Herbert Hoover

31st President of the United States

Before serving as America’s 31st President from 1929 to 1933, **Herbert Hoover** had achieved international success as a mining engineer and worldwide gratitude as “The Great Humanitarian” who fed war-torn Europe during and after World War I and his administration would see the onset of the Great Depression.

*The Presidency of Herbert Hoover spanned the period in United States history that encompasses the events of the Great Depression era. President Herbert Hoover represented the Republican political party which influenced the domestic and foreign policies of his presidency.*

## Biography

Son of a Quaker blacksmith, Herbert Clark Hoover brought to the Presidency an unparalleled reputation for public service as an engineer, administrator, and humanitarian.

Born in an Iowa village in 1874, he grew up in Oregon. He enrolled at Stanford University when it opened in 1891, graduating as a mining engineer.

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.

One week before Hoover celebrated his 40th birthday in London, Germany declared war on France, and the American Consul General asked his 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.

After the United States entered the war, President Wilson appointed Hoover head of the Food Administration. He succeeded in cutting consumption of foods needed overseas and avoided rationing at home, yet kept the Allies fed.

After the Armistice, Hoover, a member of the Supreme Economic Council and head of the American Relief Administration, organized shipments of food for starving millions in central Europe. He extended aid to famine-stricken Soviet Russia in 1921. When a critic inquired if he was not thus helping Bolshevism, Hoover retorted, “Twenty million people are starving. Whatever their politics, they shall be fed!”

After capably serving as Secretary of Commerce under Presidents Harding and Coolidge, Hoover became the Republican Presidential nominee in 1928. He said then: “We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land.” His election seemed to ensure prosperity. Yet within months the stock market crashed, and the Nation spiraled downward into depression.

After the crash Hoover announced that while he would keep the Federal budget balanced, he would cut taxes and expand public works spending.

In 1931 repercussions from Europe deepened the crisis, even though the President presented to Congress a program asking for creation of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to aid business, additional help for farmers facing mortgage foreclosures, banking reform, a loan to states for feeding the unemployed, expansion of public works, and drastic governmental economy.

At the same time he reiterated his view that while people must not suffer from hunger and cold, caring for them must be primarily a local and voluntary responsibility.

His opponents in Congress, who he felt were sabotaging his program for their own political gain, unfairly painted him as a callous and cruel President. Hoover became the scapegoat for the Depression and was badly defeated in 1932. In the 1930’s he became a powerful critic of the New Deal, warning against tendencies toward statism.

In 1947 President Truman appointed Hoover to a commission, which elected him chairman, to reorganize the Executive Departments. He was appointed chairman of a similar commission by President Eisenhower in 1953. Many economies resulted from both commissions’ recommendations. Over the years, Hoover wrote many articles and books, one of which he was working on when he died at 90 in New York City on October 20, 1964.

## Personality

The character traits of President Herbert Hoover can be described as diligent, dull, aloof, independent and confident. It has been speculated that the Myers-Briggs personality type for Herbert Hoover is an ISTJ (Introversion, Sensing, Thinking, Judgment). A reserved, well-regulated and serious character and a strong traditionalist. Herbert Hoover Personality type: logical, organized, sensible, thorough and dependable.

## Nicknames

* "The Great Engineer"
* "The Great Humanitarian"
* "The Chief"
* "Bert"
* "Herbie"

*Meaning: The nickname of President Herbert Hoover provides an insight into how the man was viewed by the American public during his presidency. "The Great Engineer" was given as his nickname in reference to his early career as a civil engineer and reflected his flood control work when the Mississippi River burst its banks in 1927. However, the Great Depression consumed the nation within months of his assuming the presidency and Herbert Hoover was blamed. The period began to be referred to as the "Hoover Depression" and his close friends who called him "Herbie" became fewer and fewer. Millions were unemployed and the insides of their empty trouser pockets were called "Hoover handkerchiefs". Poverty stricken, homeless men padded their clothes with newspapers that were called "Hoover blankets." Families were made homeless and no option but to live in shanty towns called "Hoovervilles" and this is the nickname that is most closely associated with Herbert Hoover.*

## Inauguration

The **inauguration of Herbert Hoover** as the 31st president of the United States was held on Monday, March 4, 1929, at the East Portico of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. This was the 36th inauguration and marked the commencement of the only term of both Herbert Hoover as president and Charles Curtis as vice president. Chief Justice and former President William Howard Taft administered the presidential oath of office to Hoover. This was the first presidential inauguration to be recorded by sound newsreels. Following the second inauguration of Calvin Coolidge, overseen by Taft exactly four years earlier, it was also the second (and most recent) time that a former president administered the oath of office to a new president.

The Constitution of the United States gives the president the option either to swear or to affirm the oath. Hoover is often listed as having said "affirm" due to being a Quaker, but the newsreel taken of the ceremony indicates that he said "solemnly swear." Franklin Pierce was the only president known to say "affirm" rather than "swear" when taking the oath of office.

In administering the oath, Taft erroneously recited the phrase "preserve, protect and defend" as "preserve, maintain and defend". Helen Terwilliger, a 13-year-old eighth-grade student in Walden, New York, caught the error and wrote to the Chief Justice to tell him. Taft conceded that he had made an error, attributing it to "the defect of an old man's memory", but asserted that he had made a different error, misquoting the words as "preserve, maintain and protect". Terwilliger did not back down from her claim; Fox Film, Pathé News and Paramount News, the companies that had prepared newsreels of the inauguration, examined their recordings and jointly confirmed Terwilliger's account.

## Presidents who died during his Presidency

* William Howard Taft
* Calvin Coolidge

## Famous Films

* The Blue Angel
* All Quiet on the Western Front
* Earth (1930)

## Accomplishments and major events

*The major accomplishments and the famous, main events that occurred during the time that Herbert Hoover was president included the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the Start of the Great Depression with the Dust bowl, the soup kitchens and the 1932 Bonus Army March.*

**The Roaring Twenties**

Summary: Herbert Hoover became president towards the end of the Roaring Twenties, a period of great change in America with the new Inventions in the 1920's and the great Economic Boom of the 1920's.

**The Prohibition Gangsters**

Summary: It was also the era of Prohibition which led to the rise of the Prohibition Gangsters, mobsters and 'bootleggers' who profited from the illegal sale of liquor during the Prohibition Era (1920 to 1933).

**Eliot Ness and "The Untouchables"**

Summary: Eliot Ness and "The Untouchables" were tasked with combating the activities of Al Capone and his crime syndicate, the Chicago Mafia. Eliot Ness was the Government Agent (G-Man) who led the group of 11 law enforcement agents, nicknamed the "Untouchables" because they could not be bribed.

**The Long Bull Market**

Summary: The Long Bull Market of the 1920s saw share prices on the stock market soar as the Stock Market brokers encouraged the practice of buying stocks "on margin", meaning buying stocks with loaned money.

**The 1929 Wall Street Crash**

Summary: The economic boom in the 1920s led to high consumerism, easy credit schemes and increased debt. The good times came to an abrupt end with the 1929 Wall Street Crash. Stockbrokers began to make large-scale margin calls, demanding that investors repaid their loans immediately, panic started and the stock market went into free fall. on Tuesday, October 29, 1929 stock prices completely collapsed and $10-$15 billion was lost in just one day. The Wall Street Crash resulted in the closure of banks, bankruptcies, evictions, suicides, wage cuts and mass unemployment that led to the Great Depression.

**The Great Depression**

Summary: The Great Depression (1929 - 1941) brought homelessness, hunger, debt, despair and dejection to the American people. Herbert Hoover was the incumbent president and on the receiving end of much of the blame. The Great Depression began with the 1929 Wall Street Crash and did not end until the start of WW2. When the Great Depression hit, President Herbert Hoover cited constitutional restraint as a reason for not allowing more forceful intervention by the Federal government. Instead, Herbert Hoover appealed to the private sector to come to the aid of the people.

**The 1930 Hawley Smoot Tariff**

Summary: The Hawley Smoot Tariff was signed into law on June 17, 1930 by Herbert Hoover, just after the start of the Great Depression, to significantly raise to increase tax rates on imported (foreign) goods. The Hawley Smoot Tariff seriously backfired as furious European countries imposed a tax on American goods making them too expensive to buy in Europe, contributing to the economic crisis of the Great Depression.

**The Social Effects of the Great Depression**

Summary: The Social Effects of the Great Depression transformed American society during the Herbert Hoover administration and the quality of life plummeted as jobless people were forced to live in poverty with poor living conditions, little education and poor health.

**The Shantytowns and Hoovervilles**

Summary: Shantytowns and Hoovervilles were the names given makeshift camps set up by the homeless during the Great Depression. By 1932, nearly two million American people were homeless and forced to live in makeshift shacks, constructed from unwanted materials and lacking basic amenities such as clean drinking water and adequate sanitation.

**The Soup Kitchens**

Summary: Soup Kitchens, run by charities, sprang up in every major town and city in America serving free meals to hungry men, women and children. There were few welfare programs to help the unemployed, starving and destitute people and as unemployed soared to over 25% Soup Kitchens sprang up in every major town and city in America.

**The Bonus Army March**

Summary: The Bonus Army March was made in the summer of 1932 when over 40,000 World War 1 veterans marched to Washington to lobby Congress to pass legislation authorizing the early payment of veterans bonuses. The senate failed to agree to the payment and the Bonus Army were disbanded by the heavy handed treatment of the US Army under Douglas MacArthur.

**The Dust Bowl**

Summary: The Dust Bowl was caused by a series of devastating droughts in the 1930s that resulted in Dust Storms and 'Black Blizzards' that ripped up the topsoil sweeping thousands of tons of dirt across America and destroying 100 million acres of farming land.

**The Hollywood in the 1920's**

Summary: People sought to escape from the misery of the Great Depression through the movies. Hollywood in the 1920s saw the end of silent movies and the introduction of the 'talkies' in 1927 by Warner Brothers when Al Jolson starred in First talking movie - The Jazz Singer. As the effects of the Great Depression increased hundreds of 'picture palaces' closed as ticket sales dropped dramatically.

**The Hays Code**

Summary: In 1930 the Hays Code and Censorship of the movies was introduced banning the use of profanity, nudity, immorality and the role of the "vamp" in the Hollywood movies of the 1920s.

**The 1932 Lindbergh Kidnapping**

Summary: Another notable event during the presidency of Herbert Hoover was the Lindbergh Kidnapping sparked a nationwide search following the abduction of the 20-month-old son of the famous aviator Charles Lindberg on March 1, 1932. Bruno Richard Hauptmann was sentenced to death for the kidnapping and murder of the child was Bruno Richard Hauptmann.

**The Hoover Dam**

Summary: The Hoover Dam was built during the Great Depression. Construction work began on April 20, 1931 under the instructions of Herbert Hoover and was completed on March 11, 1936 during the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt. President Hoover was blamed for many of the disastrous effects of the Great Depression and the dam was immediately referred to as the 'Boulder Dam'. It was not until 1947 that it was renamed the Hoover Dam.

## Post Presidency

### Roosevelt administration

#### Opposition to New Deal

Hoover departed from Washington in March 1933, bitter at his election loss and continuing unpopularity. As Coolidge, Harding, Wilson, and Taft had all died during the 1920s or early 1930s and Roosevelt died in office, Hoover was the sole living former president from 1933 to 1953. He and his wife lived in Palo Alto until her death in 1944, at which point Hoover began to live permanently at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York City. During the 1930s, Hoover increasingly self-identified as a conservative. He closely followed national events after leaving public office, becoming a constant critic of Franklin Roosevelt. In response to continued attacks on his character and presidency, Hoover wrote more than two dozen books, including *The Challenge to Liberty* (1934), which harshly criticized Roosevelt's New Deal. Hoover described the New Deal's National Recovery Administration and Agricultural Adjustment Administration as "fascistic", and he called the 1933 Banking Act a "move to gigantic socialism".

Only 58 when he left office, Hoover held out hope for another term as president throughout the 1930s. At the 1936 Republican National Convention, Hoover's speech attacking the New Deal was well received, but the nomination went to Kansas governor Alf Landon. In the general election, Hoover delivered numerous well-publicized speeches on behalf of Landon, but Landon was defeated by Roosevelt. Though Hoover was eager to oppose Roosevelt at every turn, Senator Arthur Vandenberg and other Republicans urged the still-unpopular Hoover to remain out of the fray during the debate over Roosevelt's proposed Judiciary Reorganization Bill of 1937. At the 1940 Republican National Convention, he again hoped for the presidential nomination, but it went to the internationalist Wendell Willkie, who lost to Roosevelt in the general election.

#### World War II

During a 1938 trip to Europe, Hoover met with Adolf Hitler and stayed at Hermann Göring's hunting lodge. He expressed dismay at the persecution of Jews in Germany and believed that Hitler was mad, but did not present a threat to the U.S. Instead, Hoover believed that Roosevelt posed the biggest threat to peace, holding that Roosevelt's policies provoked Japan and discouraged France and the United Kingdom from reaching an "accommodation" with Germany. After the September 1939 invasion of Poland by Germany, Hoover opposed U.S. involvement in World War II, including the Lend-Lease policy. He was active in the isolationist America First Committee. He rejected Roosevelt's offers to help coordinate relief in Europe, but, with the help of old friends from the CRB, helped establish the Commission for Polish Relief. After the beginning of the occupation of Belgium in 1940, Hoover provided aid for Belgian civilians, though this aid was described as unnecessary by German broadcasts.

In December 1939, sympathetic Americans led by Hoover formed the Finnish Relief Fund to donate money to aid Finnish civilians and refugees after the Soviet Union had started the Winter War by attacking Finland, which had outraged Americans. By the end of January, it had already sent more than two million dollars to the Finns.

During a radio broadcast on June 29, 1941, one week after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, Hoover disparaged any "tacit alliance" between the U.S. and the USSR, stating, "if we join the war and Stalin wins, we have aided him to impose more communism on Europe and the world... War alongside Stalin to impose freedom is more than a travesty. It is a tragedy." Much to his frustration, Hoover was not called upon to serve after the United States entered World War II due to his differences with Roosevelt and his continuing unpopularity. He did not pursue the presidential nomination at the 1944 Republican National Convention, and, at the request of Republican nominee Thomas E. Dewey, refrained from campaigning during the general election. In 1945, Hoover advised President Harry S. Truman to drop the United States' demand for the unconditional surrender of Japan because of the high projected casualties of the planned invasion of Japan, although Hoover was unaware of the Manhattan Project and the atomic bomb.

### Post-World War II

Following World War II, Hoover befriended President Truman despite their ideological differences. Because of Hoover's experience with Germany at the end of World War I, in 1946 Truman selected the former president to tour Allied-occupied Germany and Rome, Italy to ascertain the food needs of the occupied nations. After touring Germany, Hoover produced a number of reports critical of U.S. occupation policy. He stated in one report that "there is the illusion that the New Germany left after the annexations can be reduced to a 'pastoral state.' It cannot be done unless we exterminate or move 25,000,000 people out of it." On Hoover's initiative, a school meals program in the American and British occupation zones of Germany was begun on April 14, 1947; the program served 3,500,000 children.

Even more important, in 1947 Truman appointed Hoover to lead the Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government a new high level study. Truman accepted some of the recommendations of the "Hoover Commission" for eliminating waste, fraud, and inefficiency, consolidating agencies, and strengthening White House control of policy. Though Hoover had opposed Roosevelt's concentration of power in the 1930s, he believed that a stronger presidency was required with the advent of the Atomic Age. During the 1948 presidential election, Hoover supported Republican nominee Thomas Dewey's unsuccessful campaign against Truman, but he remained on good terms with Truman. Hoover favored the United Nations in principle, but he opposed granting membership to the Soviet Union and other Communist states. He viewed the Soviet Union to be as morally repugnant as Nazi Germany and supported the efforts of Richard Nixon and others to expose Communists in the United States. In 1949, New York governor Thomas E. Dewey offered Hoover the Senate seat vacated by Robert F. Wagner. It was a matter of being senator for only two months and he declined.

Hoover backed conservative leader Robert A. Taft at the 1952 Republican National Convention, but the party's presidential nomination instead went to Dwight D. Eisenhower, who went on to win the 1952 election. Though Eisenhower appointed Hoover to another presidential commission, Hoover disliked Eisenhower, faulting the latter's failure to roll back the New Deal. Hoover's public work helped to rehabilitate his reputation, as did his use of self-deprecating humor; he occasionally remarked that "I am the only person of distinction who's ever had a depression named after him." In 1958, Congress passed the Former Presidents Act, offering a $25,000 yearly pension (equivalent to $253,576 in 2022) to each former president. Hoover took the pension even though he did not need the money, possibly to avoid embarrassing Truman, whose allegedly precarious financial status played a role in the law's enactment. In the early 1960s, President John F. Kennedy offered Hoover various positions; Hoover declined the offers but defended Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs invasion and was personally distraught by Kennedy's assassination in 1963.

Hoover wrote several books during his retirement, including *The Ordeal of Woodrow Wilson*, in which he strongly defended Wilson's actions at the Paris Peace Conference. In 1944, he began working on *Freedom Betrayed*, which he often referred to as his "magnum opus". In *Freedom Betrayed*, Hoover strongly critiques Roosevelt's foreign policy, especially Roosevelt's decision to recognize the Soviet Union in order to provide aid to that country during World War II. The book was published in 2012 after being edited by historian George H. Nash.

## Death

Hoover faced three major illnesses during the last two years of his life, including an August 1962 operation in which a growth on his large intestine was removed. He died in New York City on October 20, 1964, following massive internal bleeding. Though Hoover's last spoken words are unknown, his last-known written words were a get-well message to his friend Harry Truman, six days before his death, after he heard that Truman had sustained injuries from slipping in a bathroom: "Bathtubs are a menace to ex-presidents for as you may recall a bathtub rose up and fractured my vertebrae when I was in Venezuela on your world famine mission in 1946. My warmest sympathy and best wishes for your recovery." Two months earlier, on August 10, Hoover reached the age of 90, only the second U.S. president (after John Adams) to do so. When asked how he felt on reaching the milestone, Hoover replied, "Too old." At the time of his death, Hoover had been out of office for over 31 years (11,553 days all together). This was the longest retirement in presidential history until Jimmy Carter broke that record in September 2012.

## Facts and trivia

* A native of West Branch, Iowa, Herbert Hoover was the first American President born west of the Mississippi.
* As a child, Hoover consistently attended schools, but he did little reading on his own aside from the Bible.
* Hoover's father, noted by the local paper for his "pleasant, sunshiny disposition", died in 1880 at the age of 34. Hoover's mother died in 1884, leaving Hoover, his older brother, Theodore, and his younger sister, May, as orphans. Hoover lived the next 18 months with his uncle Allen Hoover at a nearby farm.
* Hoover was the first student to attend Stanford University, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Geology. After graduating he went to work as a mining engineer, where he eventually devised a way to remove zinc from mines and started the Zinc Corporation.
* Before serving as president, Hoover led the Commission for Relief in Belgium, served as the director of the U.S. Food Administration under President Woodrow Wilson, and served as the third U.S. secretary of commerce under President Warren G. Harding.
* Hoover was the last cabinet secretary to be directly elected President of the United States.
* Less than a year after the 1929 U.S. Presidential Election, Hoover faced the Great Depression and dealt with unemployment rates as high as 25%. This tough time ultimately led to him losing reelection to Franklin D. Roosevelt.
* Hoover departed from Washington in March 1933, bitter at his election loss and continuing unpopularity. As Coolidge, Harding, Wilson, and Taft had all died during the 1920s or early 1930s and Roosevelt died in office, Hoover was the sole living ex-president from 1933 to 1953. Hoover's retirement was over 31 years long, one of the longest presidential retirements.
* He and his wife, Lou, lived in Palo Alto, California until her death in 1944, at which point Hoover began to live permanently at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York City.
* Racist remarks and racial humor was common at the time, but Hoover never indulged in them while President and deliberate discrimination was anathema to him; he thought of himself as a friend to blacks and an advocate for their progress. W. E. B. Du Bois described him as an "undemocratic racist who saw blacks as a species of 'sub-men'".
* During the 1930s, Hoover increasingly self-identified as a conservative. He closely followed national events after leaving public office, becoming a constant critic of Franklin Roosevelt. In response to continued attacks on his character and presidency, Hoover wrote more than two dozen books, including *The Challenge to Liberty* (1934), which harshly criticized Roosevelt's New Deal. Hoover described the New Deal's National Recovery Administration and Agricultural Adjustment Administration as "fascistic", and he called the 1933 Banking Act a "move to gigantic socialism".
* Only 58 when he left office, Hoover held out hope for another term as president throughout the 1930s. At the 1936 Republican National Convention, Hoover's speech attacking the New Deal was well received, but the nomination went to Kansas Governor Alf Landon. In the general election, Hoover delivered numerous well-publicized speeches on behalf of Landon, but Landon was defeated by Roosevelt.
* Following World War II, Hoover befriended President Harry S. Truman despite their ideological differences. Because of Hoover's experience with Germany at the end of World War I, in 1946 Truman selected the former president to tour Allied-occupied Germany and Rome, Italy to ascertain the food needs of the occupied nations. After touring Germany, Hoover produced a number of reports critical of U.S. occupation policy.
* In 1949, New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey offered Hoover the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Robert F. Wagner. It was a matter of being senator for only two months and he declined.
* Hoover faced three major illnesses during the last two years of his life, including an August 1962 operation in which a growth on his large intestine was removed. He died on October 20, 1964, in New York City following massive internal bleeding.
* In the 1940s and 1950s, public opinion of Hoover improved largely due to his service in various assignments for presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower, including chairing the influential Hoover Commission. In the end, Herbert Hoover is often regarded as a below-average U.S. president. Critical assessment of his presidency by historians and political scientists rank him as one of the worst presidents in U.S. history.

## References

* https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Hoover-328