Herbert Hoover was born at midnight on
10 or 11 August 1874 into a Quaker family in Iowa.
The Hoover family had Quaker ancestors going back six generations.
He was called “Bertie” and later “Bert.”
When he was two years old, he was suffering from a terrific fit of coughing
that might have killed him if his uncle John Minthorn, a Quaker physician,
had not blown air into his mouth.
Bertie was not allowed to play with toy soldiers or wooden swords.
He began going to school in 1879; he was taught not to fight,
and he refused to fight a bully.
His father died of a heart attack in December 1880.
His mother Hulda became a preacher, and Bertie was required
to read a chapter from the New Testament every morning.
She taught Sunday school and was secretary
for the
Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU).
She died from typhoid and pneumonia in February 1884.
Bertie lived with Uncle Allen and Aunt Millie on a nearby farm.
He liked her cooking and became chubby.
In the summer of 1885 he lived with Laban Miles
at the Osage Reservation in the Indian Territory (Oklahoma)
where Miles was the superintendent of the Reservation.
Bert had native Americans as friends and liked learning their lore.
He also collected rocks and began to study geology.
Uncle John Minthorn’s young son had died in 1884,
and he offered to take in Herbert.
On the evening of 12 November 1885 Bert and the Hammell Quaker
family boarded a train that took them to Oregon where Dr. Minthorn
had moved to work as an Indian agent for President Chester Arthur.
There Bert attended the new Friends Pacific Academy
that Minthorn helped build and ran as superintendent.
He made Bert do numerous chores.
He did not like taking care of the horses and preferred to ride his bicycle.
Bert and his cousins once skipped Sunday school
to go fishing and came home all muddy.
Quakers prayed for the sinners.
Bert trusted in God and said, “My God is a good, kind God.”1
Minthorn had been a surgeon in the Union Army and had fought at Shiloh.
He taught Bert the ethics of work, responsibility, and self-improvement.
Bert graduated from the Grammar School on 6 May 1887
and delivered the commencement speech on “Keeping His Word.”
In February 1888 Minthorn and others started the
Oregon Land Company in Salem with $20,000 in capital.
Bert went to work for them as the assistant bookkeeper
in an office earning $30 a month, and he learned accounting and typing.
He soon knew about all the deals and where the documents were.
In the fall of 1889 he began taking classes at the Capital Business College in Salem.
A teacher helped him get books from the library, and he read Ivanhoe by Walter Scott.
His favorite novel was David Copperfield because it was about an orphan like himself.
He also read works by Thackeray, Shakespeare, American history,
and translations of French authors such as Voltaire, Rousseau,
Montaigne, Victor Hugo, Balzac, Dumas, and Zola.
He joined a Quaker debate club, and he argued
that war destroyed more men than alcohol.
Bert wanted to go to the new university that was being started by
US Senator Leland Stanford with $40 million “to promote the public welfare
by exercising an influence in behalf of humanity and civilization.”2
As Bert had no high school diploma, he had to pass the entrance exam.
In the summer of 1891 Bert was given pre-college tutoring
in Palo Alto so that he could pass that exam.
He worked part-time to pay for his schooling and full-time in the summers.
He learned mathematics from Dr. Joseph Swain and
geology and mining from Dr. John Casper Branner.
Swain had tutored Hoover in that summer.
Hoover continued to fail in English 1-B until the year he graduated.
He was also tutored by Stanford’s young president David Starr Jordan,
who had been president of Indiana University,
and by two women in his boardinghouse.
At Portland he passed the entrance exam in arithmetic,
algebra, geometry, geography, American history, and physiology.
Hoover failed the English language test again.
Yet he did so well on the rest, he was allowed to
enter Stanford University on 1 October 1891.
In the opening address of Stanford University on Senator Stanford’s large property
in his speech to 465 new students, who were mostly freshmen, Stanford said,
Remember that life is, above all, practical;
that you are here to fit yourselves for a useful career;
also, that learning should
not only make you wise in the arts and sciences,
but should fully develop your moral and religious natures.3
Dr. Branner hired Hoover as his laboratory assistant for $40 a month,
and he worked for him in the summer of 1892
studying rocks in the Ozarks and drawing maps.
In the fall Hoover changed his major from Mechanical Engineering to Geology.
He did not join a fraternity and was elected treasurer by the students.
In the next two summers Hoover worked for the Stanford
geologist Dr. Waldemar Lindgren in the High Sierras.
As student treasurer he reorganized student finances introducing bookkeeping.
Hoover became the manager of Stanford’s baseball team and the football team,
and he organized games against their rival at Berkeley.
During the financial recession that had begun in 1893 Hoover hoped
to get a job with the U.S. Geological Survey, but cut-backs left him out.
In the summer Dr. Branner hired him to work on a topographic
relief map of Arkansas for the Chicago World’s Fair.
He studied paleontology, mineralogy, surveying, chemistry, and
philosophy plus calculus and mining engineering in the fall.
In July 1894 Hoover began working with Dr. Lindgren for
the United States Geological Survey in the High Sierras.
In January 1895 Hoover was elected president of the Geological Club.
He graduated on 29 May 1895 at the top of his class as a mining engineer.
President David Starr Jordan spoke and said that men and women
“are judged by achievements, not by dreams….
In helpfulness alone can wealth or power find consecration.”4
In the summer of 1895 Hoover worked again with Lindgren studying
and mapping the Gold Belt of California for the U.S. Geological Survey.
He worked in mines in the Sierra Nevada mountains, and he wrote an
article on the geology of the mines for the Mining & Scientific Press.
He traveled as a mining scout in the Southwest.
His interest in economics led him to read
Adam Smith,
John Stuart Mill, and Walter Bagehot.
In February 1896 Hoover joined his older brother Tad,
sister May, and his cousin Harriette Miles in San Francisco.
Bert asked the mining engineer Louis Janin to help him get a position,
and Hoover accepted a clerical job that showed his skills.
Based on his knowledge gained working for Dr. Branner he revised
a legal brief that corrected errors and helped Janin win a lawsuit.
His salary increased to $3,000 a year, and Janin sent him
to work for 15 months in Arizona, Nevada, and Wyoming.
Janin recommended Hoover to Bewick, Moreing & Company,
and
they hired him to go to the gold rush in western Australia to scout the mines.
Hoover traveled by railroad east across the country, and after sailing
from New York on 31 March 1897 he met his employers in England.
He became a manager and felt exploited.
In October in Coolgardie, Australia three people per day were dying of typhoid.
He criticized the minimum wage because he thought it prejudicial against the owners.
He also opposed Australia’s workmen’s compensation.
That fall he increased the work week from 44 hours to 47.
On November 30 Hoover completed his
24-page report on the Sons of Gwalia mine.
On 23 May 1898 he wrote to the London office,
During the week I have had two strikes….
Again the Truckers in the lower level struck
for a rise in pay owing to the wet ground.
We discharged the entire crew at that level
and replaced them with men at the old rate.
Again it had been formerly the custom
to pay double pay for Sunday Work, which we stopped,
and six men working on Sunday refused to proceed.
We discharged them and replaced them with new men.
I have a bunch of Italians coming up this week
and will put them in the mine on contract work.
If they are satisfactory I will secure enough of them
to hold the property in case of a general strike,
and with your permission will reduce wages.5
Lack of water was a problem, and Hoover built a filtration system
to recycle water that worked so well that its use in Australia spread.
He discovered the Sons of Gwalia mine that needed capital, and he
persuaded
the London office to buy two-thirds of the company for $500,000.
Hoover was given a salary of $10,000 and expenses.
They found rich veins, and in the next 65 years
it produced gold worth $55 million.
Hoover worked as a consulting engineer for
eight mining companies and a financial company.
He returned to London and quit after the mine brought
in $2 million for Moreing whom he said gave him nothing.
Moreing offered Hoover a job working for Chang Yen Mao.
In November 1898 Hoover agreed to manage
coal mining in China for $20,000 and expenses.
He had met Lou Henry at Stanford when she was a freshman
three years behind him, though she was about five months older.
She learned Latin and five foreign languages.
Like Hoover she was interested in rocks.
She was determined to graduate before they married,
and she was the first woman to earn a degree in geology at Stanford.
Hoover returned to London in early January 1899, and he married
Lou at her family’s home in Monterey, California on February 10.
They sailed from San Francisco for China.
She began learning Chinese and translated mining books.
They moved into the city of Tianjin on March 20 and were persuaded
to show their status on a large estate with fifteen Chinese servants
that together cost what one would earn in America.
Hoover began collecting information on mining in Chihli.
Chang Yen Mao sent Hoover to various places in the Chinese empire
including Shandong, the Gobi Desert, and beyond the Great Wall to
Manchuria, Mongolia, and to the Shansi and Shensi provinces.
He found that China had the greatest anthracite coal reserves
in the world, and they were being developed in Kaiping.
Revolutionaries called “Boxers” in the West were
rising up and attacking Christians and foreigners.
The Hoovers’ compound had about 2,300 soldiers
who were mostly Russians with few weapons.
China sent 5,000 imperial troops to protect the village,
and they defected and joined 25,000 Boxers.
Hoover refused to flee, and on a bicycle he delivered food
and supplies to foreigners staying in the settlement.
He stopped a British officer from executing some Chinese.
At one point they faced death in a battle.
Eventually Welsh fusiliers and US Marines arrived, and the Boxers fled.
Chang deeded Bewick, Moreing & Company to the British with Hoover
as their representative so that the Chinese would respect it as a British company.
In August 1900 Chang and Gustav Detring persuaded Hoover
to accept a deed as trustee for a new British corporation
which Hoover wrote was for the “benefit of all concerned.”
He got stock worth about $200,000.
The Hoovers returned to Asia in early 1901.
Lou stayed in Japan, and Bert directed the Kaiping mines,
processing, and their shipping business.
He accepted a 20% share of Bewick, Moreing.
They left China in September, and he became one
of the four partners in Bewick, Moreing at London.
The Hoovers traveled by way of California.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported that he was “reputed
to be the highest salaried man of his years in the world.”6
They went to London in November.
For two years he traveled and set up mining operations in sixteen nations,
opening offices in San Francisco, New York, Paris, St. Petersburg,
Melbourne, Johannesburg, and Rangoon.
In 1905 he invested in an abandoned mine in Burma,
and his management helped produce much silver, zinc, and lead.
He managed twenty mines with most of them in Australia.
He visited Russia in 1909, and for several years he invested in oil fields
and copper mines; he observed the brutality of the tsarist empire.
He returned two years later and was so annoyed
and
worried by the chaos that he sold his investments there.
Hoover had a habit of reading two hours each night
that he maintained for the rest of his life.
He read Carlyle’s French Revolution and
Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
He was trying to monopolize the goldfields and claimed
he controlled over $70 million in Australian mines.
In China he testified for two days in a trial about
arguments he had had with Chang Yen Mao.
The judge found that Hoover had taken property deeds by force.
Hoover was critical of the workers and believed that
negroes and Asiatics were mentally inferior to white men.
In Outer Mongolia he lived in a fine house
and had fifteen Chinese servants.
In 1903 he signed a ten-year contract with Moreing.
Thorstein Veblen was from the Midwest,
and he began teaching at Stanford in 1906.
Hoover studied his books, The Theory of the Leisure Class and
The Instinct of Workmanship and the State of the Industrial Arts.
In 1907 Hoover left pregnant Lou and their 3-year-old son
in London, and he worked in Australia for six months.
He signed a ten-year covenant with Bewick, Moreing in June 1908,
and that year he sold his interest in the company for about $225,000.
He was determined to earn a million before he was 40,
and he acquired four times that.
He was employing over a million workers.
The Zinc Corporation in Australia became Conzinc Riotinto
and was one of the world’s largest mining companies.
Hoover liked to have things his way and was temperamental.
He invested his earnings in the stock market, and no law
at that time prevented him from using inside information.
His total share of capital from eighteen companies
with $55 million was making him about $30 million.
Hoover had lectured on mining at Stanford
and Columbia University in New York.
In 1909 he published Principles of Mining and explained
drilling, valuation, bookkeeping, and risk management.
He wrote,
To the engineer falls the work of creating from the
dry bones of scientific fact the living body of industry.
It is he whose intellect and direction bring to the world
the comforts and necessities of daily need.
Unlike the soldier, destruction is not his prime function.
Unlike the lawyer, quarrels are not his daily bread.
Engineering is the profession of creation and of construction,
of stimulation of human effort and accomplishment.7
In his Memoirs he wrote,
The great liability of the engineer compared to
men of other professions is that
his works are out in the open where all can see them.
His acts, step by step, are in hard substance….
The engineer simply cannot deny that he did it.
If his works do not work, he is damned.
That is the phantasmagoria that
haunts his nights and dogs his days.8
His ideas became more liberal.
He recognized that higher wages could reward hard work.
He accepted the 8-hour day and worked on improving mine safety.
In his mining book he had recommended compulsory arbitration.
He also argued that nonviolent labor organizations deserved
more recognition as they were “normal and proper antidotes
for unlimited capitalistic organization.”9
He wrote,
The time when the employer could ride roughshod
over his labor is disappearing with the doctrine
of “laissez faire” on which it was founded.
The sooner the fact is recognized,
the better for the employer.
The sooner some miners’ unions develop from the first
into the second stage, the more speedily will their
organizations secure general respect and influence.”10
In 1909 Hoover wrote,
Some years of experience with compulsory arbitration
in Australia and New Zealand are convincing that
although the law there has many defects,
still it is a step in the right direction, and the result
has been of almost unmixed good to both sides.
One of its minor, yet really great, benefits,
has been a considerable extinction of the parasite
who lives by creating violence.11
In 1910 Hoover became the chairman of the new
Inter-Russian Syndicate that was capitalized with 2 million rubles.
Moering accused him of spying on his company, and in 1911
Hoover paid him $125,000 to settle with him out of court.
From 1908 to 1914 he managed teams he called “engineering or mine doctors”
who turned failed mines into profitable businesses.
Hoover’s wife Lou knew Latin and German, and he used $20,000
to hire scholars of medieval German and Latin to help them translate the
classic De Re Metallica by the humanist Georgius Agricola (1494-1555).
They published it in 632 pages with illustrations in 1912, and the
American Historical Review reported that it was “noteworthy” and “intelligent.”
That year Hoover contributed $1,000 to the
Progressive campaign of Theodore Roosevelt.
Hoover in September addressed an undergraduate assembly, and he noted
that the Student Union could protect them from “social inequality.”
He said,
The undemocratic social stratification which has been
so much discussed of late in our eastern neighbors,
has not yet entered Stanford to any alarming extent.
Nor do we want it….
There has been a great growth of class feeling
in this country during the past few years,
and we have seen with dismay the transplanting of privilege
into the social life of some of our universities….
Certainly the older [European] universities
are not cradles of democracy.
In this country, however, with the ideals
upon which our government is founded, we have a right
to expect or even demand that the universities should be
in the forefront of the fight for equality of opportunity
and not a playground for childish institutions.
The ideals of a university are made by its members,
and yours are right so far.
You must see that you keep them.12
At the end of 1912 he became a Stanford University trustee,
and he served for fifty years.
He promoted projects for a new library, a hospital,
and a gymnasium, and he donated $100,000.
Hoover became interested in politics, and Stanford’s
president David Starr Jordan recommended him.
Jordan, like Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson,
advised students to provide “useful service.”
In April 1912 Hoover had become an agent
for the
Panama-Pacific International Exposition planned for 1915
to commemorate Balboa’s discovery of the Pacific Ocean.
He was concerned that the US Congress had given US shipping
preferred rates on the Panama Canal, and he became acquainted
with the Liberal Foreign Secretary Edward Grey and the former
Prime Minister Arthur Balfour who led the Conservative opposition in Britain.
His wife Lou and their two sons arrived in London on 30 June 1914.
The beginning of the Great War in Europe
in August 1914 canceled the Panama Exposition.
Hoover retired from mining when there were 125,000 men on his payroll.
His investments would provide him with an income of about $100,000 a year
for the remaining half century of his long life.
On 2 August 1914 Germany gave Belgium an ultimatum to let the
German Army pass through their country to France, or there would be a war.
Belgium was neutral by international law and rejected that demand.
The next day Germany declared war on France, and their Army invaded Belgium.
On August 4 Britain declared war against Germany.
In his Memoirs Herbert Hoover wrote,
Then the world stumbled into the Great War
and the period of Great Fear settled like a fog
upon the human race—to last, perhaps, for generations….
The world made the sad discovery that deeper in European
nations than the arts of peace and human progress
were age-old hates, rivalries and imperialisms.
The combative nature of man, the forces of aggressive
nationalism and the human yearning of men
for the adventure and glory of war were only slumbering.13
Also on the 4th Hoover told a friend that the war
“upset every possible human calculation,” and he
wrote to his friend H. Foster Bain,
I have a body of 100,000 men at work
in various enterprises, and this morning
I do not see how we are to meet these pay-rolls
by any human device possible.
Our products are mostly base metals the market
for which is paralyzed; shipping facilities are gone,
and even exchange facilities to remit money—
did we have it—are out of gear.
Of still more importance is the fact that
the moneys which we have in reserve in London
are unavailable, due to a Moratorium.
All of the wildest dreams of novelists
as to what could happen in the case of a world war
have already happened by way of anticipation,
and as to what the realization of such a war may be
one can only stutter at.14
On that day Hoover went to see the American Consul General
Robert Skinner where a thousand Americans had gathered.
On August 5 Hoover sent a cable to his friend Lindon W. Bates saying,
American Government will probably need appoint
Special Commissioner in England
to handle return of American Tourists.
I would be glad undertake this work without payment.
Have you any channel to suggest my appointment
at Washington [?] American Ambassador [and]
Consul General would no doubt support recommendation
if made from independent quarters.15
He volunteered to help the 100,000 Americans
in Europe most of whom wanted to go home.
Banks were closed, and there was no credit or telegraph service.
Already about 6,000 had come to London.
Two days later Hoover began operating his service in the Savoy Hotel
ballroom in London while Americans were panicking,
and by August 8 about 10,000 Americans had registered at the Savoy.
He organized businessmen into a Committee of American Residents
in London for Assistance of American Travellers with himself as chairman.
The war was ruining mining in Europe as men went off to fight.
Hoover with former mining executives and their wealthy friends began
loaning gold and British pounds so that the American Citizens’ Committee
could help US exiles book passage home and get temporary lodging.
Hoover’s wife Lou established a Women’s Committee to do the same
for single women and those with children by providing $1.5 million
to 120,000 refugees on an honor system.
They gave out cash for IOUs, and only $300 would not be repaid.
The US Congress appropriated $2.5 million to relieve
stranded travelers, and that eased the panic.
Hoover’s Committee was giving out $10,000 a day.
Fred Kent also formed a committee at the Savoy,
and he declined to join Hoover’s committee.
The US Ambassador Page gave the first $300,000
from the US to Kent’s Citizen Committee.
Hoover appealed to Assistant Secretary of War
Henry Breckinridge when he arrived in London in August.
On the 20th Breckinridge and Page asked Hoover’s Residents Committee
to organize and distribute the remaining $2.5 million.
His volunteer staff included over a hundred accountants and auditors.
By early October 120,000 Americans had left from London
for America including 42,000 who registered with his committee.
They had given financial aid to about 9,600 Americans.
German forces had invaded and occupied Belgium that was caught
between the German Army and the British blockade.
Belgium’s King Albert with some forces had retreated to Antwerp
where he remained for the duration of the war.
Germany’s quick conquest of the rest of neutral Belgium killed
hundreds of civilians and forced 42,000 people to move.
They destroyed 1,100 buildings including Louvain University’s great library.
These atrocities brought the British into the war against Germany.
Before the war Belgians had the sixth largest economy in Europe,
and they had been importing 70% of their food.
The US Ambassador Walter Hines Page asked Hoover to use his
organizational skills to provide money and food to feed millions of Belgians.
They had to get food through the British blockade and
distributed to people in German-occupied territory.
On October 6 Hoover turned his attention to the Belgians’ need for food.
He cabled the Chicago commodities exchange
and bought 10,000 bushels of wheat for Belgium.
On October 10 he met with Ambassador Page at the American Embassy,
and Page gladly agreed to letting Hoover organize the project.
The US Minister to Belgium Brand Whitlock sent a cable to
President Wilson on October 16 and another to the Secretary of State saying,
In normal times Belgium produces only one sixth
of the foodstuffs she consumes;
within two weeks there will be no more food in Belgium;
winter is coming on and there are thousands
who are without home and without hope; it is necessary
to extend the relief work to the whole of Belgium.16
Hoover accepted the job, and at a summit in Page’s office they formed
the Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB) with himself as chairman
in London with other headquarters in Rotterdam, Brussels, and New York.
CRB’s goal was to provide food for 7.5 million Belgians under German occupation.
Hoover wrote about what they did.
Immediately this [relief] Commission was set up,
they went into the market and purchased $250,000 worth
of food, chartered ships, placed the food on board,
quietly stated to the English Cabinet
that the Belgian people are starving, and said:
“Are you going to allow this to go to the Belgians or not?”
and having carefully advertised the purchases
and the preparations for shipment
and the date when the steamers could sail,
there could only be one answer
from the English officials.17
Some Belgian businessmen bought food for $100,000, and Hoover
persuaded the US Government to approve the shipment on October 13.
The British Government on October 21 agreed
to subsidize the relief with £150,000 per month.
Hoover contacted the Chicago wheat exchange by telegraph with an order,
and on November 4 a ship with food left for Rotterdam.
Hoover described his situation in a letter to his associate Curtis H. Lindley.
It is really difficult for me to take the matter seriously
for I want nothing from the President or anyone else
in this World except my good name amongst all men.
As to my social standing, I have broken bread with lawyers,
engineers, Earls, Viscounts, plain Knights, Chevaliers,
Prime Ministers and Ex-Prime Ministers,
Members of Parliament, United States Senators,
Congressmen, Editors of Newspapers,
miners, porters and sundry other persons.
I regret that I have never organized these efforts
into that Social Status which of course can only be evolved
by close attention to the feminine side,
shoots, hunts, balls, dinners and so forth.
As you know, on the contrary, I have preferred a modest
existence and with my off-time devoted to literary work.
I have but few things to parade to the World
and the best of these was to be chosen by my countrymen
here in London, where I have lived these many years,
to represent them in this general World emergency.
As to my financial status, I can manage to rub along
on the professional income of about $100,000 per annum
which I have assembled annually for some years
and my colleagues in business even encourage me to draw
a considerable part of it while I am at work for the Belgians,
a testimony of their affection and a guarantee
that I will pay my bills.18
Hoover often had to risk the dangers
of German submarines and mines at sea.
He had to persuade the British to let the blockade allow the shipments
of food for Belgians and the Germans not to confiscate them.
On December 5 Hoover wrote to the American Ambassador in Berlin,
James Gerard, to persuade Germans to leave alone the Belgian food sources.
All of the destruction in Belgium and the levying
of food-supplies for the support of troops can be defended
as a war measure, but to allow these people to starve
while under their material control will raise a storm
in the neutral world fifty times the volume of that which
has already been created by any local destruction.
It is my belief that the belligerent nation which refuses
to participate in the succor of these people
will yet have to carry the brand of Cain as their murderers.
On the other hand, any kindness held out to them
in this time of dire necessity will bring with itself credit
which in after history will wipe out
nine-tenths of the charges of ruthlessness in war.19
On 12 January 1915 US Ambassador Page wrote this to President Wilson:
Life is worth more, too, for knowing Hoover.
But for him Belgium would now be starved,
however generously people may have given food.
He is gathering together and transporting
and getting distributed $5,000,000 worth a month,
with a perfect organization of volunteers, chiefly American.
He has a fleet of thirty-five ships,
flying the Commission’s flag—the only flag that
all belligerents have entered into an agreement
to respect and to defend.
He came to me the other day and said,
“You must know the Commission is $600,000 in debt.
But don’t be uneasy.
I’ve given my personal note for it.”
He’s a simple, modest energetic little man
who began his career in California and will end it in Heaven;
and he doesn’t want anybody’s thanks.20
On January 18 Hoover wrote to his friend Will Irwin.
We have had great trials over [on] this side
through the conduct and attitude of the Belgian Committee
and part of our Commission who were in control in Brussels.
Things got on such a footing,
that it was brought home to me,
that unless an immediate revolution took place
we might afford one of the greatest scandals
of the War and be in a position that
would damn the balance of our lives.
After many sleepless nights, I went to Belgium
and found everybody dead against me.
I stayed there a little over two weeks, and as a result,
I first brought Whitlock to my side within twenty minutes—
I had the Belgians my way in 24 hours,
and in a week the Americans in control were either
bashed into line or were eating out of my hand.21
Early in 1915 Hoover met with Chancellor of the Exchequer
David Lloyd George
and Germany’s Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg.
Hoover conferred with France’s Prime Minister Aristide Briand, and he visited
the German military headquarters at Charleville in occupied northern France.
Hoover got a passport that let him cross borders,
and he gave no military information to either side.
The US Ambassador Page noted that Hoover was probably the only person who had
negotiated agreements “with the British, French,
German, Dutch and Belgian governments.”
Hoover announced that he was the boss, and
he did not like anyone disagreeing with him.
Belgium’s Governor-General Bissing challenged the authority
of Hoover who went to Berlin and had Bissing overruled.
He arranged for a motion picture crew to film food lines in Brussels,
and he wrote to his wife Lou in San Francisco to arrange shipments from California.
Page and Hoover met with Emile Francqui, and his committee
would organize the distribution of food in Brussels.
Soon CRB had a fleet of 75 ships carrying food from America to Rotterdam.
A few American volunteers supervised Belgians who handled distribution.
Those who could pay for food were charged a little over cost
so that the destitute could get free food.
Canteens or kitchens served meals with an extra meal
for pregnant women, children, and the elderly.
During the war those canteens served 2.5 million persons.
On March 3 a letter to the Belgian priest J. F. Stittlemans
had a description of their operation.
To beg, borrow and buy nearly $1,800,000 worth of food
every week; to ship it over seas from America, Australia,
the Argentine and India; to traverse three belligerent lines;
to transport it through the country
with a wholly demoralised transportation service;
to distribute it equitably to over 7,000,000 people;
to see that it reaches the civilians only and that
it is adapted to every condition from babyhood to old age
and to do this with a machinery operated
by the self-denial of volunteer effort,
is a labour only rendered possible
by the most steadfast teamwork on the part of all….
We are under daily zealous surveillance
of all the governments involved;…
we maintain an investigation department of our own;
we have put into force every method and check
for efficiency and neutrality of conduct
which our advisors and ourselves could invent;
the accounts of our many branches
are audited and published every fortnight….
This organization has gained for the American people,
not only by the generous American gifts
but also by the integrity and efficiency of its administration,
a bright spot in the esteem of Europe,
and we have the right to demand the absolute confidence
and support of our fellow countrymen.22
In March 1915 Hoover extended CRB to part of northern France
where 2.5 million civilians were occupied by German forces.
The director Lindon Bates of the CRB office in New York lost his son
on a torpedoed ship and then accused Hoover of violating the US Logan Act
which prohibits citizens from negotiating with foreign nations.
Senator Henry Cabot Lodge began an investigation.
Hoover came home and met with President Wilson who did not like Lodge
and said he would help CRB by appointing prominent businessmen to a committee.
The State Department had been informed, and Bates resigned.
On March 21 a German plane attacked several ships
in the North Sea, and CRB’s Elfand was one of them.
On April 10 a German submarine torpedoed the
CRB vessel Harpalyce in the English Channel.
Hoover wrote to Ambassador Page and asked the
US Government to do something about this.
On May 12 Hoover wrote this to President Wilson:
We are certain that unless America today
takes a strong lead in the vindication
of the rights of neutrals and the upholding and enforcement
of international agreements, the world will have
slipped back two hundred years toward barbarism.
Since this war began, one agreement after another
has been set aside by one belligerent after another,
and as the sanctity of international undertakings
and the proof of their ability to stand
is fundamental to the world’s ultimate peace,
any deviation from the insistence by neutrals
of these undertakings undermines
irretrievably the whole future of our civilisation.
We believe that the hour has struck
when America must stand on this issue.23
In a letter he dated June 3 Hoover wrote,
I have returned a few days ago
from France, Germany and western Russia.
I wish again to reiterate to you that the evidences
of certain psychological currents amongst these people
are of the strongest possible character;
that in Germany especially, there is no doubt in my mind,
that there is building up a revival
of the old Roman sentiment which may be expressed
in the old Roman phrase—“The Masters of the World.”
This does not apply to a few men at the top but is becoming
the ambition of every German of even half intelligence.
I do not believe that they have any faith
of accomplishing this by the peaceful arts of commerce.
Some of these days the civilised world
has got to fight these people to a finish.
The English people have already in their history
gone through a mild case of this contagion,
and are pleased to sit under the illusion that
they are already the masters of the world,
and the fire of their ambitions has largely died out,
and I do not believe that they will again be
on the offensive unless they are deeply stirred up.24
In June a conflict developed between Belgians
in the Comité National (CN) and the CRB.
Hoover told Ambassador Whitlock,
I am not contending that
the Belgian people are not grateful;
they are in fact overwhelmingly grateful to America and to
yourself personally, and this is as we should all desire.
Our real difficulty lies in the lack of esteem
and consideration which the C.R.B.
possesses as an institution in itself.
It has always been my belief, that a great work
cannot be done by individuals but only by institutions,
and the association with a successful institution
is sufficient gratification for any individual.
Curiously enough, abroad the C.R.B. is a household word
and the reflection of this
is the daily facilitation of our work….
Yet here, in Belgium,
we seem to have no position as an institution.
The daily treatment of our men—the grudging civility—
by the Germans is sufficient evidence of this.
My observation leads me to believe this is as much as
anything else due to the reflection of Belgian attitude.25
On July 20 Hoover met with the CN leaders and said he was going to withdraw
the CRB from doing relief inside Belgium because the CN was well established.
The Comité National quickly asked Hoover’s commission to remain in Belgium.
Hoover then drew up a “treaty” defining the administrative relations
of the two agencies, and CN allowed CRB personnel
to be members of their executive committee.
Hoover retained a tight control over publicity because
he did not want to jeopardize “the lives of millions of people.”
On October 16 he left England to return to the United States.
President Wilson invited him to the White House
and was so impressed by Hoover that he said,
He is a real man,… one of the very best men
we have sent over there, … a great international figure.
Such men stir me deeply and make me in love with duty!26
In a letter to Col. House on August 16 Hoover complained
that the “Allied programme of starvation” was a failure
that caused the Germans to hate the British.
He also wrote,
I have only one constructive suggestion to make,
and that is that it is in the joint interest of both sides
that the embargo should be taken off food-supplies the
world over [including the North Sea and the Black Sea]….
The final and complete acknowledgment of foodstuffs
as non-contraband and not subject to blockade and embargo
in this war would be one of the most constructive steps
towards civilisation and permanent peace
that the world has yet taken.27
On 9 November 1915 Hoover and his family
sailed from New York to return to London.
The New Republic reported that the Commission for Relief in Belgium
is “the biggest commissary undertaking the world has ever seen”
covering 19,000 square miles in northern France and Belgium
using 240 regional warehouses for 4,700 communes.
Hoover met with his staff in Brussels on his eighth trip there during the war.
On December 4 Hoover persuaded Britain’s Prime Minister Herbert Asquith
to grant access through the blockade with the following argument:
I pointed out that the civil population had been brought
to this pass through action of the British [blockade];
that if the British claim that
they were fighting the war on behalf of Belgium were true,
they would be unable to substantiate this claim in history
if they prevented others from saving the Belgian population
from decimation by starvation
or through slaughter arising out of starvation riots;
that although the British Government refuses
to give us assistance, it dare not put an end
to our shipment of foodstuffs from America into Belgium
if it wished to hold one atom of American public esteem….
I was convinced that the Germans would not feed
the Belgians, and that they must certainly starve
unless the activities of our Commission continued.28
On 4 May 1916 at the annual meeting of the National Committee
for Relief in Belgium the British Prime Minister Asquith said,
A noble friend and colleague of mine, Lord Curzon,
has described Mr. Hoover’s work as:
“A miracle of scientific organisation.”
That I believe, is not an over-statement….
I am desired to express on behalf of the Government
our deep gratitude to Mr. Hoover and to those American
citizens who have so nobly given up their time
and their occupations without recompense,
and to a large extent without recognition,
to this work of purchasing, shipping and distributing
the supplies which alone enable the population
of Belgium to keep body and soul together.
It is one of the finest achievements in the history
of humane and philanthropic organisation.29
After that the Foreign Secretary Edward Grey assured Hoover that
the entire British Government would cooperate with “this humanitarian work …
in the closest possible way,” and the CRB has their “complete confidence.”
All together the CRB provided about $880 million in aid.
Fund-raising drives were organized throughout the United States,
in British colonies, Latin American countries, and Japan.
Lou Hoover was an effective speaker.
In England 220 Belgians were donating $250,000 each month.
In October 1916 Pope Benedict XV appealed for money for the starving children
of Belgium and advised Catholic clergy in America to ask for funds.
Hoover told Lloyd George that they needed government funds,
and despite the militarists he approved a monthly grant of $4.8 million.
A French bank president provided $14 million and
a regular amount for occupied northern France.
Hoover came to New York, and the mining engineers in the
Rocky Mountain Club of New York, who had compiled $500,000
for a new clubhouse, at a dinner to honor Hoover on 29 January 1917
their directors voted to contribute that money to the CRB.
In his speech Hoover said,
The feeling that the food supply of the community
may cease at any moment;
that your women and children are in jeopardy,
and the feeling of every thinking man that a disturbance
by the population only means blood in the streets;
that there is no possible salvation or solution;
a population that shivers at rumors;
it goes beyond ability to describe.
That has been the situation of Belgium and Northern France,
with 10,000,000 people for the last two years.30
In early March 1917 Hoover met with Wilson in the White House,
and the President asked him to find out what resources were needed
by Britain and France to win the war and to learn from
the Allies’ economies what could help America.
Most of the relief for Belgium and northern France came from governments
with the United States providing $386,632,260,
France $204,862,854, and Britain $109,045,329.
Sales of food to other nations brought in $168,521,878;
world charity provided $52,290,836, and Belgium gave $6,328,328.
Hoover was proud that the CRB’s overhead costs were
less than 0.5% of the Commission’s budget for four years
at $3,908,892 out of the total of $927,681,485.
On 2 April 1917 President Woodrow Wilson asked the Congress
for a declaration of war against Germany, and on that night
Hoover and CRB volunteers on a train in Belgium
sent to Wilson the following message:
We wish to tell you that there is no word in your historic
statement to congress but finds response in all our hearts.
For two and a half years we have been obliged
to remain silent witnesses to the character of the forces
dominating this war, but we now are at liberty to say that
although we break, with great regret, our association
with many German individuals who have given
sympathetic support to our work,
yet, your message enunciates our conviction,
born of our intimate experience and contact,
that there is no hope for democracy or liberalism
and consequently for real peace or the safety of our country
unless the system which has brought the world
into this unfathomable misery
can be stamped out once and for all.31
On April 6 the United States entered the Great War,
and the CRB became part of the US Government.
Europe had 40 million soldiers under arms, and the United States Army then
had less than 200,000 with only 19 officers on the General Staff.
Between March 31 and April 8 the CRB lost four relief ships carrying
thousands of tons of wheat even though they had German guarantees of safety.
On April 20 Hoover asked the American people
to reduce their consumption of food saying,
If we do not do it,
we stand a grave chance of losing the war,
because our allies cannot fight without food….
I feel it is my duty to emphasize that the food situation
is one of the utmost gravity, which, unless it is solved,
may possibly result in the collapse
of everything we hold dear in civilization.32
President Wilson had cabled Hoover and
asked for his advice on the US food supply.
Hoover returned to Rotterdam, and then in London he recruited Ben S. Allen,
who was a Stanford graduate and journalist
who was working for the Associated Press.
Stanford’s president Ray Lyman Wilbur met Hoover
in New York when he arrived on May 3.
Hoover met with Wilson on May 9, and they discussed the food conditions
in Europe and what the Allies needed in the coming year.
Congress was debating the Food and Fuel Control Act
introduced by the House Chairman of Agriculture Asbury Lever.
Hoover declined the title of “food czar,” and asked to be the “food administrator,”
and Wilson on May 13 accepted Hoover’s terms and included him in his war cabinet.
Hoover renounced his membership in the Republican Club.
On May 19 President Wilson asked Congress to establish
the Food Administration with Hoover as Administrator.
He asked Wilson on May 29 for and got $10,000 from a discretionary fund
for defense that he needed for expenses during his preparations.
On June 12 Wilson gave Hoover full authority to implement the
“national mobilization of the great voluntary forces of the country”
in order to save food and reduce waste.
Hoover announced his plan to register women as
members of the United States Food Administration,
and he sent 200,000 letters to Christian ministers in the country.
On June 15 the Espionage Act was approved, enabling the President to control
national imports which Wilson said he would do with licenses.
On June 19 the New York Herald and the New York Times reported that
Hoover arranged for the motion picture industry
and advertisers to make films for use by the women.
On July 10 Senator Lodge began criticizing
Wilson for meddling with “economic laws.”
On July 15 the Exports Council that included Hoover began issuing licenses.
By the end of July over two million housewives had signed pledge cards.
Hoover issued a press release defining the goals of the Food Administration as
1) stabilizing prices and eliminating vicious
speculation, extortion, and wasteful practices;
2) guarding exports to retain sufficient supplies for Americans
to prevent inflated prices with the Allies; and
3) stimulating food conservation to increase exports to the Allies.
The US Congress approved Lever’s food control bill,
and President Wilson signed it into law on August 10.
His executive order created the Food Administration Grain Corporation
that set the fair price of $2.20 a bushel for wheat.
Hoover as Food Administrator could license persons and businesses
for food production in order to prevent the packers, canners, bakers,
distributers, wholesalers, and retailers from being
“unjust, exorbitant, unreasonable” or discriminatory.
On August 14 Wilson authorized Hoover’s Food Administration
Grain Corporation with one-third of the Lever Act’s $150,000.
This allowed the first government-owned corporation to
buy, sell, and store wheat and flour on a large scale.
Hoover announced that a committee would set a fair basic price
based on $2 per bushel for the best grade as the minimum price.
The committee would have four leaders of farm organizations,
two presidents of agricultural colleges, two organized labor representatives,
two independent academics, and one capitalist.
On August 30 the committee recommended the government
buy 1917 wheat for $2.20 per bushel in Chicago.
Hoover made an adjustment in September for owners of the
21,600 grain elevators in the United States
On September 20 the Food Administration formed the
International Sugar Committee with three Americans and two Allied members.
On October 1 refiners promised in a contract to buy imported sugar only
from the International Sugar Committee and to follow its distribution provisions,
and they also agreed to a limited sale price.
Hoover asked Wilson to order all US businesses involved with more than
20 foodstuffs to get a license from the Food Administration
by November 1, and the President did so.
On November 28 Wilson asked his war cabinet for suggestions on legislation,
and Hoover proposed that the President or the Federal Trade Commission
be vested with the “general price-fixing” power.
Without this he said they were “setting up great currents of injustice”
especially for farmers.
In his upcoming Annual Message to Congress Wilson included this policy.
He noted that “supply and demand” was replaced by “unrestrained selfishness.”
After the Bolshevik revolution that put Lenin in power in November,
Finland declared its independence on December 6.
The US State Department persuaded Hoover to let the Finns buy
40,000 tons of corn and oats to replace commandeered flour.
Early in January 1918 Hoover warned that the British and French
food situations were “critical” and that rationing was likely in England.
On January 10 the Food Administration announced they would buy up to
30% of all US flour mills’ products in 1918
in order to provide food for the Army, the Navy, and the Allies.
Mills with unsatisfactory prices would have their grain requisitioned.
In an official bulletin on January 28 Hoover wrote,
The whole great problem of winning the war
rests primarily on one thing: the loyalty and sacrifice
of the American people in the matter of food.
It is not a Government responsibility.
It is the responsibility of each individual….
If we are selfish or even careless,
we are disloyal, we are the enemy at home.
Now is the hour of our testing.
Let us make it the hour of our victory;
victory over ourselves;
victory over the enemy of freedom.33
When Hoover asked the President for a decision,
Wilson responded by writing:
I suppose you mean that I ought to decide whether
we are to continue our present scale of shipment
of breadstuffs across the seas and so incur
the shortage for our own people to which you refer.
I am afraid there is no choice in the matter.
The populations across the sea must be fed and have,
as I understand it, no available substitutes for wheat,
whereas our own people have at least substitutes and have
them, I believe (have they not?) in adequate quantities.
Personally, I feel confident that the spirit of our people
would rise to the sacrifice and that,
if there are adequate quantities of the available substitutes,
they would be willing to use them.34
Hoover worked on supplying American and Allied soldiers with food.
He warned against inflation and recommended “price-fixing.”
With the government as the sole buyer and seller there
would be only “one link in the distribution chain.”
The Food Administration employed more women than ever.
Lou Hoover founded the Food Administration Club for Women,
and she made speeches and gave interviews on food conservation.
Herbert Hoover said,
The question of who wins the war is
the question of who can endure the longest,
and the problem of endurance, in a large degree,
is a problem of food and ships to carry it in.35
He advised that conserving food works better than rationing
which is a bureaucratic mess, and it helped control inflation without using quotas.
The Food Administration sent out 200,000 letters to
American religious leaders and 21,000 to newspaper editors.
Senator James Reed of Missouri often criticized Hoover for interfering with farmers.
Hoover responded, “If democracy is worth anything,
we can do these things by cooperation.”36
On 18 April 1918 Hoover in a speech to the Pittsburgh Press Club said,
I do not believe that any person in the United States
has a right to make one cent more profit
out of any employment than he would have made
under pre-war conditions.
I do not care whether this refers to the farmer,
to the laborer, to the manufacturer, to the middlemen
or to the retailer; to me, every cent taken
beyond this standard is money abstracted
from the blood and sacrifice of the American people.
I do not believe that extortionate profits
are necessary to secure maximum effort
on the part of the American people in this war.
If we are going to adopt that theory, we have admitted
everything that has been charged against us
of being the most materialistic, the most avaricious,
and the most venal of people in this world.
If we are going to admit that the Government, in order to
secure the supreme effort of its citizens in production
must bribe them with money to this extra exertion,
we have admitted a weakness of American character,
of American civilization and of American ideals
that puts us on a plane below German Kultur.37
In a letter to Rep. William A. Ayres on May 4 Hoover wrote,
I would indeed be glad to see someone
take up the advocacy of the consumer in Congress.
So far as I know he has had no vocal advocate there yet,
the whole leaning of discussing
having been towards the producer.38
On June 13 Hoover in a letter to President Wilson explained
why they needed an American-Allied cereal program in the coming year.
By late June 1918 the CRB served 621 Belgian communes.
Hoover worked without being paid, and people he had met with also
included Herbert Kitchener of Khartoum, Kaiser Wilhelm II,
French President Raymond Poincaré, and Belgium’s King Albert.
On June 29 the Federal Trade Commission reported this
about the Big Five meat packers:
Five meat packers, Armour, Swift, Morris, Wilson,
and Cudahy, and their subsidiary and affiliated companies,
have monopolistic control of the meat industry
and are reaching for like domination in other products.
Their manipulation of the market embrace every device
that is useful to them, without regard to law.
Their reward, expressed in terms of profit,
reveals that four of these concerns
have pocketed in 1915-1916-1917 $140,000,000.39
Hoover wrote a letter on this issue to Arthur Meeker,
a leader in the Big Five, and he sent a copy to President Wilson.
A mandate expired on July 1, and by then
they had distributed $1.1 billion in food and aid.
Hoover persuaded Wilson to use the surplus to form the European Children’s Fund
which would help 115 million children in the next five years in 14 countries.
Hoover reported to President Wilson in July 1918 that the United States
had provided food worth more than $1.4 billion to Europe
and that they had prevented food riots in the United States.
They believed that no autocracy could equal the
power of “the voluntary effort of a free people.”
The Great War ended with an armistice on 11 November 1918.
In the first year after the Armistice the United States provided almost all
of the
food and credit or charity to the Allies and two-thirds of the cash or goods.
Hoover in London met with British and American friends,
and in his Memoirs he wrote,
We had worked together
over the whole four years of war.
Now that it was over,
there was a release of humor and spirit.
Our discussions were mostly on the peace to come.
Idealism burned brightly.
We felt greater by being part of a generation
which had won for the earth the end of mass murder,
freedom of men, the independence and safety of nations.
We discussed the economic
and social reforms that must follow.
We talked of abolishing want,
through increased productivity, care of the aged,
better homes, and wider doors of opportunity.
We talked of the greater future for children of all men.
We were sure that humanity,
having passed through the furnace of the last four years,
would be less greedy, less selfish.
We discussed far into the night the measures
that must be taken to get the world back to work.
There would be a period of great difficulties
and readjustments, but the new spirit of men that had
carried the war would carry the peace and reconstruction.
The purification of men,
the triumph of democracy would bring a new golden age.
We were indeed proud that
we had had a part in this rebirth of mankind.40
Hoover during the war had urged Wilson to implement a tax on excess profits,
and he sent a memorandum to Senator Simmons on 18 July 1918.
Hoover’s accomplishments and statements appealed to progressives,
and he reprimanded Social Darwinists who warned that
protecting the helpless would doom civilization.
He discussed issues with the American Federation
of Labor (AFL) leader Samuel Gompers.
Hoover used volunteers, and he also asked for the Lever Food Control bill
which became law on August 10 “encouraging the production,
conserving
the supply, and controlling the distribution of food products and fuel.”
Hoover said,
If we are to have war, with its hatreds, its disturbances,
its check to all good causes—
perhaps with its spilling of our strongest blood—
we should at least have the compensations.
So far as we can, we should check extravagance in living,
dress, travel and amusement, and set the people to saving.
It will be good not only for the conduct of the war
but for our souls….
Democracy is a form of government born of peace,
constructed for peace and maintainable only in peace.
To carry on a war successfully requires
a dictatorship of some kind or another.
A democracy must submerge itself temporarily
in the hands of an able man or an able group of men.
No other way has ever been found.41
Webster’s Dictionary added the word “Hooverize” meaning
economizing for the national interest by conserving food.
Germans said they would torpedo relief ships,
and Winston Churchill of Britain’s Admiralty had
Foreign Minister Edward Grey investigate Hoover for spying.
Grey found no evidence.
Britain’s Prime Minister Herbert Asquith
did not feel the need to feed the Belgians.
Hoover explained to Lloyd George why he should grant his requests.
Page introduced Hoover to the Argentine minister
who agreed to share his nation’s crop.
Hoover persuaded the German military governor in Brussels why
he should not withdraw his permission for the CRB to function in Belgium.
The British argued that the Germans should feed the hungry in Belgium.
Hoover replied that they would not do so
because they would feed their troops first.
The CRB would end up with a $35 million surplus.
Hoover wanted that donated to Belgian education,
and after the war they donated $18 million to the universities
of Brussels, Ghent, Liège, and Louvain and other schools.
What was left enabled Belgian scholars to study
in America and Americans in Belgium.
Droughts in 1916 and 1917 decreased harvests when they were most needed.
Speakers were sent out to urge people to conserve
led by Stanford University President Ray Lyman Wilbur, Ben S. Allen,
and Hoover, and promotion included various media.
The conservation campaign was more effective
than the rationing done by European nations.
Hoover and farm groups asked Congress to
exempt agricultural workers from the draft.
He was also preparing to feed neutral and enemy nations
after the war by using the American surplus.
Wilson would use this as part of his conditions in the Peace Treaty.
On 2 November 1918 the New York Times printed a letter from
New York lawyer Frederic R. Coudert to Wilson and the President’s response.
Coudert wrote,
My own views are summarized in a word—
that we must have united support for the President.
In the issues before us there can be no party policies.
It is vital that we have a solid front
and a sustained leadership.
I am for President Wilson’s leadership not only in
the conduct of the war, but also in the negotiation of peace,
and afterward in the direction of America’s burden
in the rehabilitation of the world.42
Wilson wrote to Coudert thanking him, and on November 4
the New York Times printed all the letters between Hoover and Coudert
under the headline “Hoover Calls for Support for Wilson.”
Hoover in 1958 would publish his book The Ordeal of Woodrow Wilson
in which he explained that Wilson needed their support
“because I believed that the President’s hand in the Treaty negotiations
would be greatly weakened if the election went against him.”
On November 6 Wilson wrote a letter that he sent to several administration
officials explaining that he had invited Hoover
to expand the activities of the Commission for Relief
in Belgium to cover the entire relationship
of this government, and possibly that of other governments,
together with all American public charity,
to the whole business not only of food but also clothing,
raw materials, tools, machinery, exchange and other
economic relief involved in the reconstruction of Belgium.43
In an address to state food administrators on November 12 Hoover said,
From the inability of governments to secure food
for their people grows revolution and chaos.
From an ability to supply their people grows
stability of government and defeat of anarchy.44
When Hoover was presented with a Loving Cup at a
Conference of Administrators on November 13, he said,
If that enemy sets up self-government,
if he sheds absolutely those qualities
that threaten the destruction of the entire world,
it cannot be our purpose
to vent vengeance upon his women and children.45
In the article “The Efficient American” published in The Bellman
on November 23 the journalist William C. Edgar wrote about Hoover,
He is the embodiment of the efficient American
in his achievements, but it is not only through his
genius for organization, his inexhaustible capacity for work,
his extraordinary grasp of perplexing and intricate problems
and his magnetic leadership of men
that he accomplishes wonders.
Behind all these rare qualities, and beneath a taciturn
and reserved attitude, there is a generous soul
and a kindly heart from which springs the desire
to expend all he has of energy, strength,
endowments and talents in the service of his fellows.
This is the exceptional combination of attributes
which make him one of the greatest men of his age,
whose name, when the history of this period is written,
will stand out among the world’s elect.46
After the United States refused to make a major loan to Britain,
on December 31 the British canceled their food orders
and turned to Australia and Argentina.
Hoover led the Relief and Reconstruction of Europe,
and he participated in the Paris Peace Conference in the first half of 1919.
In late December 1918 President Wilson left the White House
with the commissioners Secretary of State Robert Lansing and
diplomat Henry White for the Peace Conference in Paris, France
where they were joined by the other two American commissioners
Col. Edward House and General Tasker Bliss.
Hoover’s job was to do research and provide accurate information
on the “gaunt realities which prowled outside” the Peace Conference.
He estimated that in the next ten months
400 million people may face starvation.
He had one hundred ships carrying food to
neutral and liberated nations in Europe.
In January 1919 Wilson announced an executive order establishing
the American Relief Administration (ARA) with Hoover as Executive Director.
Their first mission was set up in Warsaw, Poland on January 5.
Of the sixty commissions, agencies, and boards working on rehabilitating Europe
in that winter Hoover influenced all of them and was a member of twenty.
On February 24 the US Congress appropriated $100 million for the ARA.
He used ports and canals, and he had railroads
rebuilt in Central and Eastern Europe.
Wilson and Hoover persuaded the war cabinet to accept
giving humanitarian aid to German women and children.
The US Senate tried to stop the ARA from
giving appropriated money to enemy nations.
Hoover supervised the delivery of 1.7 million tons of food by the ARA,
and 42% went to the former German and Austro-Hungarian empires.
Hoover believed in doing what is best for all concerned.
Hoover was housed with the commissioners, and
he was busy as the leader of the American Relief Administration,
director-general of the Supreme Economic Council as well as being
chairman of both the Inter-Allied Food Council and the European Coal Council.
They were responsible for making sure that four million people were not starving.
Hoover once traded two Austrian locomotives for two million Galician eggs.
He was also working to feed the defeated Germans
despite the opposition of the Republican Senator Henry Cabot Lodge.
In Finland the word “hoover” came to mean “help” in Finnish.
In Hungary he demanded that Archduke Joseph be replaced by
“the formation of a ministry representing labor
and socialist middle classes and peasants.”47
In Poland he used food to persuade the military dictator Józef Pilsudski
to appoint the famous pianist Ignacy Paderewski as Premier.
Hoover called Bolsheviks “jackals,” and he was concerned about the Russians.
In his chapter “The Food Blockade of Germany”
Hoover explained “Why We Are Feeding Germany.”
From the point of view of my Western upbringing,
I would say at once, because we do not kick a man
in the stomach after we have licked him.
From the point of view of an economist, I would say that
it is because there are seventy millions of people
who must either produce or die,
that their production is essential to the world’s future
and that they cannot produce unless they are fed.
From the point of view of a governor, I would say
it is because famine breeds anarchy; anarchy is infectious;
the infection of such a cesspool will jeopardize
France and Britain, will yet spread to the United States.
From the point of view of a peace negotiator, it is because
we must maintain order and stable government in Germany
if we would have someone with whom to sign peace.
From the point of view of a reconstructionist I would say
that unless the German people can have food,
can maintain order and stable government
and get back to production, there is no hope
of their paying the damages they owe to the world.
From the point of view of a humanitarian, I would say that
we have not been fighting with women and children,
and we are not beginning now.
From the point of view of our Secretary of War,
I would say that I wish to return the American soldiers
home and that it is a good bargain to give food
for passenger steamers on which our boys may arrive home
four months earlier than will otherwise be the case.
From the point of view of the American Treasurer,
I would also say this is a good bargain, because it saves
the United States enormous expenditures in Europe
in the support of idle men and allows these men
to return to productivity in the United States.
From the point of view of a negotiator of the Armistice,
I would say that we are in honor bound to fulfill the implied
terms of the Armistice that Germany shall have food….
Taking it by and large,
our face is forward, not backward on history.
We and our children
must live with these seventy million Germans.
No matter how deeply we may feel at the present moment,
our vision must stretch over the next hundred years,
and we must write now into history such acts as will
stand creditably in the minds of our grandchildren.48
Hoover wrote to President Wilson on 28 March 1919
proposing that they help feed Russia.
He warned Wilson that a military invention could cause “infinite harm”
because of the repression, and American soldiers might become Communists.
Hoover in April wrote again to President Wilson,
If the Allies cannot be brought to adopt peace
on the basis of the 14 points, we should retire from Europe
lock, stock, and barrel, and we should lend
to the whole world our economic and moral strength,
or the world will swim in a sea of misery and disaster
worse than the dark ages.49
Hoover followed the State Department’s directive to feed the white Russian
civilians in Riga, Latvia before the Bolsheviks withdrew in May.
On May 7 Hoover read the first draft of the Versailles Treaty
and was upset to see passages of “hate and revenge.”
That morning he took a walk and happened to meet
General Smuts and John Maynard Keynes.
He wrote,
We agreed that the consequences of many parts of
the proposed Treaty would ultimately bring destruction.
We also agreed that we would do what we could
among our own nationals to point out the dangers.50
The economist John Maynard Keynes stated that in his opinion Hoover was the
“only man who emerged from the ordeal of Paris with an enhanced reputation.”
Hoover in May told his friend Edgar Rickard that he
was going to collect library material on war generally.
Hoover attended the signing of the Versailles Treaty on 28 June 1919.
When American delegates said he was too pessimistic,
he replied, “Just wait about five years and see.”
Keynes in The Economic Consequences of the Peace later wrote,
Never was a nobler work of disinterested goodwill
carried through with more tenacity and sincerity and skill,
and with less thanks either asked or given.
The ungrateful Governments of Europe owe much more
to the statesmanship and insight of Mr. Hoover
and his band of American workers than
they have yet appreciated or will ever acknowledge….
It was their efforts, their energy, and the American
resources placed by the President at their disposal,
often acting in the teeth of European obstruction,
which not only saved an immense amount
of human suffering, but averted
a widespread breakdown of the European system.51
Hoover in August wrote to Secretary of State Lansing asking that
the
American Relief Administration (ARA) be allowed to supply
Russia’s White Army led by General Nikolai Yudenich.
While they marched toward Petrograd in the fall,
Hoover provided food, clothing, and gasoline.
In 1919 the ARA distributed $1 billion in aid, and
about 40% went to Germany and the former Austro-Hungarian Empire.
On September 19 Hoover left Europe to return to America,
and by then in less than one year he had helped deliver
28 million tons of food and supplies valued at $5.5 billion.
The United States had provided 96% of the funding and 93% of the supplies.
On 2 October 1919 Hoover in an Address on the League of Nations said,
I am not one of those
who have an impatience of honest debate.
I believe that the debate over the League of Nations
going on in the United States
is building the very foundations of the League.
It is bringing home to every household in the country
the necessity and possibility of providing for our own safety
and of providing for the safety of the world as a whole
without great armies or navies.
Nor do I believe in the criticism of the Senate
for not accepting out of hand this document so laboriously
evolved by five hundred conflicting minds in Paris.
It is a fundamental part of our institutions
that the Senate shall scrutinize these matters.52
Hoover in early October addressed the students at
Stanford University and concluded with this:
I am one of those who hold that this war
would never have happened if the nations of Europe
had accepted the invitation of Sir Edward Grey
to a conference of civilians in July, 1914.
I believe that if the intelligence of the world
can be aggregated around a table,
the pressures from these responsible men for a solution
which will prevent the enormous loss of life and the
fabulous amount of human misery created by war will be
such that no body of decent men in these times can resist it.
We have now seen the most terrible five years of history
because the reactionaries of Europe refused
to come into a room to discuss the welfare of humanity.
From this mighty political, social and economic upheaval
there has resulted a host of outstanding problems
which can breed war at any minute.
The liberal world is asking us
to come into a council to find solution for these things.
That world is not asking for soldiers;
it is asking for our economic and moral weight,
our idealism, and our disinterested sense of justice.
Are we not to take the responsibility
that rests on the souls of those men in Europe
who refused this invitation in 1914?53
On November 13 the League to Enforce Peace
supported the problematic Lodge reservations.
Hoover advised President Wilson to accept them,
and after that the recovering Wilson never spoke to Hoover again.
Hoover used the Quaker peace organization,
the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) to provide relief in Germany,
and in November 1919 he became co-chairman of the Quaker program.
He said “The United States is not at war with German infants.”54
Hoover was elected president of the American Institute of Mining
and Metallurgical Engineers in 1919, and in November he led
public service for the Federated American Engineering Societies (FAES).
On 1 December 1919 he was vice chairman at the
Second Industrial Conference, and he favored a public works department,
a federal employment service, and banks for home-loans.
Their meetings went on, and on 6 March 1920 Hoover wrote their report
to President Wilson that called for a minimum wage, a 48-hour work-week,
ending child labor, improving housing, and equal pay for women and men.
Hoover criticized the Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer and
other patriots who feared that exploitation nourished communism.
Hoover said, “We shall never remedy justifiable discontent until we eradicate
the misery which ruthless individualism has imposed upon a minority.”55
Even the liberal editors Herbert Croly and Walter Lippman of the New Republic
hailed Hoover as “a Providential gift to the American people” for the next few years.
On March 30 Hoover announced he was a
Republican in this vague and convoluted statement:
If the Republican party with the independent element
of which I am naturally affiliated, adopts a forward-looking,
liberal, constructive platform on the Treaty
and on our economic issues, and if the party proposes
measures for sound business administration of the country,
and is neither reactionary nor radical in its approach
to our great domestic questions, and is backed by men
who undoubtedly assure the consummation of
these policies and measures, I will give it my entire support.
While I do not, and will not myself, seek the nomination,
if it is felt that the issues necessitate it
and it is demanded of me, I can not refuse service.56
One week later Hoover, without having entered it,
won the Democratic primary in Michigan.
He let his name be entered in the California primary against the native son,
Senator Hiram Johnson who had been the Progressives’ candidate
for Vice President with Theodore Roosevelt in 1912.
Hoover got about 200,000 votes to Johnson’s 370,000 in the May primary.
At the Republican convention Hoover did not get higher than ninth in the balloting.
Hoover and his family lived in California, and the Guggenheim family,
who owned the biggest metallurgical business,
offered to pay Hoover $500,000 per year or more.
Instead he chose public service.
He supported the Harding-Coolidge ticket.
Harding and Coolidge won easily over the
Democrats James Cox and Franklin Roosevelt.
On December 10 Hoover spoke in Chicago to a
committee of the American Bankers Association.
He said,
The only direct loans of our government
should be humane loans to prevent starvation….
The world must stop
this orgy of expenditure on armament.
European Governments must cease to
balance their budgets by publishing paper money
if exchange is ever to be righted.57
Notes
1. Herbert Hoover: A Life by Glen Jeansonne, p. 21.
2. The Russian Job: The Forgotten Story of How America Saved
the Soviet Union from Ruin by Douglas Smith, p. 20.
3. The Life of Herbert Hoover: The Engineer 1874-1914 by George H. Nash,
p. 28.
4. Ibid., p. 40.
5. Herbert Hoover: A Public Life by David Burner, p. 30.
6. Herbert Hoover by William E. Leuchtenburg, p. 15.
7. The Life of Herbert Hoover: The Engineer 1874-1914 by George H. Nash,
p. 481-482.
8. The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: Years of Adventure 1874-1920, p. 133.
9. The Hoover Policies by Joan Hoff Wilson, p. 33-34.
10. The Life of Herbert Hoover: The Engineer 1874-1914 by George H. Nash,
p. 487-488.
11. Herbert Hoover: A Public Life by David Burner, p. 66.
12. The Life of Herbert Hoover: The Engineer 1874-1914 by George H. Nash,
p. 526.
13. The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: Years of Adventure 1874-1920,
p. 136-137.
14. The Life of Herbert Hoover: The Engineer 1874-1914 by George H. Nash,
p. 575.
15. The Life of Herbert Hoover: The Humanitarian 1914-1917
by George H. Nash, p. 7.
16. Ibid., p. 24.
17. Ibid., p. 29.
18. Ibid., p. 59-60.
19. Ibid., p. 73.
20. Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times by Kenneth Whyte,
p. 172.
21. The Life of Herbert Hoover: The Humanitarian 1914-1917
by George H. Nash, p. 78.
22. Ibid., p. 93.
23. Ibid., p. 290.
24. Ibid., p. 283.
25. Ibid., p. 136.
26. Ibid., p. 150.
27. Ibid., p. 295.
28. Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times by Kenneth Whyte,
p. 151-152.
29. The Life of Herbert Hoover: The Humanitarian 1914-1917
by George H. Nash, p. 178.
30. Ibid., p. 311.
31. Ibid., p. 340.
32. Ibid., p. 360.
33. The Life of Herbert Hoover: Master of Emergencies 1917-1918
by George H. Nash, p. 232.
34. Ibid., p. 240-241.
35. Herbert Hoover: A Life by Glen Jeansonne, p. 113.
36. Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times by Kenneth Whyte,
p. 193-194.
37. The Life of Herbert Hoover: Master of Emergencies 1917-1918
by George H. Nash, p. 297-298.
38. Ibid., p. 297.
39. Ibid., p. 330.
40. The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: Years of Adventure 1874-1920, p. 285-286.
41. The Life of Herbert Hoover: The Humanitarian 1914-1917
by George H. Nash, p. 349.
42. The Life of Herbert Hoover: Master of Emergencies 1917-1918
by George H. Nash, p. 423.
43. Ibid., p. 474.
44. Ibid., p. 491.
45. Ibid., p. 490.
46. Ibid., p. 503-504.
47. Herbert Hoover by William E. Leuchtenburg, p. 43.
48. The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: Years of Adventure 1874-1920, p. 347-348.
49. Herbert Hoover by William E. Leuchtenburg, p. 44.
50. Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times
by Kenneth Whyte, p. 221.
51. Ibid., p. 225-226.
52. Herbert Hoover: President of the United States by Edgar Eugene Robinson
and Vaughn Davis Bornet, p. 97.
53. Herbert Hoover: A Public Life by David Burner, p. 149.
54. Ibid., p. 127.
55. Herbert Hoover by William E. Leuchtenburg, p. 46.
56. Ibid., p. 48.
57. The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: The Cabinet and the Presidency 1920-1933,
p. 14.
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