Herbert Hoover 31st President of the United States (1929-1933) Date of Birth: 10.08.1874 Country: USA

1. Biography of Herbert Hoover
2. Early Life and Education
3. Professional Career
4. Presidency and the Great Depression
5. Later Years and Legacy

Biography of Herbert Hoover

Herbert Clark Hoover, the 31st President of the United States (1929-1933), was an administrator in crisis. He was the first president whose birthplace was west of the Mississippi River. Hoover had an unusual and interesting professional development, and, rare for a president, he did not hold an elected office before entering the White House.

Early Life and Education

Herbert Hoover was born on August 10, 1874, in West Branch, Iowa. His father was a blacksmith and traded agricultural tools. Two circumstances shaped young Hoover's life: his Quaker religious upbringing, which later influenced his humanitarian and pacifist views, and the early death of his parents, which forced him to take care of himself. From 1891 to 1895, Hoover studied geology at the newly opened Stanford University. It was there that he met his future wife, Lou Henry, the first female student studying geology at the university. They married in 1899. Mrs. Hoover was a moderate advocate for women's rights, particularly in sports, and supported the Girl Scouts organization.

Professional Career

After completing his studies, Hoover spent nearly twenty years as a successful mining engineer and businessman abroad, with his main office in London. He soon became a well-known international expert in mining. When World War I broke out in 1914, he dedicated himself to humanitarian tasks, first organizing relief for Belgium, and later providing food assistance to post-war Europe, including famine-stricken Soviet Russia. After the United States entered the war, President Wilson appointed Hoover to lead food administration in 1917, which he efficiently managed to ensure the country's and allies' food supplies. After the war, Hoover supported Wilson's desire to join the League of Nations. In 1920, when he finally returned from overseas, he became a potential Republican candidate for president, and reformist forces from both parties fought for him. In 1921, President Harding appointed him as Secretary of Commerce. In this position, he worked tirelessly to promote cooperation between the government and the business community. Hoover became a modern conservative, a centrist politician who advocated for American individualism, preserving liberal democracy, and capitalist institutions in his country. As Secretary of Commerce, he developed statistics and economic analysis, market and industrial research, and information exchange within the business world. He advocated for cooperation between entrepreneurs and labor unions, an active policy against unemployment, and the development of housing construction, road building, and air transportation. All of this was to be achieved through voluntary joint efforts of private entrepreneurs, rather than government coercion. After President Coolidge declined to run for re-election, Hoover was able to present himself as a candidate. The election campaign between him and the Democratic candidate Alfred E. Smith, the Governor of New York and a Catholic, lacked major issues. Hoover made prosperity his main campaign theme and promised an end to poverty in the country: "a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage." As a result, Hoover won the election on November 6, 1928, with a lead of 6 million votes and an even more convincing advantage in the electoral college. The Republican majority in Congress also strengthened.

Presidency and the Great Depression

Hoover was inaugurated on March 4, 1929, becoming the first president from the managerial elite of his country. He was an organizer, administrator, and technocrat. Until the autumn of 1929, he had a good relationship with the public. His political concept primarily involved administrative renewal, attempting to manage the economy through informal interaction between the government and economic leaders. His cabinet and government agencies, as was typical during the "Republican era," included many important industrialists and bankers. Henry L. Stimson, an experienced Republican politician and diplomat, became Secretary of State. Hoover's domestic policy initially focused on expanding national parks and forest conservation, improving the conditions of Native Americans, implementing prohibition laws, reorganizing prisons, and coordinating the actions of national charitable and social services. However, the changes in these areas were modest.

The administration of Hoover was later defined by the Great Depression, which began in October 1929. By 1932, American industrial production had fallen to the level of 1913, and foreign trade had declined to the level of 1905. During the height of the crisis in the winter of 1932-33, almost one in four workers was unemployed. The crisis also hit farmers hard. Hoover became a prisoner of events; he failed to fully comprehend the scale of economic devastation and social distress. His policy to overcome the crisis relied primarily on the self-correcting forces of the capitalist economy. He rejected government control of the economy and spending policies to finance federal social programs. One of his major mistakes was approving the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act in July 1930, which imposed record-high tariffs and had a catastrophic impact on global trade. Only towards the end of 1930 did the Hoover administration begin to implement anti-crisis measures, and it was not until January 1932, after the establishment of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, that the efforts became more active and large-scale. Up to $2 billion was provided in government subsidies to the economy. In July 1932, the government allocated $300 million to individual states for assistance and relief. Hoover vetoed Congress' proposals for broad reforms, such as the introduction of national unemployment benefits, in 1932. However, he signed the Norris-La Guardia Act in support of labor unions. The president's firm stance in the face of national distress quickly eroded his authority. His decision in July 1932 to evict several thousand war veterans from Washington, where they had staged a demonstration for the advance payment of war compensation and set up a camp near the Capitol, was highly unpopular.

In terms of foreign policy, Hoover's administration was significantly influenced by the impact of the global economic crisis and the deteriorating international position of the United States. Even before the crisis in June 1929, the Young Plan, with active U.S. involvement, had undertaken a revision of German reparation payments. Reparation and war debt payments collapsed as a result of the crisis. In June 1931, Hoover attempted to contain the collapse with a moratorium that postponed all international government debts for one year. Since then, reparation and war debt payments were suspended for a long time. Hoover consistently continued the foreign policy course of his two predecessors. He firmly adhered to non-involvement in the League of Nations and non-recognition of the USSR. His worldview combined nationalist self-awareness, a sense of international responsibility, belief in the superiority of "white nations," and a desire to protect the country from another war. Hoover believed in non-coercive international cooperation, in a peaceful international system based on the power of public opinion. He had a deep aversion to war and the destructive arms race.

Hoover sought to improve relations with Latin America, to dispel distrust towards the "colossus of the North," and to abandon interventionist claims and imperialistic gestures of intimidation, while promoting economic and cultural cooperation. However, the crisis undermined these intentions. By the end of his presidency, he successfully withdrew American troops from Nicaragua and prepared for the withdrawal from Haiti. In the disarmament question, Hoover reached a compromise at the London Conference in 1930 with England and France, which established upper limits on tonnage for cruisers, destroyers, and submarines. However, this agreement did not last long. Hoover's extensive disarmament proposal at the Geneva Conference in 1932, which would have completely banned aggressive weapons and reduced national armed forces by one-third, remained in the realm of good intentions. In response to Japan's violation of the agreement during the "Manchurian Crisis" of 1931-32, Hoover and Stimson issued a doctrine on January 7, 1932, named after them, which declared non-recognition by the United States of Japanese conquests or deals in China achieved by force. Hoover did not gain anything from the economic actions against Japan, which Stimson insisted on. Compared to the goals set by Hoover, his foreign policy during the crisis years, despite all efforts, remained ineffective. It was also unable to prevent further deterioration of the country's international position.

Later Years and Legacy

In the fall of 1932, before the upcoming presidential election, Hoover's authority reached its lowest point. However, the Republicans nominated him as they had no alternative to Hoover. The Democrats put forward Franklin D. Roosevelt, the reformist governor of New York, as their candidate. Due to the changed political landscape resulting from the crisis and the ineffectiveness of his anti-crisis measures, Hoover suffered a heavy personal defeat in the elections. Congress was once again in the hands of the Democrats. Disillusioned and lonely, Hoover left the presidency on March 4, 1933.

After leaving the White House, Herbert Hoover lived for another 31 years, longer than any other former president. He initially lived in the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York City and strongly criticized the policies of the "New Deal" (Speeches on the American Way), which he believed would lead to either fascism or socialism. He also fiercely opposed the United States' entry into the war on the side of Britain from the outbreak of World War II until the attack on Pearl Harbor and, from June 1941, as an ally of the Soviet Union. The dropping of atomic bombs on Japanese cities at the end of the war deeply troubled him due to the "indiscriminate killing of women and children." During the presidencies of Truman and Eisenhower from 1946 to 1955, Hoover again served in government positions, coordinating American food aid to Europe and leading the commission to reorganize the government apparatus in Washington. He did not approve of the military interventions in Korea and Vietnam. Hoover died on October 20, 1964, at the age of 90 in New York City. He was buried in his hometown of West Branch, Iowa, where the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library has been located since 1962.