Herbert Hoover
Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times by Kenneth Whyte
Tier 2
Herbert Hoover was a bad president. Kenneth Whyte reasonably argues that his presidency was not nearly as bad as remembered. He posits that much of the blame heaped on Hoover is unjust and that his inability to sell himself is at the heart of his reputation. There is validity to this, but it is also essential to hold Hoover accountable for his failures as president. That being said, this book is excellent, and Hoover is one of the most fascinating individuals ever to become president. I was thoroughly blown away by this book and the story of Hoover’s life. I anticipated another Calvin Coolidge and was instead treated to a fascinating biography.
Let’s get some of the presidential stuff out of the way. He was about as qualified of a candidate as you could imagine. So much so that before the 1920 Election, both the Democrats and the Republicans tried to court him. Neither knew exactly where he stood politically and after a period of political upheaval, both parties saw him as a potential candidate. One wonders if his reputation would be different if he’d been a Democrat. Would history view his presidency and life differently? Would FDR have never been elected? How different would the nation's political landscape look if it had been a Democrat in office during the Stock Markey Crash of 1929?
But that is not what happened. Hoover ran as a Republican briefly in 1920 and then again in 1928 after serving under Coolidge as the Secretary of Commerce. In 1928, he easily defeated Al Smith, a beloved Democrat from New York. Hoover’s presidency was bad. His stance on Civil Rights was awful, even for the time. He wouldn’t denounce lynching or support legislative action to combat it and favored a bootstraps approach for minorities (they needed to help themselves). His immigration stance was similarly brutal, and his administration forcibly “repatriated” about a million Mexican Americans, most of whom were legal American citizens. He supported prohibition, and the budget increased under him. Then there was the bonus army, which was a group of WWI veterans and their families who were peacefully demonstrating for their bonuses to be paid. Police went to disperse them, and when things got out of hand, Hoover sent in General Douglas MacArthur, who, as was his wont, took the most brutal action possible. Hoover did not order this action but later supported it.
And, of course, there was the Great Depression. Even nearly a century later, economists debate the causes and what actions could’ve been taken to mitigate its effects. Some say Hoover didn’t do enough. Some say he did too much. Some say FDR is to blame for the full consequences, and if he hadn’t been so reactionary, it would’ve run its course. Some say FDR rescued the nation. The truth, as with all things, is somewhere in between. I can say that Hoover did a poor job of comforting and reassuring the nation in a moment of crisis. Ultimately, comfort, hope, and belief are often more important than any policy. Hoover was a man who kept his cards close to his chest and was not one to utilize the bully pulpit. His successor, FDR, used it as well as almost any president ever has. This, as much as anything, is what shaped Hoover’s legacy. He would always be compared to Roosevelt—the nation’s grandfather, a beacon of light in dark times.
But people are not defined solely by a solitary period of their lives. Hoover may have been a poor president in a crisis, and some of the blame for the Great Depression should certainly be laid at his feet, but what a life he lived.
Hoover graduated from Stanford as an engineer while the nation was in a different financial panic, and he initially struggled to find a job. Finally, he was hired to operate gold mines in Western Australia. They were harsh conditions, and the work was difficult, but he excelled at it. He convinced the company he worked for to purchase a different gold mine, and it quickly became one of their best-producing mines. He advanced through the ranks and became a partner in this company (picking up some very pro-business, anti-worker sentiments along the way), but had a falling out with his boss and was offered a position in China.
Once in China, he picked up where he left off, making the mine profitable but also making some horrible public statements regarding Chinese workers. He discussed racial inferiority and lack of work ethic without restraint, suggesting what essentially amounted to corporate slavery to improve their work. While he was there, the Boxer Rebellion broke out, and Hoover and many other foreign nationals were trapped there during the revolution. After the Boxers were defeated, Hoover went on to travel the world for his company, locate profitable mines, and work to get them working at optimal efficiency (regardless of how brutal the working conditions were).
He left that company and started working on his own. At this time, he had quite the reputation and used it to gain investment to finance his ventures. He was very successful at this and, by 1914, was a wealthy man.
Next, he turned his sights on public service. Woodrow Wilson placed him in charge of feeding occupied Europe. The Germans occupied territory in Belgium and refused to feed the Belgian citizens. They argued that they didn’t have enough food to feed themselves, and the British had a blockade of the North Sea, limiting the amount of food coming into those occupied territories. Enter Hoover, who worked tirelessly to get food to the millions of stranded war victims. He met with German and British authorities and was known as one of the only men who could travel with complete impunity across the war-torn hellscape of Europe during WWI.
After his success in feeding Europe, Wilson put him in charge of the U.S. Food Administration, tasked with securing the nation’s food needs during the war. Hoover seamlessly used volunteers and propaganda efforts to ensure the nation did not starve as a result of entering the war.
Following the war, he continued his efforts in Europe. It would’ve been easy, and historically common, for the allies to leave the defeated nations to their own devices. This would’ve meant massive starvation across much of Europe. Hoover opposed this and provided aid to the defeated Germans and even to famine-stricken, recently communist Russia. In Russia alone, during the famine of 1921-22 (which still cost about six million lives), it is argued that Hoover and the American Relief Administration saved tens of millions of lives.
Next, he joined the Coolidge administration, notably helping with the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. He was widely praised for his action in that disaster but also suppressed reports of widespread mistreatment of African Americans in refugee camps.
Hoover’s post-presidency is also fascinating. He fiercely opposed the New Deal and FDR overall. I don’t blame him for this. Roosevelt was brutal toward Hoover and his actions as president and, as previously mentioned, represented light to Hoover’s darkness. Hoover became more conservative as the years passed, and FDR became the face of liberalism. Later, though, his reputation would be revived by the likes of Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy. He served on presidential commissions and was offered opportunities to rejoin public life, but he declined.
I wouldn’t say that I like Herbert Hoover. I don’t think he was a good president, and he had massive failings as a man. But one does not need to like a subject to like a biography. This book is engrossing and full of stories and places you likely know nothing about. It takes a man who has been largely forgotten and brings him to life. There is scope and tragedy to his tale, and even if I feel that Whyte sometimes tries a bit too hard to defend Hoover, it doesn’t diminish the quality of this biography.