In February 1921 President-elect Harding chose Herbert Hoover
to be Secretary of Commerce that paid a salary of $15,000.
Hoover had worked for the Democrat Wilson and favored the League of Nations,
and conservative Republican Senators opposed him.
They wanted the wealthy Andrew Mellon to be in the new cabinet.
Harding told them that he would not take Mellon to be Treasury Secretary
unless they accepted Hoover who chose to be
Secretary of Commerce instead of Interior.
Hoover told Harding that he wanted to be able to work
on the entire economy, and Harding agreed.
Hoover issued this statement that the New York Times published on February 25:
President-elect Harding this evening asked me to state
that he has included myself in his nominations
for the Cabinet as Secretary of Commerce.
Senator Harding enters whole-heartedly into plans
for upbuilding this department, and wishes that
I continue to direct the policies of European relief.1
Hoover would write speeches and executive orders for Harding,
and he gave advice on patronage.
During his first week Hoover advised Federal Reserve officials to control speculation.
On March 19 Hoover asked 25 leaders in business, labor, and agriculture
to be an advisory committee for the Commerce Department which had been formed
to foster, promote, and develop the foreign and domestic
commerce, the mining, manufacturing, shipping,
and fishery industries, the labor interest
and the transportation facilities of the United States.2
Hoover in his Memoirs explained why he wanted to expand electrical power, writing,
The discoveries in long-distance transmission
had now opened a new vista in the production and use
of electrical power which had not yet been much availed of.
The problem was to bring about the development
of central generating plants interconnected
so as to secure maximum load factors.
We urged the possibilities of larger use of water power
in such interconnected systems.3
He also advocated disarmament and supported the
Washington Naval Conference
that was led by Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes.
Hoover became one of the three influential advisors with Mellon and Hughes,
and he said that Harding always kept his promises.
Hoover agreed on lower income taxes to stimulate the economy,
and he stood out for advocating higher estate taxes to reduce
unearned fortunes being passed down for generations.
Hoover also clashed with Agriculture Secretary Wallace when he criticized
the McNary-Haugen Bill by the Western Farm Bloc because it would increase
the surplus of the chronic overproduction left over from the war emergency.
Hoover urged farmers to grow less wheat, corn, and cotton
by cultivating fruits and vegetables.
He also advised them to plant cover crops on depleted lands in order
to prevent wind and soil erosion that would cause the future Dust Bowl.
The post-war period had a severe recession in 1921-22.
Overproduction had lowered food prices.
International trade fell sharply while Europeans tried to recover from the war.
Tens of thousands of Americans became bankrupt,
and the number of unemployed passed four million in August 1921.
Hoover persuaded President Harding to sponsor a Conference on Unemployment,
and Hoover recommended men and women in business,
labor, government, and education who could be appointed.
The President met with sociologist William Ogburn, economist Wesley C. Mitchell,
political scientist Charles Merriam, Interior Secretary Wilbur,
and Shelby Harrison of the Russell Sage Foundation
on September 26 in the new Interior Building.
Hoover told the conference,
There is no economic failure so terrible in its import as that
of a country possessing a surplus of every necessity of life
in which numbers, willing and anxious to work,
are deprived of these necessities.
It simply can not be
if our moral and economic system is to survive.4
They also included Charles Schwab of Bethlehem Steel,
the AFL leader Samuel Gompers, Detroit’s Mayor James Couzens,
and the progressive journalist Ida Tarbell.
In three weeks the sixty delegates from industry, labor, and
various
levels of government planned public works to develop infrastructure.
During the 1920s union membership had decreased from 5,047,800 to 3,442,600.
Manufacturing and mining mergers went from 67 in 1922 to 221 in 1928,
and businesses that disappeared went up from 309 in 1922 to 1,245 in 1929.
Hoover used the Commerce Department to compile statistics and analyze
unemployment, inflation, production, and surpluses in agriculture and industry.
In 1921 and 1922 they estimated that the unemployed
numbered between 3.5 million and 5.5 million.
The United States Employment Service was expanded.
They proposed shorter hours and job sharing in manufacturing,
establishing employment agencies, and coordinating charitable relief.
Hoover also advocated limiting armaments worldwide.
He supported the work of the American Construction Council
that was led by Chairman Franklin Roosevelt
and promoted employment in building trades.
Hoover sent out hundreds of letters to state governors and others,
and 209 mayor’s committees had been formed by December.
Yet the Congress failed to pass funding for the U.S. Employment Service.
On 13 July 1921 the famous Russian author Maxim Gorky
sent out the following open letter:
To All Honest People:
Gloomy days have come for the land of Tolstoy,
Dostoevsky, Mendelev, Pavlov, Mussorgsky,
Glinka and other world-prized men […]
Russia’s misfortunes offer humanitarians
a splendid opportunity to demonstrate
the vitality of humanitarianism […]
I ask all honest European and American people
for prompt aid to the Russian people.
Give bread and medicine.5
The Norwegian explorer Firdtjof Nansen advised Gorky to appeal
to Americans, and it was published in the American press on July 22.
Hoover, who read many newspapers, discovered that appeal on that day,
and the next day he wrote to Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes
suggesting they assist the Russian children.
The next day Hoover sent a telegram to Gorky saying that they would relieve
the suffering if all American prisoners were released immediately
and if the Soviet government announced that they were receiving help
from the American Relief Administration,
that Hoover was not acting as Secretary of Commerce
but as the unofficial head of the ARA, and that it would operate in Russia
just as it does in other nations allowing workers complete liberty
and that they would be permitted to set up local committees who
would distribute the aid as they wished, and that the Soviet government
would pay for transportation, storage, and handling the supplies.
The ARA promised to supply one million children without prejudice.
Hoover also noted that ARA workers would not engage in politics.
Ten million people were starving in Ukraine.
Hoover learned of this and persuaded the American government
to help the people despite the Bolshevik Communists’ efforts to run the country.
He said, “We must make some distinction between the Russian people
and the group who have seized the Government.”
Later he said, “Twenty million people are starving.
Whatever their politics, they shall be fed.”6
On July 26 Hoover received Gorky’s message that
the Soviet government agreed to his conditions.
Hoover persuaded President Harding to ask for $10 million for Russia.
The American Relief Administration (ARA) Director Walter Lyman Brown
for Europe negotiated with Maxim Litvinov at
Riga, Latvia, and they made an agreement in August.
Hoover in regard to ARA employees sent Brown
on August 6 the following cable:
I wish to impress on each one of them
the supreme importance of their keeping
entirely aloof not only from action but even
from discussion of political and social questions.
Our people are not Bolsheviks, but our mission is solely
to save lives and any participation even in discussions
will only lead to suspicion of our objects.
In selection of local committees and Russian staff
we wish to be absolutely neutral,
and neutrality implies appointment from every group
in Russia and a complete insistence that
children of all parentage have equal treatment.7
Hoover persuaded the Soviets to release all the American political prisoners
in Russian dungeons, and the Soviets permitted the ARA volunteers
to do their work bringing food and supplies.
The ARA paid for the food and transportation into Russia,
and the Soviet governments had to pay for storage and transportation inside Russia.
Hoover wanted to feed the children first, and 700 tons of food arrived
in September to feed 200 children and others in Petrograd.
As he learned that desperate adults had turned to cannibalism,
he made the food available to all those in need.
The ARA worked with 120,000 Russian volunteers operating 15,700 kitchens.
By October they had 68,598 feeding stations.
Hoover found a distinction between the 200,000 Communists
and the 150 million Russian people.
Hoover advised President Harding to ask Congress for funds to provide
10 million bushels of corn and one million of seed grains for the ARA,
and he did so on December 6.
On the 23rd Vladimir Lenin informed the Ninth all-Russian Congress of Soviets
that Americans were committed to providing $20 million, and he called it “success.”
Joseph Stalin criticized this in Pravda.
On 15 May 1922 Hoover told the International Chamber of Commerce
that “a great nation is suffering agonies the world
has not known since the Dark Ages.”8
About 200 Americans who had been detained
in Russia by the revolution were repatriated.
The ARA hired about 200 Americans in Russia and the United States
while 80,000 Russians worked in 15,700 kitchens feeding millions.
During 1922 and 1923 the ARA was helping 15 million people daily.
On 30 July 1923 Maxim Gorky wrote to Hoover,
Your generous assistance is worthy of the greatest praise.
Nevertheless permit me to express my feelings
and gratitude to all citizens of the United States of America
and complete satisfaction with the humanitarian work
of the American Relief Administration,
of which you are the chairman.
In the past year you have saved from death
three and one-half million children,
five and one-half million adults, fifteen thousand students,
and now added two hundred or more Russians
of the learned professions.
I am informed that this charity cost America $59 million,
figures which are sufficiently eloquent.
In all the history of human suffering I know of nothing
more trying to the souls of men than the events
through which the Russian people are passing,
and in the history of practical humanitarianism
I know of no accomplishment which in terms of magnitude
and generosity can be compared to the relief
that you have accomplished….
The generosity of the American people resuscitates
the dream of fraternity among people at a time
when humanity greatly needs charity and compassion.
Your help will be inscribed in history as a unique
and gigantic accomplishment worthy of the greatest glory
and will long remain in the memory of millions
of Russian children whom you saved from death.9
Hoover was most concerned about the children, and he
became
president of the voluntary American Child Health Association.
From 1914 to the summer of 1923 Hoover’s leadership with volunteers
in Europe saved the lives of about 20 million people including 9 million children.
Oil was replacing coal and motor vehicles the railroads.
Rail workers went on strike in 1922, and the US Attorney General Daugherty
crushed the strikers without consulting Hoover who proposed changing
working
hours from a 12-hour day and seven-day week to five 8-hour days in a week.
In the spring of 1922 he published “American Individualism”
as an article in the magazine World’s Work.
Doubleday, Page & Co. on 11 December 1922 published
American Individualism: A Timely Message to the American People.
Six days later on page one the New York Time Book Review considered it
“among the few great formulations of America political theory.”10
The historian Frederick Jackson Turner said the
“meaty little book contains the New and Old Testament of the
American gospel and I wish it a wide circulation.”11
By January 1923 they had sold 9,600 books, and it was on its third printing.
Hoover also gave away thousands of copies of the book.
In this book he wrote,
Five or six great social philosophies
are at struggle in the world for ascendency.
There is the Individualism of America.
There is the Individualism of the more democratic states
of Europe with its careful reservations of castes and classes.
There are Communism, Socialism, Syndicalism, Capitalism,
and finally there is Autocracy—whether by birth,
by possessions, militarism, or divine right of kings.
Even the Divine Right still lingers on although our lifetime
has seen fully two-thirds of the earth’s population,
including Germany, Austria, Russia, and China,
arrive at a state of angry disgust with this type
of social motive power and throw it on the scrap heap….
No doubt, individualism run riot,
with no tempering principle, would provide a long category
of inequalities, of tyrannies, dominations, and injustices.
America, however, has tempered the whole conception
of individualism by the injection of a definite principle,
and from this principle it follows that attempts at domination,
whether in government or in the processes
of industry and commerce, are under an insistent curb.
If we would have the values of individualism,
their stimulation to initiative,
to the development of hand and intellect,
to the high development of thought and spirituality,
they must be tempered with that firm and fixed ideal
of American individualism—an equality of opportunity.
If we would have these values we must soften its hardness
and stimulate progress through
that sense of service that lies in our people….
In our individualism we have long since abandoned
the laissez faire of the 18th Century—the notion that it is
“every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost.”
We abandoned that when we adopted
the ideal of equality of opportunity—
the fair chance of Abraham Lincoln.
We have confirmed its abandonment in terms of legislation,
of social and economic justice,—in part because
we have learned that it is the hindmost
who throws the bricks at our social edifice,
in part because we have learned that the foremost
are not always the best nor the hindmost the worst—
and in part because we have learned that
social injustice is the destruction of justice itself.
We have learned that the impulse to production
can only be maintained at a high pitch
if there is a fair division of the product.
We have also learned that fair division can only be obtained
by certain restrictions on the strong and the dominant.
We have indeed gone even further in the 20th Century
with the embracement of the necessity of a greater
and broader sense of service and responsibility to others
as a part of individualism….
With the growth of ideals through education,
with the higher realization
of freedom, of justice, of humanity, of service,
the selfish impulses become less and less dominant,
and if we ever reach the millennium, they will disappear
in the aspirations and satisfactions of pure altruism….
Leadership is a quality of the individual.
It is the individual alone who can function
in the world of intellect and in the field of leadership.
If democracy is to secure its authorities
in morals, religion, and statesmanship,
it must stimulate leadership from its own mass.
Human leadership cannot be replenished by selection
like queen bees, by divine right or bureaucracies,
but by the free rise of ability, character, and intelligence….
That high and increasing standards of living and comfort
should be the first of considerations
in public mind and in government needs no apology.
We have long since realized that
the basis of an advancing civilization must be
a high and growing standard of living for all the people,
not for a single class;
that education, food, clothing, housing,
and the spreading use of what we so often term
non-essentials are the real fertilizers of the soil
from which spring the finer flowers of life.
The economic development of the past fifty years
has lifted the general standard of comfort
far beyond the dream of our forefathers.
The only road to further advance in the standard of living
is by greater invention, greater elimination of waste,
greater production and better distribution
of commodities and services, for by increasing their ratio
to our numbers and dividing them justly
we each will have more of them….
Democracy is merely the mechanism which
individualism invented as a device that would carry on
the necessary political work of its social organization.
Democracy arises out of individualism
and prospers through it alone.
Humanity has a long road to perfection,
but we of America can make sure progress
if we will preserve our individualism,
if we will preserve and stimulate the initiative of our people,
if we will build up our insistence and safeguards
to equality of opportunity,
if we will glorify service as a part of our national character.
Progress will march if we hold an abiding faith
in the intelligence, the initiative, the character, the courage,
and the divine touch in the individual.
We can safeguard these ends if we give to each individual
that opportunity for which the spirit of America stands.
We can make a social system as perfect as
our generation merits and one that will be received
in gratitude by our children.12
Hoover suggested these two tests:
“Does this act safeguard an equality of opportunity?
Does it maintain the initiative of our people.”
He wrote,
There will always be a frontier to conquer or to hold
as long as men think, plan, and dare….
There are continents of human welfare
of which we have penetrated only the coastal plain.
The great continent of science is as yet explored
only on its borders, and it is only the pioneer
who will penetrate the frontier
in the quest for new worlds to conquer.13
He described American individualism this way:
Seven years of contending with economic degeneration,
with social disintegration, with incessant dislocation,
with all of its seething and ferment of individual
and class conflict, could but impress me
with the primary motivation of social forces….
And from it all I emerge … an unashamed individualist.
But let me say also that I am an American individualist.
For America has been steadily developing the ideals
that constitute progressive individualism.
Our individualism differs from all others
because it embraces these great ideals:
that while we build our society upon the attainment
of the individual, we shall safeguard to every individual
an equality of opportunity to take that position
in the community to which his intelligence,
character, ability, and ambition entitle him;
that we keep the social solution free
from frozen strata of classes;
that we shall stimulate effort
of each individual to achievement.14
He hoped that service would enlarge the sense of responsibility and understanding.
Hoover shared Harding’s letters (that Hoover wrote) to owners with journalists
who then criticized the steel magnates.
Hoover used his own money to pay two secretaries
and three assistants who together made more than he did.
Hoover organized his department into industry,
trade and transportation, and communication.
They added employees and got more funds for new bureaus and projects.
His Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce stimulated trade.
Inside the Bureau of Standards he established the Division of Simplified Practice,
and the Federal Specifications Board unified the other departments.
Standard forms reduced duplication in government and industry.
Hoover wanted the United States to join the World Court,
and he served on the Dawes Committee that
revised the war debts owed to the United States.
He urged lowering the interest rate, extending the payment period,
and he advised Europeans to disarm weapons to save money.
He also worked on this for Germany and South America.
In 1923 the Committee on Unemployment and Business Cycles
led by Owen D. Young published Business Cycles and Unemployment,
and their criticism of speculation, waste, extravagance,
and poor credit was discussed by others.
Hoover persuaded the Guggenheim Foundation
to donate $2.5 million for research on air travel.
He organized studies on automobile and highway safety
with experts who were asked to develop voluntary guidelines.
They standardized signs, speed limits, size of highways, and other issues.
Highways were constructed to bypass downtown areas,
and streets were made wider to make pedestrians safer,
provide parking spaces, and parking lots in cities.
Hoover always liked being in forests and mountains and by lakes and streams,
and he was elected president of the National Parks Association
and raised money for them.
In 1923 in Pennsylvania 150,000 anthracite coal miners went on strike,
and Hoover used the United States Coal Commission that was set up in 1922
and was led by John Hays Hammond and Edward Eyre Hunt.
Governor Gifford Pinchot settled the strike, and that caused higher coal prices.
Hoover joined President Harding’s railway tour on 3 July 1923
in Tacoma, Washington, and he added to Harding’s speech there
the information that steel mill owners had backed down.
Harding confided in Hoover how some in his administration had betrayed him.
He had warned Jesse Smith that he was going to be arrested,
and Smith committed suicide.
Hoover was with Harding in San Francisco on 2 August 1923
when doctors were unable to prevent Harding’s death from presumed heart failure.
Hoover telephoned Secretary of State Hughes and asked him to tell
Vice President Coolidge that he had become President.
Mrs. Harding refused to allow an autopsy.
Hoover issued this statement on Harding’s presidency:
When he came into responsibility as President
he faced unprecedented problems of domestic rehabilitation.
It was a time when war-stirred emotions
had created bitter prejudices and conflict in thought.
Kindly and genial, but inflexible in his devotion to duty,
he was strong in his determination
to restore confidence and secure progress.
All this he accomplished through patient conciliation
and friendly good will for he felt deeply that hard driving
might open unhealable breaches among our people.
We have all benefited by the success of his efforts.15
On 7 April 1924 President Coolidge supported a memo by Hoover
and announced the forming of the Federal Oil Conservation Board
with the Commerce Secretary on the board.
Hoover campaigned in California for Coolidge’s re-election.
On July 1 Coolidge appointed Hoover to head the St. Lawrence Commission
to explore the feasibility of constructing the Seaway,
and this would be constructed in 1954-59.
The Commerce Secretary Hoover recommended
the young investigator J. Edgar Hoover, who was no relation,
and he became FBI Director at the age of 29.
In 1925 the Bureau of Mines and the Patent Office were moved
from the Interior Department to the Commerce Department which
was led by the man who probably knew the most about the mining business.
Several newspapers noted the Hoover was an important advisor to Coolidge.
The New Republic reported,
It is certainly not generally recognized …
how extraordinarily extensive is his impress
upon the government outside of his own Department.
There is reason to doubt whether in the whole history
of the American government a Cabinet officer has engaged
in such wide diversity of activities
or covered quite so much ground.
The plain fact is that no vital problem,
whether in the foreign or the domestic field,
arises in this administration in the handling of which
Mr. Hoover does not have a real—
and very often a leading—part.
There is more Hoover in the administration
than anyone else.16
In 1925 Hoover became alarmed by the increasing speculation,
and he began to warn against that mood.
On 1 January 1926 he gave this statement to the press:
There are some phases of the situation
which require caution … real estate and stock speculation
and its possible extension into commodities
with inevitable inflation;
the overextension of installment buying;
the extortion by foreign government-fostered monopolies
dominating our raw material imports;
the continued economic instability
of certain foreign countries;
the lag in recovery of certain major agricultural products;
the instability of the coal industry;
the uncertainties of some important labor relationships—
all these are matters of concern….
This fever of speculation is also widespread in real estate
and, unless our financial policies are guided
with courage and wisdom, this speculation may yet reflect
into the commodity markets, thereby reversing
the cautious buying policies of recent years.17
In 1926 Hoover and labor leaders worked to get passed the Labor Act
that formed a United States Board of Mediation
that guaranteed unions collective bargaining.
By 1926 the United States had reached its highest standard of living,
and it was the highest in the world.
Congress founded the Aeronautics Division in Commerce Department
in 1926 and the Radio Division there in 1927.
Hoover wanted to reduce the cost of housing.
He started the Housing Division and worked with the private
Better Homes in America, and he presided over their board from 1922 to 1934.
They had 4,500 local chapters who worked for cost reductions
and provided a manual for homeowners.
Interest rates had ranged from 12 to 15%, and Hoover’s mortgage program
helped lower them to about 6% by 1927.
In the summer of 1926 heavy rain caused flooding
that began in the tributaries of the Mississippi River.
On 15 April 1927 New Orleans was flooded.
By May 1927 the Mississippi River south of Memphis became an inland sea
that was a thousand miles long and 80 miles wide.
This massive flood forced about 700,000 people to evacuate
including over 200,000 African Americans.
About 500 people died, and damage estimates ranged from $246 million to $1 billion.
Many farm animals drowned.
The states most affected were Missouri, Illinois, Kansas, Tennessee,
Kentucky, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Texas.
On April 22 Coolidge appointed Hoover to be chairman of a
special cabinet committee to organize the relief.
Hoover set up his headquarters in Memphis, and
he had two police detectives bring in whoever he needed.
He had sawmills build skiffs, and he rented outboard motors
to be part of a fleet of 800 barges and boats.
He directed tens of thousands of volunteers and instructed 91 communities saying,
A couple of thousand refugees are coming.
They’ve got to have accommodations.
Huts. Watermains. Sewers. Streets.
Dining-halls. Meals. Doctors. Everything.
And you haven’t got months to do it.
You haven’t got weeks. You’ve got hours.18
Over 150 tent cities sprang up with water, sewers,
electricity, and communal dining halls.
He urged the press to call for donations to the Red Cross,
and on April 30 Hoover on NBC radio across the country made this appeal:
I am speaking from Memphis, the temporary headquarters
which we have established for the national fight
against the most dangerous flood
our country has ever known in its history.
We, here, in the midst of the scene, are humble before
such an outburst of the forces of nature
and the futility of man in their control,
but we have the obligation to fight its invasion
and to relieve its destruction….
It is difficult to picture in words
the might of the Mississippi in flood.
To say that two blocks from where I stand
it is at this minute flowing at a rate
ten times that of Niagara seems unimpressive.
Perhaps it becomes more impressive to say that
at Vicksburg the flood is 6,000 feet wide and 50 feet deep,
rushing on at the rate of six miles an hour.
A week ago when it broke the levees at Mounds Landing,
only a quarter of the river went through the hole.
Yet in a week it poured water up to twenty feet deep
over several counties … flooding out 150,000 people.19
While Hoover was doing this work, the Coolidges
on vacation in the Black Hills invited the Hoovers to visit them.
Refugees were given medical treatment.
Over 30,000 people had volunteered to help or raise funds.
Eventually on 15 May 1928 Coolidge approved the public works
Flood Control Act passed by Congress for the Mississippi and Sacramento rivers.
When the NAACP exposed the abuses against African Americans,
Hoover appointed Tuskegee Institute’s Principal Robert Russa Moton to investigate.
Hoover suggested that plantations be subdivided into small homesteads
in order to finance a private resettlement corporation.
After being President for exactly four years on 2 August 1927
Coolidge wrote a note saying, “I do not choose to run for President
in nineteen twenty eight,” and he gave it to reporters in Rapid City, South Dakota.
Hoover continued to warn against speculation and reckless economics.
In seven years Hoover increased the Commerce Department to 1,600 employees,
and progressive government with scientific management
organized cooperation and private initiatives.
The Standards Bureau helped regulate and make
more efficient many parts of the economy.
The Census Bureau collected statistics, and they
published the monthly Survey of Current Business.
The Foreign and Domestic Commerce Bureau offered assistance to businesses
to
solve problems scientifically, and they published trade data in Commerce Reports.
A Bureau of Fisheries used selective breeding
to improve the quantity and quality of fish.
In 1928 the Commerce Department published in two volumes
Recent Economic Changes in the United States.
Hoover worked on making the government responsible
for the economy by controlling economic forces.
He became chairman of the National Research Fund with Charles Evans Hughes,
Owen D. Young, John W. Davis, Julius Rosenwald, and Felix Warburg as trustees.
Organizations that pledged matching grants often did not keep their promises.
Hoover launched a campaign to change the 12-hour day
and 7-day weeks in the steel industry.
Hoover later wrote,
The increased tempo of the speculative activity appeared
in the increase in bank debits to individual depositors’
accounts in 141 cities—from $53,600,000,000 at the end
of June, 1927, to $82,400,000,000 eighteen months later.
The volume of bank deposits increased only slightly,
illustrating the increasing turnover
which typifies a speculative orgy.
But a more vivid proof of the inflation came from loans
to New York stockbrokers and bankers on stocks.
These rose from $3,560,000,000 in June, 1927,
to $5,500,000,000 in September 1928, to more
than $8,500,000,000 in September 1929.21
Herbert Hoover was leading in the race for the
Republican nomination for President in 1928.
He participated in eleven primary elections and won in Maryland,
Massachusetts, New Jersey, Michigan, California, and Oregon.
The states of Indiana, Ohio, and West Virginia had favorite sons running,
and Hoover lost in those.
The Republican National Convention was in Kansas City on June 12-15.
On the first ballot Hoover was nominated with 837 out 1,089 votes,
and the second ballot was unanimous.
The native American Senator Charles Curtis of Kansas was the Majority Leader,
and he was nominated for Vice President with 1,052 votes on the first ballot.
Hoover on June 14 sent a message to the convention which included this:
My whole life has taught me what America means.
I am indebted to my country
beyond any human power to repay.
It conferred upon me the mission to administer America’s
response to the appeal of afflicted nations during the war.
It has called me into the cabinets of two Presidents.
By these experiences I have observed the burdens
and responsibilities of every home.
It deals with the peace of nations.
No man could think of it
except in terms of solemn consecration.
You ask me for a message:
A new era and new forces have come into
our economic life and our setting
among nations of the world.
These forces demand of us
constant study and effort if prosperity,
peace, and contentment shall be maintained….
You have manifestly a deep concern
in the problems of agriculture.
You have pledged the party to support specific
and constructive relief upon a nation-wide scale
backed by the resources of the Federal government.
We must and will find a sound solution
that will bring security and contentment
to this great section of our people….
Shall the world have peace?
Shall prosperity in this nation
be more thoroughly distributed?
Shall we build steadily toward the ideal
of equal opportunity to all our people?
Shall there be secured that obedience to law
which is essential assurance of life of our institutions?
Shall honesty and righteousness in government
and in business confirm the confidence of the people
in their institutions and their laws?22
Hoover wrote his own speeches and only made a few.
Curtis and the Senators George Moses of New Hampshire
and William Borah of Idaho did more campaigning for Hoover.
The Democrats in Houston in June 26-28 nominated
Governor Alfred E. Smith of New York, who was Catholic and
connected to the Society of St. Tammany, and Senate Minority Leader
Joseph Robinson of Arkansas for Vice President.
On August 11 Hoover made a speech to 70,000
in the Stanford Stadium in Palo Alto and said,
In this land, dedicated to tolerance,
we still find outbreaks of intolerance.
I come of Quaker stock.
My ancestors were persecuted for their beliefs.
Here they sought and found religious freedom.
By blood and conviction I stand for
religious tolerance both in act and in spirit.
The glory of our American ideals
is the right of every man to worship God
according to the dictates of his own conscience.23
In that speech he also said,
Our problems of the past seven years
have been problems of reconstruction;
our problems of the future are problems of construction.
They are problems of progress.
New and gigantic forces have come into our national life.
The Great War released ideas of government
in conflict with our principles.
We have grown to financial and physical power
which compels us into a new setting among nations.
Science has given us new tools and a thousand inventions.
Through them have come to each of us wider relationships,
more neighbors, more leisure, broader vision,
higher ambitions, greater problems.
To insure that these tools shall not be used to limit liberty
has brought a vast array of questions in government.
The points of contact between government
and the people are constantly multiplying.
Every year wise governmental policies
become more vital in ordinary life.
As our problems grow, so do our temptations grow
to venture away from those principles upon which
our republic was founded
and upon which it has grown to greatness.24
On the issue of prohibition of alcohol he said in his acceptance speech,
I do not favor the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment.
I stand for the efficient enforcement
of the laws enacted thereunder.
Whoever is chosen President has under his oath
the solemn duty to pursue this course.
Our country has deliberately undertaken
a great social and economic experiment,
noble in motive and far-reaching in purpose.
It must be worked out constructively.
Common sense compels us to realize that
grave abuses have occurred—
abuses which must be remedied.
An organized searching investigation of fact and causes
can alone determine the wise method of correcting them.
Crime and disobedience of law cannot be permitted to
break down the Constitution and laws of the United States.
Modification of the enforcement laws which would permit
that which the Constitution forbids is nullification.
This the American people will not countenance.
Change in the Constitution can and must be brought about
only by the straightforward methods
in the Constitution itself.25
The theme of Republican prosperity was in all of Hoover’s speeches,
and in that speech he described the progress Republican administrations
had made in raising the standard of living.
To me the test is security, comfort, and opportunity
that have been brought to the average American family.
During this less than eight years
our population has increased by over 8 per cent.
Yet our national income has increased by … 45 per cent.
Our production and … consumption of goods …
increased by over 25 per cent….
These increases have been widely spread
among our whole people….
While during this period the number of families
has increased by about 2,300,000;
we have built more than 3,500,000 new and better homes;
we have equipped nearly 9,000,000 more homes
with electricity, and through it drudgery
has been lifted from the lives of women.
Many barriers of time and distance have been swept away
and life made freer and larger by the installation
of 6,000,000 more telephones, 7,000,000 radio sets,
and the service of an additional 14,000,000 automobiles.
Our cities are growing magnificent
with beautiful buildings, parks, and playgrounds.
Our countryside has been knit together with splendid roads.
We have doubled the use of electric power,
and with it we have taken sweat from the backs of men.
The purchasing power of wages has steadily increased.
The hours of labor have decreased.
The twelve-hour day has been abolished….
Most of all, I like to remember
what this progress has meant to America’s children.
The portal of their opportunity has been ever widening.
While our population has grown but 8 per cent,
we have increased by 11 per cent
the number of children in our grade schools,
by 66 per cent the number in our high schools,
and by 75 per cent the number
in our institutions of higher learning.
With all our spending we have doubled savings deposits
in our banks and building and loan associations.
We have nearly doubled our life insurance.
Nor have our people been selfish….
The gifts of America to churches, to hospitals
and institutions for the care of the afflicted,
and relief from great disasters have surpassed
by hundreds of millions any totals
for any similar period in all human record.26
The progressive Jane Addams noted that Hoover was like the president
of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, Sidney Hillman, writing,
Mr. Hoover has proposed to do on a large scale
what Mr. Hillman has already achieved
in at least one great clothing establishment in Chicago,
securing to the workers themselves the profits
resulting from technological improvements as well as
a tenure of work elsewhere in the establishment,
for the displaced man.27
Senator Borah and Hoover promised that an extra session of the Congress
would meet to pass agricultural relief.
Hoover gave speeches on radio, and the New York Times commended
his voice that was clearly heard.
On October 6 he said,
Our national officials are chosen in order that
they may protect the political
and economic health of the American people.
In a contest such as this
there is no place for personal bitterness.
A great attribute of our political life has been the spirit
of fair play with which our Presidential contests
have been waged in former years and the
sportsmanlike spirit in which we have accepted the result.
We prove ourselves worthy of self-government
and worthy of confidence as officials in proportion
as we keep these contests free from abuse,
free from misrepresentation,
and free from words and acts which carry regret.
Whatever the result, we remain fellow countrymen.28
Later Hoover wrote that the seven major addresses that he gave
during the campaign were in Palo Alto (California), West Branch (Iowa),
Elizabethton (Tennessee), Newark, Boston, New York, and St. Louis
where he urged a network of interstate highways and more waterways
while appealing to farmers and urging cooperation between labor and capital.
On October 22 Hoover in his speech at New York said that he believed in
a land where men and women may walk in ordered
freedom in the independent conduct of their occupations;
where they may enjoy the advantages of wealth,
not concentrated in the hands of the few
but spread through the lives of all;
where they build and safeguard their homes,
and give to their children the fullest advantages
and opportunities of American life;
where every man shall be respected in the faith
that his conscience and his heart direct him to follow;
where a contented and happy people,
secure in their liberties, free from poverty and fear,
shall have the leisure and impulse to seek a fuller life.29
Hoover and Al Smith agreed on major issues such as tariffs,
reorganizing government, and not intervening in Latin America.
Hoover talked little about issues that would embarrass Smith
such as religion and Prohibition.
On November 5 Hoover said,
We are a nation of progressives;
we differ as to what is the road to progress.
This election is of more momentous order
than for many years because we have entered into
a new era of economic and moral action,
not only in our own country but in the world at large.
Our national task is to meet our many new problems,
and in meeting them to courageously preserve
our rugged individualism, together with the principles
of ordered liberty and freedom, equality of opportunity
with that of idealism to which
our nation has been consecrated
and which has brought us to the leadership of the world.30
In the election on November 6 Hoover got 21,427,123 votes
and won 40 states giving him 444 electoral votes.
Al Smith with 15,015,464 votes won six southern states
with Massachusetts and Rhode Island for 87 electoral votes.
The Socialist candidate Norman Thomas received 267,420 votes.
In the Senate the Republicans took seven seats away
from the Democrats giving them a 56-39 advantage.
In the House of Representatives the Republicans
gained 32 seats and would dominate 270-164.
After the election Hoover and his wife Lou, who spoke Spanish,
visited Latin America for six weeks going to Honduras, El Salvador,
Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil.
They traveled there and back on a battleship so that
they could accommodate diplomats and journalists.
He noted that President Coolidge had imposed a presidential election
on Nicaragua by having it conducted by US Marines.
Hoover promised to remove the Marines from Nicaragua.
He also met Bolivia’s President, and he hoped
to go to Mexico and Cuba later.
On his tour he made 14 short and friendly speeches.
He said,
I would wish to symbolize the friendly visit
of one good neighbor to another.
In our daily life, good neighbors call upon each other
as the evidence of solicitude for the common welfare
and to learn of the circumstances and point of view of each,
so that there may come both understanding and respect
which are the cementing forces of all enduring society.
This should be equally true amongst nations….
Democracy is more than a form of political organization;
it is a human faith.
True democracy is not and cannot be imperialistic.
The brotherhood of this faith is the guarantee of good will.
We who are public servants can do but little in our time.
Our minute part of a few years is soon forgotten.
But if we can contribute to diminish destructive forces,
if we can strengthen the forces
of material and spiritual progress,
if we can upbuild the institutions of government which
assure liberty and freedom we shall have served our part….
There is abundant reason why friendship
and understanding between us should be deeply rooted
in the hearts of the people of both our nations.
We have on both sides a history of common labor,
of building in the new world a new form of government
founded upon a new conception of human rights;
the supreme experience of rebellion
from the political and social systems of the Old World;
the subjugation of the wilderness;
of developments of economic life through the application
of the great discoveries of science; the effort to lift
the moral and cultural levels of our countries.31
Notes
1. Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times by Kenneth Whyte, p. 251.
2. The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: The Cabinet and the Presidency 1920-1933,
p. 40.
3. Ibid., p. 65.
4. Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times by Kenneth Whyte, p. 261.
5. The Russian Job: The Forgotten Story of How America Saved the Soviet Union
from Ruin by Douglas Smith, p. 18.
6. Herbert Hoover: A Life by Glen Jeansonne, p. 143.
7. The Russian Job: The Forgotten Story of How America Saved the Soviet Union
from Ruin by Douglas Smith, p. 35.
8. Ibid., p. 176.
9. Ibid., p. 191.
10. American Individualism by Herbert Hoover “Introduction” by Henry Nash, p. ii.
11. Ibid., p. ii-iii.
12. American Individualism by Herbert Hoover, p. 4, 6-7, 8-9, 13, 18, 27-28, 39, 57.
13. Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times by Kenneth Whyte,
p. 280.
14. Herbert Hoover: President of the United States by Edgar Eugene Robinson
and Vaughn Davis Bornet, p. 40.
15. Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times by Kenneth Whyte,
p. 286.
16. Herbert Hoover by William E. Leuchtenburg, p. 63.
17. The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: The Great Depression 1929-1941, p. 5-6.
18. Herbert Hoover by William E. Leuchtenburg, p. 68.
19. Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times by Kenneth Whyte,
p. 331-332.
20. The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: The Great Depression 1929-1941, p. 12.
21. The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: The Cabinet and the Presidency 1920-1933,
p. 195-196.
22. Ibid., p. 207.
23. Ibid., p. 200.
24. Ibid., p. 201.
25. Ibid., p. 183-184.
26. The Presidency of Herbert Hoover by Martin L. Fausold, p. 28.
27. Ibid., p. 198.
28. Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression by Harris Gaylord Warren, p. 36.
29. Herbert Hoover: President of the United States by Edgar Eugene Robinson
and Vaughn Davis Bornet, p. 22.
30. The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: The Cabinet and the Presidency 1920-1933,
p. 213-214.
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