The Daily Alaska empire., 1929-03-05
HOOVER LIFE STORY READSLIKE EXTRACT
 FROM FICTION PAGE
By L. A. BROPH1 "A. P. Feature Editor)

bert Hoover in becoming thirty first Chief Executive of the United States enters upon the greatest ad- venture of life filled with the stuff of which fictionists make plots.
 As he made his way to those well bandied words of ambitions goal fame and fortune-he could easily have stepped into character in many novels.
 There was, first, Hoover, the or phan. Then the young American mining engineer, braving the mys- teries of China. Then Hoover, the powerful and opulent American en- gineer at ease in Cairo or West Branch; San Francisco or London; in the great cities of the world, in Russia, Mexico, Burma, China. Romantic adventure and riches came to Hoover as she showed his l shoulders into places on the globe where white men had never gone before. The long trail has taken him over the South African veldt, through the Australian bush, into the storied jewel mines of the Pha- roahs in Asia Minor and into the iron mines of the Romans in the Alps.
 Comes Into Destiny
 The odessy of adventure leads down broad Pennsylvania Avenue, and the chubby-faced Quaker boy of Iowa comes into his destiny.
 Tn background, training and in achievements, Hoover is distinctly i a different type of executive than any gone before. Many executives were soldiers. Hoover was, too in a manner of speaking. He served a machine gun at the siege of Tientsin and he helped put down riots in Russia, when the first rev. olution died abortively.
 1 Herbert Clark Hoover is 55 years of age. He was born August 10, 1874, in West Branch, Iowa. At nine years of age, he was left an orphan.
 Jesse Hoover, the village black smith, his father, died of typhoid fever when the boy Herbert was six. The mother, Huidah Min thorn Hoover, provided for the fam 1 ily-Herbcrt, Theodore, his older brother, and May, the youngest as best she could-but she died of pneumonia three years after the death of Jesse Hoover.
 After the mothers death, Her bert went to live with his uncle, Allan Hoover, a farmer of Cedar County, Iowa, not far from West Branch. Brother Tad went to live with another uncle, and May remained with Grand mother Minthorn.
 :, Changes Home Again 1 At the age of 10, Herbert went to live with another of his mothers brothers, Dr. John Minthorn, who had opened a Quaker settlement in Oregon. Herbert attended an acad- emy that Dr. Minthorn had found- ed, doing chores to help pay for his keep.
 His next jump was as an office boy in his uncle's real estate office in Portland. A chance remark of a stranger upon the mysteries and possible profit in engineering, start ed Hoover on his career. He de- termined to work his way through Leland Stanford university in an engineering course.
 Upon being graduated, he worked in mine in Grass Valley, Calf. then became affiliated with Lon don firm of engineers and thence forth strode rapidly into his career. West Australia was his first call. Then China, on a government mis- sion to develop iron and coal de- posity; then an engineering trek over the globe.
 1 He leaped into world notice in handling distraught American visi- tors in London in 1914 after the outbreak of the world war, and from then on, his efforts in human itarian work took up his time until President Harding gave him the portfolio of Commerce Secretary in 1921.
 On Political Path Hoover's first steps on the po- i litical path were timid and some what uncertain. In 1920, the ques- tion was publicly raised as to whether he was a Republican or a Democrat. He received few votes for the Republican Presidential nomination at the same time prom finent Democrats were supporting Ihim. He settled the issue by mak- ing a personal announcement that { he was Republican.
 The head of vast proiects-it was