally liable and paid back the investors who had also been defrauded. He worked as a partner for Bewick-Moreing until 1908 when he retired from that company and became an independent consultant, where he made a literal fortune, retiring in 1914 at 40 years of age with between $4 million in the bank and up to $30 million in investments and stocks, having accepted payment for much of his consulting in stock options. For the record, in 2024 dollars, that $4 million is $124 million. So he was good to retire from everything and live the sweet life in Palo Alto when The Great War kicked off.
Here is where he earned the rest of those nicknames. As the war kicked off, he recognized the hardest hit populations would be the civilians, who had no say in what was going on. And he organized food charities to feed the continent, starting with Belgium, which had a starving civilian population while German troops rolled through.
Basically, under no passport, just his word and signature that he was relief aid only, he was able to get massive grain imports into Belgium. And to ensure they went to the civilian population they were intended to help, people could only get fed at the soup kitchens basically. This was smart, as this ensured no one person could come in, confiscate the grain, and profit from it.
And after feeding Belgium, he fed basically all of Europe, using diplomacy and charitable contributions. And when the war was over, he turned the surplus charitable contributions to the overarching charity in Belgium for educational purposes. Yeah…Belgium fucking LOVES Hoover. And so does Europe.
Following this triumph, he was of course invited to join Harding’s cabinet, which he did as Secretary of Commerce, in which capacity he served until 1928 when he was himself elected President, just in time for the markets to crash.
Now, Hoover was a profoundly smart man. He had been warning people for awhile that things were untenable on the stock market, and in summer 1929 he began to divest himself of stock. And of course by October 1929 the slow trickle of people offloading stocks became a flood and the market crashed entirely, ushering in America’s entry to the Great Depression.
Now, something that is not talked about frequently is that Europe and Asia had entered the Depression at least a year before. That’s kind of what made it “Great” meaning large in quantity…not excessively good. Also, the damn thing lasted a decade.
For Hoover, he tried man. His concern was he didn’t want to create a massive bureaucracy, because he knows it’s real easy to build one, damn near impossible to dismantle. So while public works expanded under Hoover, he was careful to keep the bureaucracy to a minimum, which meant there were not as many jobs created. This was, of course, used to bludgeon him in the 1932 elections.
The biggest problem Hoover faced during the depression years is that everything that could have been done to mitigate the problem would have needed to be started several years prior, when he was Secretary of Commerce. One of the problems was the drought in the 1930’s, known as the Dust Bowl. Years before this happened, Hoover had recommended farmers plant cover crops like clover to replenish soil nutrients for future planting. The problem he faced is that following the boom years of the war well all crops were purchased for cash to feed Europe, the farmers now had an excess of crops but no where to sell them, for which they blamed Hoover. So when, as Secretary of Commerce, he recommended they reduce planting and plant cover crops, the farmers ignored him.
He also recommended farmers create local collectives for bargaining purposes, which was again ignored. The other thing he did that more or less sealed his fate as a one term president was signing the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930. This created a slew of protectionist tariffs, right at a time when taxes and tariffs should have been lowered. Great Britain took the pound off the gold standard, and Hoover managed, by dint of his earned reputation as a man of his word, to convince the rest of the global nations that America would not be going off the gold standard. But it was a very near thing. When England pulled the pound, there was a run on banks and gold deposits dwindled. And of course, the overarching global depression was the final nail in his coffin. The other countries were unable to buy goods from America because they had no money with which to make purchases.
America basically had everything it needed to survive. In the 1930s we were a self-sustained nation, fully capable of manufacturing our own goods and services. But the stock market crashed caused massive panic. Unions grew stronger and one designed to help Veteran’s backed Hoover into a corner from which he could not escape. When the Great War ended, money had been put into an account to accrue interest and be paid out to the veterans of that war in 1945. When the crash happened, the veteran’s wanted their withdrawals now, and not at the current value of the account, but at what the accounts would be worth in 1945. Hoover refused. He offered a compromise to assist some of the hardest hit veterans with withdrawals at current value, but the veterans insisted they all needed to be paid now, including those who were wealthy and didn’t need the money.
This refusal would be used by the Democrats for the next 6 election cycles, only ending when Eisenhower was voted into office in 1952. In fact, for the next 6 election cycles, the Democrats didn’t run against whoever the actual Republican nominee was. They ran against Hoover. Even when he wasn’t running. And of course FDR won in 1932 and ran an absolute smear campaign against Hoover that was so grotesque, Hoover was unable to forgive FDR for it. And Hoover forgave everyone everything! It was the Quaker heritage.
FDR’s New Deal did NOT end the depression. There’s a great deal of evidence that is policies exacerbated it, although we’ll explore that topic more fully in the coming month. Hoover certainly thought so and took to writing, becoming a prolific writer. The man who barely passed English Composition in college published several books in his day and one quite posthumously, Freedom Betrayed was published in 2011. The reason for the delay is that the book dismantled FDR’s policies while in office, and Hoover’s heirs were worried it might stir up more bad feeling when published.
In the first eight years of FDR’s presidency, Hoover warned FDR was a power hungry megalomaniac. Hoover also flew to Europe, where he received something like 11 honorary degrees from continental schools, had many streets named for him, and met with European leaders, including Hitler and Goring. Hitler, interestingly enough, wanted Hoover’s respect.
Hoover, on his way back to the States, stopped in England and warned Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain that Germany would be ready for war in 18 months. This was 1938 and Hoover was prescient as always, as Hitler’s tanks rolled in to Poland on September 1, 1939. Hoover believed we should stay out of the war until Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, then hoped we would keep the war on the Pacific Front. And when he found out about treatment of the Jews…well, it’s estimated that in his lifetime, The Great Humanitarian kept some 83 million people from starving to death through his intervention.
On January 7, 1944, Lou Hoover suffered a fatal heart attack, leaving Hoover bereft and single for the rest of his life.
He resumed his humanitarian efforts during and after the war, and remained active in Republican politics til the end of his life, which was on October 20, 1964.
Hoover led a fucking life. I mean, he was orphaned at 9, worked his way through Stanford, traveled the world, earned and gave away an absolute fortune. Most people liked him, including his enemies, with the exception being FDR, and from what I’ve read here, I’m almost positive that FDR’s enmity was pure jealousy on FDR’s part. Hoover was everything FDR could never be.
I kind of agree with the author’s assessment: if Hoover had been president at any other time, he’d be remembered as one of the greats. It was his misfortune to be sworn in 10 months before the country entered the greatest economic catastrophe to that point in history. For comparison purposes, and this is important to know for historical purposes, the market losses in 1929 were roughly $4 billion, which is about $72 billion in today’s currency. The housing crises and crash in 2008 was a loss of $5 TRILLION. So by any metric you want to use, 2008 was worse than 1929. Hoover never had a chance. And it is quite telling that for 20 years he became the boogie-man of the Democratic Party.
I don’t know how to rate him as president, because his presidency was doomed practically from the beginning. But as a human being…we need more Hoover’s just in general. You’d be hard pressed to find anyone else that kept 83 million from starving to death.
