What was Herbert Hoover known for

Early Career

Hoover graduated in 1895 over the next two decades to make his fortune as an international mining engineer and financier.  By 1914, however, he yearned for more than wealth, and World War I provided him with an opportunity for public service. Initially, he aided Americans stranded in Europe. Later, he established the Commission for Relief in Belgium to provide food for the civilians trapped in the war zone. Hoover’s compassionate humanitarianism led to an invitation from Woodrow Wilson to become U.S. Food Administrator in 1917. In this capacity, Hoover rationed domestic food supplies to feed the allied armies as well as the American people. In the years after the war, Hoover was director general of the American Relief Administration, an agency established to address the widespread famine in Europe. As a result of his humanitarianism, he was widely admired in the United States and sought by both political parties as a candidate for President in 1920

Hoover eventually declared himself a Republican and accepted President Warren Harding’s invitation to serve as Secretary of Commerce. At the Department of Commerce, where he served through both the Harding and Coolidge administrations, he established a wide range of standards for manufactured products, campaigned against waste and inefficiency in industry, and encouraged the growth of new industries such as radio and aviation. He became one of the most admired men Washington, but his fame reached new heights in 1927 because of his extraordinary service to assist the victims of the Mississippi River Flood that year.

Presidency

In 1928, when President Coolidge chose not to run for another term, Hoover easily won the Republican nomination despite never having held an elective office.  In the November election, he defeated Alfred E. Smith, the Democratic governor of New York, in a landslide. As President, Hoover had hoped to govern in the progressive tradition of Theodore Roosevelt. And true to his dream, he devoted the first eight months of his Presidency to a variety of social, economic, and environmental reforms. Following the stock market “crash” of October 1929, the President became increasingly preoccupied with the collapse of the American economy. He established new agencies such as the Federal Farm Board, the Federal Drought Relief Committee, and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. The President would not, however, provide direct federal relief to the unemployed. As an alternative, he promoted indirect relief through public works projects and loans to the states. His programs proved inadequate, however, as the number of unemployed workers increased from 7 million in 1931 to 11 million in 1933.

The President’s political reputation as the “master of emergencies” plummeted in the face of rising unemployment. He nonetheless mounted a vigorous campaign for reelection in 1932 and traveled the country by train, defending his policies at every stop.  But it came as no surprise to Hoover that he lost to Franklin D. Roosevelt in the general election. Hoover departed Washington with a heavy heart on March 4, 1933.

Post Presidency

Hoover devoted the next 12 years to writing books, speaking on issues of public concern, and serving as chairman of a number of philanthropic organizations. He became staunchly opposed to Roosevelt’s New Deal policies. In late May 1945, only six weeks after Roosevelt’s death, Hoover met with President Harry Truman and the two men planned for the recovery of postwar Europe. At Truman’s request, Hoover traveled the world to provide the President with a personal assessment of world food needs. Hoover and Truman also joined forces in 1947 on a commission to reorganize the executive branch of the federal government. The commission’s recommendations led to a streamlined, more efficient post–war government.  Hoover later agreed to Dwight Eisenhower’s request to chair a second Hoover commission from 1953 to 1955, but he was later frustrated by the President’s apparent lack of support for the commission’s recommendations. In addition to public service, Hoover devoted his post-Presidential years to social causes such as the Boys Clubs of America and the Hoover Institution, a research center he had established on the Stanford campus in 1919. He also wrote more than 40 books during those years. Hoover’s attention returned to Iowa late in the 1950s when he agreed to allow friends and associates to construct a “Presidential library” near the site of his birthplace. Hoover insisted that the building be modest in size in accordance with scale of the other buildings in the community. The former President made his last visit to Iowa on August 10, 1962, to dedicate that building to the American people.

Herbert Hoover died on October 20, 1964. On October 25, the body of Herbert Hoover was interred in a simple grave on an Iowa hill overlooking the cottage where he was born.

Works published by Herbert Hoover

• The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover, Vols. 1-3, 1951-1952
• On Growing Up, 1962
• Fishing for Fun, 1963
• The Ordeal of Woodrow Wilson, 1958
• An American Epic,Vols. 1-4, 1959-1964
• Public Papers of the Presidents of the U.S. Herbert Hoover, Vols. 1-4, 1974-1977

Before serving as America’s 31st President from 1929 to 1933, Herbert Hoover had achieved international success as a mining engineer and worldwide gratitude as “The Great Humanitarian” who fed war-torn Europe during and after World War I.

Son of a Quaker blacksmith, Herbert Clark Hoover brought to the Presidency an unparalleled reputation for public service as an engineer, administrator, and humanitarian.

Born in an Iowa village in 1874, he grew up in Oregon. He enrolled at Stanford University when it opened in 1891, graduating as a mining engineer.

He married his Stanford sweetheart, Lou Henry, and they went to China, where he worked for a private corporation as China’s leading engineer. In June 1900 the Boxer Rebellion caught the Hoovers in Tientsin. For almost a month the settlement was under heavy fire. While his wife worked in the hospitals, Hoover directed the building of barricades, and once risked his life rescuing Chinese children.

One week before Hoover celebrated his 40th birthday in London, Germany declared war on France, and the American Consul General asked his help in getting stranded tourists home. In six weeks his committee helped 120,000 Americans return to the United States. Next Hoover turned to a far more difficult task, to feed Belgium, which had been overrun by the German army.

After the United States entered the war, President Wilson appointed Hoover head of the Food Administration. He succeeded in cutting consumption of foods needed overseas and avoided rationing at home, yet kept the Allies fed.

After the Armistice, Hoover, a member of the Supreme Economic Council and head of the American Relief Administration, organized shipments of food for starving millions in central Europe. He extended aid to famine-stricken Soviet Russia in 1921. When a critic inquired if he was not thus helping Bolshevism, Hoover retorted, “Twenty million people are starving. Whatever their politics, they shall be fed!”

After capably serving as Secretary of Commerce under Presidents Harding and Coolidge, Hoover became the Republican Presidential nominee in 1928. He said then: “We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land.” His election seemed to ensure prosperity. Yet within months the stock market crashed, and the Nation spiraled downward into depression.

After the crash Hoover announced that while he would keep the Federal budget balanced, he would cut taxes and expand public works spending.

In 1931 repercussions from Europe deepened the crisis, even though the President presented to Congress a program asking for creation of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to aid business, additional help for farmers facing mortgage foreclosures, banking reform, a loan to states for feeding the unemployed, expansion of public works, and drastic governmental economy.

At the same time he reiterated his view that while people must not suffer from hunger and cold, caring for them must be primarily a local and voluntary responsibility.

His opponents in Congress, who he felt were sabotaging his program for their own political gain, unfairly painted him as a callous and cruel President. Hoover became the scapegoat for the Depression and was badly defeated in 1932. In the 1930’s he became a powerful critic of the New Deal, warning against tendencies toward statism.

In 1947 President Truman appointed Hoover to a commission, which elected him chairman, to reorganize the Executive Departments. He was appointed chairman of a similar commission by President Eisenhower in 1953. Many economies resulted from both commissions’ recommendations. Over the years, Hoover wrote many articles and books, one of which he was working on when he died at 90 in New York City on October 20, 1964.

The Presidential biographies on WhiteHouse.gov are from “The Presidents of the United States of America,” by Frank Freidel and Hugh Sidey. Copyright 2006 by the White House Historical Association.

For more information about President Hoover, please visit Herbert Hoover Library and Museum

Learn more about Herbert Hoover’s spouse, Lou Henry Hoover.