The Wallace miner. [volume] (Wallace, Idaho) 1907-current, 1918-04-11


The biographical details of Herbert
Hoover's earlier years will not go far
in explaining to us his present per-
sonality. Born in 1874 on an Iowa
farm. Of Quaker father and mother,
he received through them that native
endowment of potentialities which
come, variously, to each Of us by the
process Of heredity; processes still
mysterious despite all the wealth of
detail of mechanism and method which
modern post Mendelian study Of here
dity has revealed. We do know some
thing of why a mans eyes are blue,
IL they are blue instead of brown, as
another mans eyes are; and some
thing of why he is mentally defective
from birth, If he is, while another is
so mentally sound.
But despite the cheerful confidence
Of those too optimistic specialists
who say that the secret of inheritance
is now known, and that, being given
full knowledge of ones ancestors and
collaterals to the number of several
dozen, they will prophesy the physical
and mental makeup of ones next
child the fact is that they cannot.
They cannot, If for no other reason
than that human births are too few
per family to give them the advan-
tage Of the working of the Mendelian
mathematical formulate on which their
prophesying is based. Besides, they
can rarely have that full knowledge of
ancestry which they need. Mr.. Hoover
does not know, nor do l, the full his
tory of his ancestry and collaterals,
and the mere knowledge of the make
up of ones parents and of few
grand and great-grand- parents, is
never sufficient to explain why any
ones inherited characteristics are
justs what they are.
The influence of ones environ
ment Is sometimes more nearly deter
minable But there is one great diff
Guilty about that, too, and that is, that
to understand fully the effect Of en-
vironmental influence requires pref
ty good understanding of the native
qualities of the material upon which
the environment acts. The reaction Of
differently formed human beings is
never exactly the same even when
the environmental action on them is
nearly identical. You can't" as
David Starr Jordan is won't to say,
to explain some failures of college
endeavor, put thousand-dollar edu-
cation into a fifty dollar boy"
Herbert Hoover's early environment
was affected by the death of both par
ents while he was child and his
being handed over to the sympathetic
care of various aunts and uncles all
of Quaker faith and training. Thus
conditions must have placed In his
own hands earlier than Is usual with
most Of us. a certain personal share
in the determination of his own en-
vironment. For example, when the
time for his preparation for college
came, he found himself on the Pacific
coast under the care of Quaker
uncle who had naturally planned that
this preparation should lead him into
a Quaker college. But already the
youth had decided. that his higher ed
ucation should be obtained in mod
ern scientific university. This was
decision determined partly by the lack
Of control of the environment itself
but more probably by the assertion Of
an inherited quality which made
strongly for self determination Of be-
havior. He went, therefore. to Port
land, and, supporting himself by his
own exertions, was able in couple Of
years to fit himself for his modern
scientific university He entered
Stanford university with the first OPP
ening of its doors in the fall of 1891,
and thus entered on a Characteristic
ally pioneering career with Stanford's
pioneer class Of 1895. During his four
years at the university he again sup
ported himself by his own exertions.
Now, without doubt, these six years
of earning his own way as a youth
OF fifteen to twenty one years were an
environmental influence which had its
real effect, and one probably recognize
able and of much Importance today in
its results. He learned early some
thing enduring about values in human
life; about things that count and