Herbert Hoover (1874 - 1964) was an American mining engineer, humanitarian administrator and politician who served as the 31st president of the United States from 1929 to 1933. [1] He built an international reputation organising food relief in Europe during and after the First World War, then entered government as secretary of commerce before winning the presidency. His term was dominated by the onset of the Great Depression, and he was decisively defeated for re-election in 1932. [2]
Early life and education
Hoover was born on 10 August 1874 in West Branch, Iowa, into a Quaker family, and was orphaned before the age of ten. He was raised by relatives in Oregon and attended the institution now known as George Fox University before entering the newly founded Stanford University, from which he graduated in 1895 with a degree in geology. [1]
Engineering and humanitarian work
Hoover worked as a mining engineer and consultant on projects in Australia, China and elsewhere, building a substantial private fortune and an international reputation for administrative competence. [3] When the First World War broke out, he organised the return of stranded Americans from Europe and then led the Commission for Relief in Belgium, which supplied food to millions of civilians in occupied territory.
After the United States entered the war he headed the U.S. Food Administration, and in the years that followed he directed the American Relief Administration, extending famine aid across central and eastern Europe, including Soviet Russia. This work made him one of the best-known Americans of his generation and earned him honours from several European governments. [2]
Commerce secretary and the presidency
Hoover served as secretary of commerce under Presidents Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge, expanding the department's role in standardisation, aviation, radio regulation and disaster response. In 1928 he was elected president by a wide margin, taking office in March 1929 amid widespread confidence in continued prosperity. [1]
The stock market collapse of October 1929 and the deepening economic contraction that followed defined his administration. Hoover approved public works spending, created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to lend to banks and businesses, and signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, but he resisted direct federal relief payments to individuals, believing such aid should come from local and voluntary sources. [2] Unemployment rose sharply, shantytowns were derisively called "Hoovervilles," and the dispersal of the Bonus Army of veterans from Washington in 1932 further damaged his standing. He lost the 1932 election to Franklin D. Roosevelt in a landslide. [4]
Later life
Out of office, Hoover remained a prominent critic of the New Deal and of expanding federal power. After the Second World War he was asked by President Harry S. Truman to survey global food needs and to coordinate relief in occupied Germany and Austria, and he later chaired two commissions on the reorganisation of the executive branch, known as the Hoover Commissions. [3] He wrote extensively, and the Hoover Institution at Stanford grew out of the war-document collection he founded. Hoover died in New York City on 20 October 1964 at the age of ninety. [1]
Legacy
Hoover's reputation rests on a sharp contrast between his humanitarian and administrative achievements and the political failure of his presidency. Historians generally credit the relief operations he led with saving very large numbers of lives, while judging his response to the Great Depression as insufficient to the scale of the crisis. [4] He received the John Fritz Medal, the Hoover Medal, and the NAS Public Welfare Medal among many other honours. [1]
