Herbert Clark Hoover , born the August 10th 1874 and dead the October 20th 1964, is the 31e (1929 - 1933) President of the the United States.
When Hoover is elected, the economy is relatively flourishing and optimism reigns. A few months later, the purse collapses and the Grande Depression starts. Hoover tries without much success to put an end to it and is only found indicated responsible for the economic catastrophe.
Biography
Hoover is born on August 10th, 1874 in a family Quaker from West Branch, in the State of the Iowa. His/her father Jesse Hoover dies in 1880, his mother Hulda Minthorn, in 1884. After their deaths, Hoover lives with Newberg, in the State of the Oregon.
During the summer 1885, Bert Hoover, then 11 years old, takes a Train Pacific Union towards the west, with destination the Oregon. It carries two parts of 10 hundreds bent in its clothing and a bundle containing the culinary specialities of his aunt Hannah. It is awaited at the other end of the continent by his uncle, John Minthorn, Médecin and principal. Hoover described it later like a “man of appearance severe but, following the example all Quakers, equipped with a good bottom”.
During its six years in Oregon, Hoover learns how to only manage. “My ambition of child was, whatever the place, to earn my living without any help”. Employee in the company of his uncle, the Oregon Land , it learns the Comptabilité and the Dactylographie while following courses of the evening in a business school. Thanks to its M, schoolmistress Jane Gray, it discovers the novels of Charles Dickens and Walter Scott. David Copperfield , the history of an orphan obliged to only manage in the life remained, all its existence, one of its books favorite.
Education
With the autumn 1891, Hoover is registered with the Université of Stanford of Palo Alto, California. It pointed out there more often apart from the class than inside by managing the team of Baseball and that of football; it opens a laundry and deals with agency of lecturers. It joins other poor students against richest and is elected, against its liking, Trésorier of the association of the students. It refunds the debt of 2000 $ of this association towards the government.
Hoover pays its studies by making typewriting for its professor of Géologie John Casper Branner, which obtains also an use to him of summer to chart the Ozark mounts in the Arkansas. It is in the laboratory of geology of Branner that it meets Lou Henry, the girl of a banker born with Waterloo (Iowa) in 1874. Lou shares its love of nature and its leaning for independence. “What is important it is not what the others think of you but what you feel with deepest even” said to you it to his/her friends of university.
Hoover obtains its diploma three months before its 21 years in May 1895. It leaves Stanford with 40 $ out of pocket and any use in sight but it have an identity, a promised in marriage liberal profession and one. Moreover, for the orphan of West Branch, Stanford of adoption - a place becomes its family to which it with the impression to belong.
In 1899, he marries his boyfriend of Stanford, Lou Henry. They leave for the China, where he works in a private company as a Engineer as a chief. In June 1900, the revolt of the Boxers surprises the Hoover couple with You IEN-Tsin. During almost a month the camping is taken under the grapeshot. Whereas his wife works in the hospitals, Hoover directs the construction of barricades and, once, risk even its life to save Chinese children.
Humane years of Hoover
Wearied to work only for the Hoover money is interested in the Humanitaire, pushed by its Quakers inclinations. Opportunity arises in August 1914 with the assassination of the archduke of Austria-Hungary François Ferdinand which gives free course to the competitions between the European nations. The First World War starts and few Americans are prepared there. Approximately 120 000 compatriots of Hoover find themselves wedged bad side of the Atlantique without money and lost a little.
The August 3rd, Hoover receives a call using the Ambassador of the United States with the the United Kingdom, Walter Hines Page. In less than twenty-four hours, five hundred volunteers gather in the ballroom of the Hôtel Savoy transformed into an immense canteen and a distribution center of food, clothing, tickets of boat and money. “I did not realize there at the time, but the August 3rd 1914 I put a term at my career of engineer to launch out on the slipping slope of the public life. ”
During the weeks which follow, Hoover helps the Chief as well Plucks White of Pawhuska, Oklahoma that heiresses covered of jewels to return to the country. When one of enters she asks him an engagement certifying that its ship would not be attacked by a German submarine in the middle of the ocean, Hoover is carried out!
Hoover and nine other engineers lend 1 500 000 $ with desperate travellers. With 400 $ close this sum were completely refunded what confirms confidence that the Large Engineer (his nickname) had in the morality of the Americans. According to Hoover, “the difference between a dictatorship and a democracy are simple: the dictators organize starting from the top to the bottom, the democracies work starting from the base upwards”.
Wedged between the German bayonets and the British blockade, the Belgium, in 1914, finds itself with the threshold of the famine. One asks Hoover to assist from the small kingdom which depends with 80 % of the imports for its requirements in food. Hoover is obliged to give up its promising career of mining engineer. It reflects during a few days and finally declares with the one of his friends “To the devil fortune! ”. It takes the responsability for the immense task in two conditions - not to receive wages and to have freehand to organize and manage what was going to become the Commission of assistance in Belgium.
This commission becomes de facto an independent republic with its flag, its fleet, its factories, its workshops and its rail network. The monthly budget of 12 000 000 $ come from donations and governmental subsidies. More once Hoover engages personally on amounts exceeding its capacities of refunding. It is the first to make a diplomatic shuttle while crossing the North Sea 40 times to persuade the belligerents, with London as with Berlin, to let the vivres reach the victims of the war. He also learns how to the Belgians, for whom the corn was used to nourish the cattle, to nourish himself with made bread of cornstarch. With final, the commission saves 10 000 000 people of the famine.
The crises follow one another the every day. The British suspect it of being a German spy. The Germans expel young workers of the Commission, including a commander of the Salvation Army, on the basis of similar suspicion. In his country, the senator Henry Cabot Lodge wants to put Hoover in examination for relations with the enemy. Theodore Roosevelt promises to him to calm Lodge with this council “political courage appears in the function not in the newspapers. ”
In spite of these Hoover obstacles heading, buys rice in Burma, corn in Argentine, beans in China and corn, meat and bacon in the United States. Well before the Armistice of 1918 he is a hero, and according to the ambassador Walter Hines Page “a small simple, modest and energetic man who began his career in California and will finish it with the paradise. ”
After the entry in war of the United States, the president Woodrow Wilson names Hoover with the head of the ministry for the Agriculture. He succeeds in cause a drop in the consumption of the vivres necessary to Europe while avoiding rationing in his country. He ensures the provisioning of the Allies thus.
After the Armistice, Hoover, member of the supreme and directing Economic council of the Administration of the American assistance, organize cargoes of vivres bound for the million famished Central Europe. It extends this help to the Russia Bolshevik struck by the famine in 1921. When a critic asks to him whether that does not help the Bolchevism, Hoover retorts “Twenty million people die of hunger, whatever their affiliation political, they will be nourished! ”
Hoover is a Minister the effective commercial in the government of the presidents Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge between on March 5th, 1921 and on August 21st, 1928, and after having directed the helps following the floods of the the Mississippi in 1927, he becomes the candidate of the Republican party the June 14th 1928. He declares then: “the Americans are today more close overcoming poverty that any other nation in the history”. He gains the elections the November 6th with a comfortable margin of the popular vote.
Presidency
1929
March 4th: Nomination of Herbert Hoover as thirty-and-unième chair of the United States of America.
June 15th: Hoover signs a law of protection of the agricultural market and farmers. This policy dissociates that carried out by the Republicans before him.
24 - October 25th: the “Black Thursday” then “black Friday” which sees the collapse of the Bourse of New York.
1930
June 17th: Hoover signs the law Hawley-Smoot increasing the Customs duties in order to protect the American interior market. As the importing countries make some in the same way, the result goes against the objective and the recession settles.
December 2nd: Hoover obtains Congress 116 M$ of authorizations of programs to provide work to the 4,5 million unemployed.
1931
January 7th: Hoover is informed that the number of unemployed reaches the bar of the five million.
March 3rd: president Hoover signs the law instituting the “The Star-Spangled Banner” as a national anthem of the United States.
June 20th: Hoover proposes with the Congress a one year moratorium on the debts between the United States and the countries of Europe. The economic crisis still does not weaken.
1932
January 22nd: Hoover creates an agency of loan at the financial institutions with a capital of 2000 billion $ in order to start again the economy.
July 13rd: Hoover makes countryside against the democratic candidate Franklin Delano Roosevelt and its program of “New Deal” (new redistribution).
September 25th: Hoover increases the taxes to try to rebalance the budget and to restore confidence.
November 8th: Hoover is largely beaten by Roosevelt with the presidential elections.
Foreign politics
The foreign politics of Hoover is intended to avoid the effects of the Great depression on the worldwide economy. He proposes the suspension of refundings and war damagees related to the peace agreements of 1918.
Hoover continues the policy of intervention or military pressure to protect the American interests when they are threatened. He is opposed to the annexation of Mandchourie by Japan.
Interior policy
Eight month after the nomination the purse tumbles down and the economy is taken in a spiral mortal which is known under the name of Grande depression of 1929. Hoover announces that it will maintain the federal budget in balance, that it will reduce the taxes and will increase public works, but it signs also the Loi Hawley-Smoot which increases the rights of Douane on 20.000 articles. This law is often shown to have worsened the depression and is its more serious political error. The Hoover government decreases the quantity of money available by fear of inflation what is today, and in these circumstances, regarded as an error by the majority of the economists.
H. Hoover is, among the US presidents, one of the least included/understood and most calumniated. Criticism, partisane, make a follower of the of it Leave-make although the History shows the opposite. Because of its experiment during the First World War, Hoover was persuaded that the government could make evolve/move favorably the life of people. Consequently Hoover not only helped the Congress to legislate to improve the US economy but it used its capacities of Head of State to implement various programs and reforms.
One will find below a list of some of the initiatives taken to put an end to the Great depression and the sufferings of the American people:
- Signature of the law of emergency help and rebuilding, the first intervention of the federal government against the Unemployment.
- Signature of the law of assistance to the loans of real acquisition allowing all the citizens to finance the purchase of a house.
- Increase in the subsidies to the farmers.
- Creation of the Organization of emergency help to coordinate the local and private initiatives resulting in establishment of 3000 committees through the country.
- Incentive of the banks to create the national Credit to help the banks in difficulty and to protect the money from the agents.
- Encouragement of the industrialists to maintain the wages with an elevated level during the Depression. Much of them, and in particular Henry Ford, increased and maintained the wages at the beginning of the Depression considering that more the consumers had money plus that would help to raise the economy.
- Signature of the finance law of the rebuilding which lent money to the States for public works and to help with the uses of help. It lent also money to the banks, the railway companies and the organizations of rural appropriations.
- Increase in the customs duties to protect employment. After having heard the conclusions of the Commission of the laws, which had generated more than 20.000 pages of account-returned hearing, it signed with hesitation the law. Instead of protecting employment, the law Smoot-Hawley involved a world economic war which worsened the economic conditions.
- Increase in public works, of which in particular:
To finance these government projects - there were others of them - Hoover accepts one of the strongest increases in the taxes of the history of the United States. The budgetary law of 1932 increases the taking away on the highest section from 25 to 63%. The real estate taxes are doubled and the taxation of the companies increases approximately 15%. Hoover encourages also the Congress to inquire into the Stock Exchange operation New York and this pressure involves several reforms.
In spite of these actions and a massive intervention of its successor, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the state of the economy does not improve. A important recession occurs in 1937-38 (certain economists speak about depression) and the economy continues to stagger until 1940 (unemployment rate does not go down under the 9,9% before 1942).
The incident of the premium to the army
The war veterans of the First World War and their families express with Washington, cd., in June 1932 to obtain a premium which had been promised to them in 1924 with effect in 1945. Hoover uses the armed forces to expel the campers of Capitole and this action is criticized because potentially contrary with the law Posse Comitatus of 1878.
Policy partisane
Hoover is faithful to the theses of the Republican party preaching a minimal intervention in the interior economy. In the circumstances of the Great depression, this policy of “letting make” does not make it possible to put an end to unemployment and opens the door with the success of the Democratic party and the programme of “new redistribution” of Franklin Roosevelt.
After the presidency
Hoover thought that its opponents sabotaged its programs to make sure of the personal electoral benefit. They regarded it as cruel and insensitive. It was largely beaten with the presidential election of 1932. When Franklin Roosevelt assumes the chairmanship, Hoover, opposed to the official intervention, becomes a critic of the New Deal. Its doubts appear in its book “Fights for freedom” where he speaks about the Fascisme, of the Communisme and the Socialisme like enemy of American freedoms.
In 1947, the President Truman names Hoover at the commission of reform of the ministries, which in fact its president. It is named president of a similar commission by President Eisenhower in 1953. Work of these two commissions generates many economies in the operation of the government. Hoover writes then many articles and books. It is by writing one of them that he dies of a Cancer Intestin Al at the 90 years age to New York the October 20th 1964.
Hoover, author
- The Challenge to Liberty , l934.
- Addresses Upon The American Road, 1933-1938 , Charles Scribner' S Sounds, NY, l938
- The Great Depression , 1952.
See too
Simple: Herbert Hoover
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