Herbert Hoover

Herbert Hoover was born on August 10, 1874 in West Branch, Iowa. His family were devout Quakers. At age eight, Hoover was orphaned and was sent to live with relatives. They showed him little affection, but taught him the importance of hard work and industry. In 1891, Hoover entered Stanford University's School of Engineering, graduating in 1895. Four years later, he married his wife, Lou Henry and they had two sons, Herbert Jr. and Allan. From an early age, Hoover showed a prodigious talent for engineering and was hired by the engineering firm Bewick and Moering, working in Australia and then in China. He was in China when the Boxer Rebellion of 1900 broke out and he coordinated the barricades of Americans trapped in China. At age forty, his engineering career was so successful that he was a millionaire. 1914 saw the outbreak of World War I in Europe. That was when he left his engineering career and entered public service. He organized a relief effort to feed starving Belgians, known as the Commission for the Relief of Belgium. When the U.S. entered the war in 1917, President Woodrow Wilson asked Hoover to organize the Food Administration, which encouraged Americans to cut down on food consumption to help the war effort. After the end of World War I in 1918, Hoover organized a massive relief effort to feed starving peoples in Europe, whose countries had been devastated by the war. From 1921 to 1929, Herbert Hoover served as Secretary of Commerce, under Presidents Harding and Coolidge, expanding the department and making it more active in working with business and labor. In 1928, he was the Republican candidate for President and easily defeated his opponent, the Democratic Candidate, Alfred E. Smith. Herbert Hoover was sworn in as President on March 4, 1929. Seven months after he entered office, the Stock Market crashed, ending the "Roaring Twenties" and the economic boom of that decade and ushered in the Great Depression. At first, Hoover was proactive in handling this economic crisis, having meetings with business leaders on how to weather the economic downturn, cutting taxes and increasing money for corporations and state governments. But none of this was effective in the teeth of the worst economic crisis in American history. He tried to calm the situation with statements like "Prosperity is just around the corner," but they were not effective. His dour demeanor and seemingly callous attitudes towards the millions of unemployed were what people saw in him, particularly when he refused to provide direct relief to the unemployed. Things came to a head in the summer of 1932 when the Bonus Expeditionary Force (BEF), an army of World War I veterans, marched to Washington demanding immediate payment of a bonus promised to them in 1945. But the veterans wanted their money now. They camped out along the Anacostia River and lobbied for their bonus. The House of Representatives approved immediate payment, but the Senate voted no. Hoover obtained $100,000 from Congress to buy the veterans train tickets home. Many veterans accepted the offer, but many stayed in Washington. At that point, the US army led by Gen. Douglas McArthur forcibly evicted the veterans from Washington, setting their camps on fire and forcing them out at gunpoint. In so doing, McArthur disobeyed Presidential orders, but Hoover took full responsibility for the eviction of the Bonus Marchers. In the 1932 election, Herbert Hoover was defeated in a landslide by Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt. After he left office in 1933, Hoover returned to California and was an unstinting critic of FDR. After the death of his wife in 1944, Hoover moved to New York City where he lived his last twenty years at the Waldorf Towers, remaining active in Republican Party politics. In 1946, President Harry Truman asked him to undertake yet another relief effort for the people of Europe; he and Truman became surprisingly good friends. In 1953, Hoover chaired a commission to increase efficiency in the Executive Branch of the Federal Government. He died on October 20, 1964 at age ninety.