Herbert Hoover

by Glen Jeansonne

  Two observers assigned by Hoover inspected the countryside and reported on conditions. Dr. Vernon Kellogg, a Stanford professor and prolific author who had worked with Hoover in the CRB and Food Administration, sketched the suffering he witnessed in graphic prose. “They sit there waiting to die,” he wrote. Kellogg described human scarecrows and children huddled on a blanket with their mother, begging for food, of which she had none to give. James P. Goodrich, former governor of Indiana, was also dispatched to analyze conditions. Goodrich wrote that the regions threatened with famine went far beyond what had previously been reported and affected entire families. Hoover had initially planned to concentrate on the feeding of children, but unless adults were fed too, they would perish and, with them, their dependents.41 Conditions in the cities were grim, with children already dying of starvation. Reports from the Volga described famine on a massive scale. Later expeditions to Ukraine, not a part of the Riga agreement, found a comparable extent of starvation.

  To head the ARA mission to Russia, Hoover selected Colonel William N. Haskell, a serious professional military man who had directed relief in Armenia. A West Point graduate and a veteran of the Great War, Haskell emanated an aura of authority necessary for dealing with Russia’s often unhelpful regime. Haskell’s report was dire. “The whole situation in Russia at present seems to be that everything is old, broken, worn-out, gutted,” he wrote, adding, “Nothing works and everybody seems to be milling about in a semi-dazed condition with only one thought in mind, that is, where are they going to get food to eat, shelter, and clothing.”42

  Haskell was shocked by his findings on a tour of the Volga Valley and reported that 10 million peasants faced starvation in Ukraine. Poor crop yields and displaced peasant farmers were not the only missing links in the food chain. Haskell cabled to Hoover: “Railroads hanging together, roadbeds unrepaired, derailed cars ditched. Thousands [of] cars deteriorating on sidings where rails and ties had been removed from under them.” Workers and farmers were burning rail ties to warm their homes during the frigid winter. Further, just as trainloads of food lay halted on the Trans-Siberian Railroad, the Volga River froze, eliminating an alternative method of moving provisions. With most horses slain for their flesh, camels were pressed into service. Some food was carried on the backs of humans, often women. In regions where no food arrived, people survived on grass, weeds, acorns, twigs, bark, and roots, even resorting to cannibalism.43

  Eyewitness accounts confirmed rumors that the law of the jungle ruled the land. “In 1921–1922, when parents killed their children, and children killed their little brothers and sisters, eating the flesh raw and salted, they proved to have gone mad and become beasts,” a Russian writer related. Two doctors reported that cannibalism was prevalent, joined in by entire families. During the winter of 1921, a woman was discovered devouring her husband’s dead body. When authorities sought to remove the man’s corpse, she screamed, “We won’t give him up, we will eat him ourselves, he is ours.” A Russian university professor reported in November 1922, “Families were killing and devouring fathers, grandfathers, and children.” He explained, “Ghastly rumors about sausages prepared with human corpses were common.” An American volunteer reported that the punishment for cannibalism was to lock up offenders and leave them incarcerated until they died of starvation. One ARA veteran was confronted by a man who had eaten his children before the eyes of his starving wife. “I shall eat her tomorrow,” he boasted; “she is too weak for any protest and could only grumble.” In the city of Samara, in the heart of the famine section, authorities found ten butcher shops selling human flesh. One father relished the eating of his two small children, remarking that the “children’s flesh tasted sweeter than pork.”44

  Strong and forceful, Haskell made enemies among the Soviets, as well as among veteran ARA volunteers accustomed to a more informal, less top-down approach. Yet he held the mission together and proved resourceful and resolute. Firm yet fair, he ran a streamlined, efficient organization that made the most of meager resources and American volunteers spread thin over vast distances.45

  The ARA men sent to Russia were hardened veterans of the European ARA, where they had served as supervisory personnel. Both compassionate and determined, they constituted the core of the organization and were fiercely devoted to Hoover. Some of the fieldworkers were borrowed from the armed forces. All of them operated under the most rugged conditions, mentally and physically, of any ARA assignment, and they faced its most ambitious and challenging mission. “Trying to kill people may sound more exciting than trying to keep them alive, but don’t believe it so,” one explained.46

  The volunteers hit the ground ready to work. Every delay meant lives lost. ARA supervisors were dispersed to establish food kitchens, originally for children, soon extended to feed adults, throughout the famine regions. The American personnel were stretched thin within the districts, some of which were as large as European countries. Once in place, the ARA men used local people to carry out the feeding in each community. The ARA program began modestly in September 1921 by feeding 200 children in Petrograd. By October there were 68,598 feeding stations, and by February 1922 more than 1 million children were being fed. By August, the program served 4,173,339 children and 6,317,958 adults, reaching about 10 million people overall. Like most of Hoover’s programs, the ARA’s work in Russia was decentralized and relied heavily on 120,000 local Russian volunteers who operated 15,700 kitchens. The scope of the undertaking dwarfed the CRB role in Belgium. Moreover, the greater distances, the dysfunctional railroad system, and the harsh climate made the rescue effort incomparably more complex.

  If Haskell held the organization together within the Soviet Union, Hoover was the glue internationally, and his credibility lent a public face to the relief effort. He kept the money flowing from Congress, the public, and philanthropic foundations, which in turn kept the food arriving. As the secretary of commerce, he was crucial to the morale of his own men and commanded respect, sometimes grudgingly, from the Bolsheviks. “We cannot quit for Hoover’s sake,” Haskell said repeatedly. Hoover’s presence was a calming factor; Haskell’s administrative style could be abrasive. As chairman of the ARA, Hoover did not micromanage the organization within Russia, but he made the final decisions. Moreover, Hoover’s stature in the world community was a powerful tool and sometimes intimidated the Bolsheviks, thwarting confrontations that might have necessitated a withdrawal.47

  In postwar Europe, the foremost political problems the ARA had experienced arose from the turmoil and instability of the region, coupled with inexperience and incompetence in high offices. Now, in the Soviet Union, problems included outright sabotage and a fear of outsiders that verged on paranoia. The Bolsheviks had no intention of permitting the ARA a free hand or major credit. They found it difficult to conceive of anyone distributing food without some political agenda—after all, everything in Russia was done on the basis of a political agenda. The Bolsheviks did not want impartial feeding, nor did they desire staffing based on ability. The Soviet bureaucracy proved an exasperating bottleneck. The Cheka, or secret police, constituted the most persistent troublemakers. Haskell telegraphed Hoover in October 1922: “Every move we make scrutinized by Cheka. . . . Our agents constantly watched.” The Cheka created a shadow organization to monitor, infiltrate, and claim credit for ARA accomplishments.48

  Kremlin leader Vladimir Lenin alternated between support for the ARA—which he needed to preserve his country, and possibly even his own grasp on power—and his predilection to wage indiscriminate class war on all capitalists. He wrote a comrade that “as for the Hooverites, we must shadow them with all our might. The weakest must be compromised by scandal, chiefly employing liquor or women.” He confessed his embarrassment over accepting aid. “Without joy and contentment do we accept the gifts of the American benefactors. The bread of alms is not sweet. We know it well; you pay the most for charity.” In fact, relief workers were feeding hungry children and s
howed little interest in politics.49

  Lenin was brutal and manipulative, yet after overcoming his initial paranoia, he became one of the more pragmatic among his comrades, proving capable of making short-run concessions in order to preserve the revolution. An opportunist, Lenin was eventually converted to the view that the ARA might help him salvage his country’s economy. Temporary compromise was a viable means to an end. He considered America the only nation that had emerged from the Great War with substantial financial resources to make significant investments in the Soviet Union. In a note to a Kremlin colleague, Lenin observed, “Hoover is a real plus.” Several days later, he added, “Agreements and concessions with the Americans are super-important to us; with Hoover we have something worthwhile.” He considered the ARA an avenue to trade and diplomatic recognition from America that the Bolshevik leader considered keys to the long-term success of his party and country. Hoover was not averse to a degree of mutually beneficial trade, but he consistently opposed diplomatic recognition on the grounds that the Soviet regime was duplicitous and antithetical to American democratic principles.50

  Haskell was realistic about the role American relief might play in the survival of the Bolshevik regime, writing Hoover that although he considered food relief necessary on a humanitarian basis, it would have no effect on dislodging the men in the Kremlin, who had “a strangle hold on Russia,” even though the government “lacks support and confidence of the people. No opposition party dares raise its head.” The unpopularity of the Bolsheviks and the possibility that relief might help them complicated Hoover’s task of prying money from Congress or raising it through charity drives, yet the commerce secretary forged ahead.51 To Americans who voiced concerns that feeding Russia might make it more difficult to uproot the totalitarian government in power, Hoover responded, “We must make some distinction between the Russian people and the group that have seized the government.” He elaborated, “I think you will need to separate in your mind the 200,000 Communists in Russia from the 150,000,000 Russian people.”52

  Russian relief dwarfed any of Hoover’s previous relief actions. Food was not the ARA’s only contribution to the health of the Soviet people. It also fought epidemics of typhus and, to a lesser extent, cholera and other infectious diseases. Some of the ARA volunteers contracted typhus; a few died. The ARA conducted delousing campaigns and inoculated more than 8 million people against contagious diseases. It distributed $8 million in medical supplies and $1.5 million in clothing, and it provided seed for the 1923 crop. By the late summer of 1923 the corner had been turned. The debilitating drought ended and a bountiful harvest ensued. Hoover continued to feed children even after the harvest. He planned to raise funds in America to continue feeding adults on a limited basis, but after the Soviets negotiated contracts to export their own grain to Finland, Germany, and Italy, over his protests, Americans refused to contribute more money for Russian relief and Congress balked. The end of Russian relief closed an epoch in Hoover’s life. He had distributed $3 billion in American aid within Europe and Russia since 1914. It is estimated, conservatively, that he saved about 20 million lives, including 9 million children.53

  The Great Humanitarian was revered in the nations he had freed from the shackles of hunger, including Bolshevik Russia, where he was lionized by the Russian masses and many intellectuals, another distressed group to whom he had offered succor. Even the Soviet government was fulsome in its praise, presenting Hoover with a scroll “in the name of the millions of people saved” and proclaiming that the Russian people “will never forget the help given them.” Maxim Gorky composed a personal letter to the American stating that “your help will be inscribed in history as a unique memory of millions of Russians whom you have saved from death.” Nonetheless, as the Cold War grew frigid, Hoover received incrementally less space in Soviet history books. In the last editions he read before his death he had become a spy for the bourgeoisie.54

  Hoover’s acts of personal kindness are as impressive as his international philanthropic accomplishments. Shortly after returning from Europe at the end of the Versailles conference, he was driving down a curved, narrow mountain road in the West with his friend journalist Mark Sullivan, when they sighted an old roadster perched at the edge of a ravine. They stopped to ask if they could help, and the owner replied that his car would never run again. Hoover asked him how much the machine was worth. The man replied that it was worth at least $35, maybe $50. Hoover paid him $75. Then all three men pushed the car over the edge of the cliff and watched it tumble down.55

  On another occasion, Hoover was driving in Northern California when he picked up a young hitchhiker. The youngster explained that he had left his home in Memphis and driven a car to California for a used-car dealer. Unable to find work, he had been forced to pawn his belongings. He was hungry and ill clad. After buying him dinner, Hoover gave the teenager $100, making him promise not to reveal the source of the money. Hoover also furnished a card with the name of a friend who might give his new acquaintance a job. The following day, the youth appeared in a store and tried to buy new clothes. The salesman proved suspicious and tried to inveigle from him the source of his large bill, but the youngster was recalcitrant. Finally, he said that it had been a gift from Herbert Hoover, which the salesman considered a suspicious story. The police called Hoover, who confirmed the gift and said it had been his wish to keep the source secret. The young man found a job and ultimately became a high official at a California oil company.56

  After the Great Engineer morphed into perhaps the greatest secretary of commerce in history, he was noted for his kind treatment of everyone who worked for him, as was the case when he became president. Upon his retirement, a Commerce Department chauffeur recalled his boss’s generosity. “Hoover never would let you work for him overtime without some compensation,” said George L. Lee. “And there was no time-and-a-half then, you know, so it came out of his own pocket.” He added, “When I had to take him home and he saw that I had missed dinner, he’d bring me into his house to eat. And he used to pay his other chauffeur extra money to bring the chauffeur’s salary up to what Hoover called a decent wage.” The man elaborated that the commerce secretary was “very considerate to poor people.”57

  SIX

  Secretary of Commerce, Locomotive of the Economy

  Warren G. Harding was a man aware of his own intellectual limitations. As president-elect, he assembled the best minds in the Republican Party to staff his cabinet. Aware of Hoover’s astute grasp of issues and people, and his prodigious organizational skills from his role in feeding Europe, Harding sought Hoover as a key adviser as well as administrator.

  Despite the need in Washington for Hoover’s skills, the private sector was reluctant to give up such an enterprising engineer and businessman. In 1920 the Guggenheim family, owners of the world’s largest metallurgical empire, offered him a contract with an annual income of at least $500,000. Despite the enormous sum, Hoover decided duty meant more than money and chose to join Harding’s cabinet at $15,000 per year. Yet securing congressional approval for the position required delicate negotiations. Hoover’s appointment encountered opposition from a conservative clique of senators who considered him progressive, independent, and an internationalist tainted by service in Woodrow Wilson’s cabinet. Conservatives instead wanted Andrew Mellon, a billionaire businessman from Pennsylvania who embodied fiscal orthodoxy and laissez-faire. Harding, who excelled at compromise, offered a quid pro quo: he would conditionally invite both Mellon and Hoover to join his cabinet, but no Hoover meant no Mellon. The senatorial bloc caved.

  The president-elect offered Hoover his choice of Interior or Commerce; Hoover picked Commerce, a relatively new and obscure cabinet seat. Hoover’s opponents believed the forty-six-year-old political upstart would be buried in his new position, but they underestimated Hoover, who never thought small. Accepting the job, he attached conditions—which Harding accepted—demanding a voice in all matters that conce
rned the economy, regardless of departmental jurisdiction, meaning he would inevitably tread on the jurisdiction of his jealous peers. Upping the ante even more, he insisted he be permitted to gobble up agencies that seemed afloat in the morass of the bureaucracy, and he pressed the president-elect to increase the personnel and the budget of the Commerce Department. Harding admired Hoover’s boldness. Here was a man of action, a veritable Caesar of bureaucracy, who was, nonetheless, an efficiency expert. These arrangements unofficially made Hoover “secretary of commerce and undersecretary of everything else.”1

  As president, Harding handled political situations personally while delegating matters of substance to intelligent men with good judgment. Given free rein, the young commerce secretary flourished under the commander in chief’s indulgent leadership. Hoover drafted speeches and executive orders for the president and offered advice on patronage, including jobs outside his own department and government positions in the Western states. Harding trusted his judgment, and although their personalities and lifestyles differed, their relationship was cordial. Harding brought to Washington a set of cronies who advised him politically; thus, he was not dependent on Hoover for political guidance. Yet Hoover contributed to initiating two of the administration’s most significant accomplishments shortly after taking office. His lobbying for disarmament contributed to the Washington Naval Conference, and he helped shape legislation creating the Bureau of the Budget as an independent agency.