Herbert Hoover

by Glen Jeansonne

  During the thirty-one years from the end of his presidency to his death, Hoover served as the purest spokesman of American conservatism. While the country veered increasingly leftward during the New Deal, his views remained remarkably consistent. He never strayed from his conviction that free-market capitalism, reasonably regulated, produced the world’s highest standard of living. Inextricably linked were the fundamental American values of political, religious, and intellectual freedom, which contributed to the quality of life and complemented the cornucopia of productivity.7

  Nonetheless, Hoover questioned the efficacy of selfish big business, an octopus second only to the government bureaucracy that could strangle individual initiative and siphon off the nation’s wealth. Considering many businessmen narrow-minded and self-serving, he never believed money was an end in itself. He was as inveterate a foe of business monopoly as he was of government bureaucracy, and he remained proud of his party’s early role in containing both. Having sprung from the grass roots, Hoover believed the core of sagacity lay in the lower realms of government, bottom-up, not top-down. Too much government inspired a demand for more government to solve the dilemmas it had created itself.8

  Because Hoover was frequently on the losing side of the ideological debates of the 1930s and 1940s, historians have been too quick to leap to the conclusion that he was wrong on the merits of his causes, or even misguided to raise the arguments. Yet today, his ideas remain at the heart of American politics. In the 1980s, a groundswell of conservatism swept Ronald Reagan into power, reigniting the debate about big government, fiscal policy, welfare, overregulation of business, special interests, and endemic public spending. Hoover’s concern that prodigious public debt would eventually paralyze the government in time of real need still resonates with voters. Today, polarization and paralysis increasingly characterize American politics, yet at the core we remain a centrist nation, whether right-center or left-center. Although political prophets, like biblical prophets, are often scorned in their own lands, they are as necessary today as they were in Jeremiah’s times. It is possible that the “weaning of America” for which Hoover yearned might yet take place.

  Hoover remained proudly patriotic throughout his life, yet he worried about the future of his nation during his declining years. He questioned whether America had become a country of sheep, splintered into selfish interest groups. In their seeking economic security as their chief priority, he worried that they might shut the door to other values. “Freedom is the open window,” Hoover said, “through which pours the sunlight of the human spirit, of human dignity.”9

  Hoover’s life was one of undeniable accomplishment and indefatigable industriousness, even in lost causes. But most important about his life are his ideas, his ideals, and his character, which stand undiminished generations after his death. For him, there was no substitute for hard work and perseverance. In almost any pursuit, drive was more important than intelligence. Herbert Hoover did not gain the whole world, but neither did he lose his soul.

  Herbert Hoover was born in West Branch, Iowa, on August 10, 1874. He is pictured here at age three, his posture virtually identical with portraits of him taken when he was an adult.

  All photos courtesy of the Herbert Hoover Library.

  The Hoover children posed in a photographer’s studio in West Branch, 1888 (left to right): Theodore “Tad”; Mary “May”; and Herbert.

  Hoover met his wife, Lou Henry, while studying at Stanford University. She is pictured during her student years, at work in Stanford’s chemistry lab in 1895.

  Hoover’s international relief campaign during World War I provided sustenance for Europeans in war-torn regions, including these Belgian children gathered in their school for a meal in 1915.

  Bread and soup arrive at a canteen in Belgium in 1916 as part of Hoover’s crusade to feed the hungry in a Europe disrupted by warfare and blockades.

  Hoover poses with his catch off the coast of Seward, Alaska.

  Herbert Hoover confers with Minnesota Congressman Walter H. Newton while visiting Minneapolis in 1926. After becoming president, Hoover appointed Newton as his personal secretary.

  Raging waters sweep past an isolated country house during the floods that devastated Mississippi in February 1927. Hoover directed rescue and relief operations in the inundated region.

  Standing in the center, Hoover is greeted by the citizens of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, in August 1927. They were grateful for the assistance they had received from Hoover’s relief committee after the flood that ravaged their town earlier that year.

  Hoover and his wife, Lou, sitting in the yard of their Stanford home in the summer of 1928.

  In the heart of Iowa’s corn belt, a Hoover campaign worker decorates a tall stalk of corn with a likeness of Iowa’s native son during the 1928 presidential campaign.

  On August 11, 1928, the day after his birthday, Hoover addresses the crowd at the Stanford Stadium and accepts the Republican nomination for the presidency.

  During the 1928 campaign, Hoover visits a schoolhouse in his hometown, West Branch, Iowa, accompanied by his wife, Lou.

  During the 1928 presidential campaign, Hoover and Lou returned several times to West Branch. They are seen here riding in an open car down Main Street.

  After winning the 1928 election, President-elect Hoover embarked on a tour of Latin America, including this stop in San José, Costa Rica. During that trip, he promised a Good Neighbor Policy toward Latin America, a phrase later borrowed by the Roosevelt administration.

  President-elect Hoover and his wife continue his 1928 Latin American tour. He is shown here being greeted at the pier in Amapala, Honduras, by Honduran officials and U.S. diplomats.

  Hoover delivered his inaugural address during a rain shower from the East Portico of the Capitol on March 4, 1929. It was the first inauguration recorded on a talking newsreel.

  Hoover poses with the world’s most famous aviator, Charles Lindberg, and the flyer’s wife, Anne, on August 15, 1930.

  Hoover and his wife attending Quaker services at the New Friends Meeting House in Washington, D.C., April 1931.

  Hollywood star Mary Pickford presents Hoover with a ticket to a movie industry–sponsored charity event for the unemployed on November 12, 1931.

  Hoover marked the bicentennial of George Washington’s birth with an address to a joint session of Congress, February 22, 1932.

  On July 28, 1932, World War I veterans encamped in Washington, D.C., riot after a bill to pay them a bonus for their service was rejected by the U.S. Senate.

  Hoover meeting with African-American leaders on the White House steps on October 1, 1932. Hoover carried the black vote overwhelmingly in the 1932 presidential election.

  After his defeat in the November 1932 election, Hoover enjoyed himself on a Florida vacation. An avid fisherman, Hoover reeled in an impressive catch.

  In the last days of his presidency, Hoover plays a final game of “Hoover Ball” on the White House grounds. The game was played by throwing a medicine ball back and forth across a net.

  Hoover delivers a farewell speech marking the end of his presidency at the National Republican Club’s Lincoln Day Dinner at New York’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel on February 13, 1933.

  Hoover shares a limousine with President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt on Inauguration Day, March 4, 1933.

  Hoover returned to the spotlight by addressing the Republican National Convention in Cleveland’s Public Hall, on June 10, 1936. His speeches at the Republican nominating convention became a tradition that continued into the final years of his life.

  Hoover and his wife, Lou, share a love seat in their Stanford home, circa 1940.

  Hoover returns to the Republican National Convention, addressing an enthusiastic gathering in Chicago on June 28, 1944.

  In 1949 Hoover spoke by radio of his role as the chairman of the Hoover Commission. Appointed by Pre
sident Harry S. Truman, Hoover was charged with devising proposals for streamlining the administration of the federal government.

  In this 1950 family portrait, Hoover is posed with his son Allan (left) and grandson Andrew (center).

  As state delegations parade past the podium, Hoover prepares to address the Republican National Convention in Chicago, July 8, 1952.

  On July 23, 1953, Hoover accepted President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s appointment to chair a second Hoover Commission to make further recommendations for revising the administration of the federal government.

  Herbert Hoover enjoying a shipboard vacation with his son Herbert Hoover Jr. off the Florida coast, February 1953.

  The Hoover family gathered in West Branch to celebrate the former president’s eightieth birthday in August 1954.

  Hoover relaxes in the Waldorf Astoria suite that had long been his East Coast home. The photo was taken in 1960, four years before his death.

  Hoover poses with President Harry S. Truman at the dedication of the Hoover Presidential Library in West Branch, Iowa, on his birthday, August 10, 1962.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My gratitude begins with my devoted wife, Lauren Priegel, who has lived not only with me, but also with Hoover for the duration of our marriage and has exercised loving patience; and my daughters, Leah and Hannah, who are sources of love, inspiration, and pride. My two closest friends, David Luhrssen and Phil Deeken, undertook so many requests for aid, large and small, that they deserve a great share of the credit. David took time away from his own hectic schedule as a writer to edit and reorganize much of the material in the manuscript and to rescue me from my own follies. He is, quite simply, the best writer I know. David unselfishly devoted many hours to editing, streamlining, trimming, and consolidating the book and smoothing my prose with no more tangible reward than my thanks. Phil’s contributions were varied and so numerous they are impossible to enumerate, and he was my chief computer guru. He transported me to places far and near when I was hopelessly lost. My other computer expert, Stephen Baldwin, also contributed hugely, as did Cliff Rogers. Phil, a jack-of-all-trades, spent months at my home untangling computer snafus with the patience of Job, tutoring me about online mastery, and sometimes taking dictation, as did two former students, Chris Harley Rupp and Rosie Millman. Computer mavens themselves, they were long-suffering with a writer less understanding of technology than themselves. Another friend and neighbor, Carla Otterson, was my nearby computer expert who coaxed out of my computer and printer their best efforts. None of my other helpers enjoyed the advantage of such proximity.

  My graduate student Peter Lund tracked down scores of obscure references. My guardian angel at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee for decades has been Anita Cathey, joined more recently by Kathy Kreugel and Barisha Letterman, and Kathy’s predecessor, Cynthia Barnes. My students and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, my academic home for thirty-five years, were a source of stimulation and encouragement. My ex-student, the former Meredith Vnuk, located, ordered, and purchased every book written on Hoover, in or out of print, and mailed them to me at West Branch, which necessitated combing, usually by computer, hundreds of rare-book stores at no charge for her prodigious, time-consuming work. As you may surmise, this was a team effort by a group that bonded in a common cause. My agent, Bridget Matzie of Zachary Shuster Harmsworth, the finest literary agent I have encountered, worked ceaselessly to place the manuscript. She was untiring, patient, painstaking, good-natured, and persistent, and Todd Shuster, my other agent, intervened several times to rescue a project that resembled roadkill. I also want to acknowledge the role of Jacob Moore, my early agent at ZSH. My editor, Brent Howard at NAL/Penguin Random House, was all that a writer can ask for, and more. Discovering Brent was like being dealt a deuce and drawing to an inside straight.

  It would take a book of its own to name individually the treasure trove of lifetime friends I developed during my years at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library. I took from them the lesson that not only can writing a presidential biography be arduous; it can be uplifting, given appropriate camaraderie. Thank you all for laughing at my jokes, even the puns. It starts at the top, with the library director during my residency, Timothy Walch, his successor, Thomas Schwartz, the director of the Hoover Presidential Library Association (now the Hoover Foundation) Rebecca Allgood, and her successor, Jerry Fleagle. Competence actually does sprout on trees in West Branch, though it is a bit less common than corn, including my style of humor. The Reading Room was presided over by a maestro, Matt Schaefer, assisted by the able reference expert Spencer Howard, also an accomplished musician. Lynn Smith and Craig Wright were crucial and untiring in obtaining photographs for no reward but gratitude. Jim Detlefsen fine-tuned the computers. Everyone from the manager of the bookstore and gift shop to the library security guards treated me not as an intruder but as family.

  I wish to pay tribute to the other Hoover scholars I befriended, especially George H. Nash, Kendrick A. Clements, Hal Wert, and, through reputation, the late Gary Dean Best. I appreciate the support and encouragement of Margaret Hoover in my attempt to capture her great-great-grandfather as he actually was. Like birds of a feather, we instinctively flocked together. I want to thank Leo P. Ribuffo of George Washington University for sharing his knowledge of conservatism and for writing letters of recommendation for grants and awards and for his friendship since graduate school. Chris Chappell of Palgrave Macmillan helped launch my career as a Hoover scholar. And then there were my dedicated photocopiers at West Branch, graduate student Heather Martens, college student Laura Fraise, and West Branch high schoolers Seth Honemann, Molly Whiteside, and Megan O’Neil. At the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, my wife, Lauren, was my sole photocopier, research aide, and inseparable companion.

  Without the funding of grants awarded by the Earhart Foundation (four), the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Historical Association, the American Philosophical Society, the Bradley Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, this project would never have achieved liftoff, much less reached its destination.

  My spiritual gurus David Bobrowich, Gregory Hoag, Anna Maria Casper, Joan Hoss, and the late Nancy Retzlaff and Victoria Leigh kept me sane and energized.

  ESSAY ON SOURCES

  Most of my primary research was undertaken in the enormous collections about Hoover at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library at West Branch, Iowa, where I spent fifteen consecutive months during my sabbatical of 2006–7 as well as shorter periods during the summers of other years. In addition, I spent about six weeks photocopying material, with the help of my wife, Lauren Priegel, from the Herbert Hoover Papers at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, a smaller collection chiefly devoted to the Chief’s early career. There is some overlap between the collections at Stanford and West Branch.

  At West Branch I found the Reprint File of articles and the Clipping File of newspapers to be among the most valuable resources. Although I thoroughly combed the correspondence of each period of Hoover’s life and found some nuggets, most of Hoover’s personal and professional letters were cursory, usually dictated. The exceptions were the long, intimate letters Hoover wrote to his brother, Tad, while the Chief worked as an engineer in Australia and China. I also photocopied every oral history transcript, about three hundred, but they proved of marginal value because the oral history project began after Hoover’s death and the recollections dated primarily to the postpresidential period, which was thoroughly covered in clippings, Hoover’s books, and correspondence. One notable exception was a lengthy transcript of an oral history interview with Allan Hoover and his wife, Margaret, after Bert’s death, which contained a plethora of information about family life. I also obtained information about the family from the small collection of the papers of Lou Henry Hoover, an unusually gifted writer.