Posted on 09/04/2017 6:20:20 AM PDT by Kaslin
WEST BRANCH, Iowa -- It is a testimony to the promise of our country to stand inside the home of young Herbert Hoover. The scope of where the Hoover family began, lived and ended each day can be observed in the blink of an eye.
One room served as a bedroom for the future president, his parents and his two siblings; the other room was their living room, dining room and kitchen. The rooms are literally side by side.
They had little. Soon after, they had less. Yet Hoover persisted.
"This cottage where I was born is physical proof of the unbounded opportunity of American life," Hoover once wrote.
And he was right.
Few today know much about the poor little Quaker boy who was orphaned at age 9, separated from his siblings and sent off to Oregon to be raised by an uncle. Most students learn that he was America's president when the stock market crashed in 1929, and that he failed to right the country as it slipped and fell into the Great Depression.
It was a dark time in our history: In one day, some people lost entire fortunes, homes, livelihoods and the promise of a better life. There was 25 percent unemployment and instant poverty; there were soup lines and low wages. Vacant lots soon became an assembly of makeshift homes built with bolts of cloth, cardboard boxes and castoff wood. Built by the newly homeless, they were called "Hoovervilles."
No one will dispute that this is what happened, yet there is so much more to this man that is important for us to know -- today and tomorrow. Why? Because what happened before us guides us to what may happen to us again and serves as an instruction on how not to repeat our worst mistakes.
Forgetting history is shameful for any people. Omitting, ignoring or destroying history is worse. In truth, it is the highest moral and intellectual sin that a country's people can commit.
Hoover never finished high school, failed his college entrance exam and, once admitted to college, wasn't exactly the best of students. But he found a way to persevere once he found his niche: problem-solving, which led to an academic major, and then a career as a geologist and an engineer.
And he was quite brilliant at it. Hoover and his wife, Lou Henry Hoover, a fellow Stanford University graduate, would soon travel several continents and find themselves in precarious situations, such as being trapped in China at the beginning of the country's Boxer Rebellion. Their dedication and his tactical eye eventually earned him a reputation for bringing troubled mining operations to life. His well-earned expertise also earned them great wealth.
Yet Hoover never strayed far from his humble Quaker upbringing; he remained modest and loved hard work. He appreciated solitude and felt awkward when showered with attention.
What he loved most was "doing." And he rose to that occasion in 1914 when more than 100,000 Americans became trapped in Europe without cash, food or shelter as the continent descended into World War I.
Hoover essentially reached into his pocket and got all those Americans home on his dime, with a promissory note and nothing else. Of the millions he spent, all but $400 of what he donated was returned.
That says a lot about the grace of the Americans he helped.
It says even more about the confidence and respect he earned.
That moment forever changed his life: After Germany invaded Belgium and cut off the food supply to the non-agrarian country, he was called upon to help them survive the crisis.
He sprang into action, coordinated an unprecedented relief effort and, in the entirety of the war, saved the lives of millions of war victims by distributing five million tons of food to them. He went on to lead the American food-relief effort after the war, become a national hero and serve as the U.S. secretary of commerce.
His political views were so well-hidden (he served in the administrations of Democrat Woodrow Wilson and Republican Calvin Coolidge) that, when people began to wonder whether he would run for president, a question often arose: "Well, is he a Republican or a Democrat?"
When he lost his re-election campaign to Franklin Roosevelt in 1932, Hoover took it hard. FDR made it harder because he used Hoover much the way House Speaker Paul Ryan or Senate Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi are used by opposing parties today for political gain.
Hoover found reputation redemption in President Harry Truman, respect from Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon, and a deep friendship with President John F. Kennedy.
The Herbert Hoover National Historic site, where his first home sits in West Branch, contains a sprawling detailed instruction on the life and accomplishments of the 31st president.
The artifacts, photos and interactive displays place you into our history over 100 years ago: struggles, accomplishments, technological innovations, other inventions, wars and economic despair -- all things that we should always absorb and never forget.
Hoover was the first man elected U.S. president who had never previously been elected to office or been a general.
There is much to learn from his successes and, if we are wise enough, from his failures -- that is, if we take time from this moment, and from who and what we are today, to understand who we once were.
If not, we will once again stumble badly before we figure out who we will become.
Hoover’s political demise has a great deal to do with the handling of the Bonus-Army, and the attack by the US Army in DC upon the protesters in the summer of 1932. Newspapers gave a lot of negative coverage over the event, and it’s safe to say that a lot of what was done....was orchestrated.
Hoover was bashed in history as he was blamed for the Great Depression. Other achievements of his were simply cast aside as political opponents blamed him for that.
Many will debate what should or shouldn’t have been done about the Depression. The causes and persistence of the Depression go far beyond the policies of President Hoover. But the way history is taught, he’s blamed for it and that’s his historic legacy.
He was still president when I was born———seems like yesterday. (sigh)
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I was surprised to learn, when doing my own meager study of WWII history, that Truman called Hoover to the White House for advice on how to deal with the coming famine in Europe, and other situations, including Hoover's advice on how to end the war with Japan (in short, let Japan keep Korea and Taiwan in return for peace, which without the A-bomb would have been a realpolitik solution). Anyone who really wants to delve into this, take a few minutes to read https://www.trumanlibrary.org/hoover/intro.htm.
He is still being bashed today. Read the replies of the readers
Interestingly, ADR also opposed the Bonus Army's cause, so it would be several years before they got what they wanted.
Don’t you mean Hoobert Heever?
The whole Bonus-Army story would take an hour to really lay out in detail.
What can be said is that Congress envisioned this ‘gift’ five years after WW I ended. Everyone GI who was entitled to $50 or less...got the money immediately (you can sense how this thrilled folks right before the 1924 election). If you were owed the big money (ranging from $51 to roughly $750)....you had to wait until 1944. Basically, Congress didn’t have the money and this was invented to be a waiting process.
Things were fine until 1929 with the crash. Somehow, in 1931...this got brought up, and turned into a critical mess. By the end of 1931...thousands were showing up in DC....long term ‘campers’ (former WW I GI’s) were showing up in the spring of 1932.
The GOP...firmly in charge, simply weren’t going to go into debt by authorizing early payment. Protest mess went turbo by mid-summer, and Hoover decided enough....ordering the Army to chase the protest crowd out. There are a hundred different mistakes with the handling of this...worth another hour of discussion.
Picture appeared around the country...hyped negativity. Massive vote for FDR.
Now, here is the odd thing....Three years go by and around 1936...deep into the depression, the Democrats authorize the payment of the bonus. Lot of debt incurred. FDR vetoes the deal....they vote again and over-rule FDR.
It’s a story worthy of an epic movie...Hoover just never realized the mess that lay there, and the ordering of troops into this...was totally wrong.
Ravenous libs hate Hoover.therefore, he must have been a great man.
A group of national engineering societies in the U.S. jointly confers an award known as the Hoover Medal to engineers who demonstrate civic and humanitarian affairs outside their professional work. Past recipients of this award include notable Americans including former president Jimmy Carter, Alfred Sloan and Charles Kettering (of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center fame), David Packard (co-founder of Hewlett-Packard), and Gary Wozniak (co-founder of Apple).
It's no surprise that President Truman would call on Hoover for advice, and it's also no surprise that Hoover's legacy among people today is not a good one. Hoover was probably one of very few U.S. presidents who could legitimately say that the office of the U.S. President was beneath him.
Hoover became the public scapegoat for the attack, while then-Army Chief of Staff MacArthur skated, in large part because FDR needed him to organize the CCC and hold the Army together under massive budget cuts. MacArthur was smart enough to jump at the chance to head the Philippine Army in 1935, and the American people by 1941 seem to have forgotten his role in the Bonus Army takedown.
The Bonus-Army was a creation similar in nature to BLM today. As soon as their purpose was served....they were dumped to the side.
Huh?
Exactly
No mention of his time trapped in China during the Boxer Rebellion.
My Forgotten Man--The Warner-Vitaphone Orchestra (1933)
And they still hate him. Bill Bryson's book One Summer: America 1927 (New York: Doubleday, 2013 is a smear job on Hoover, Charles Lindbergh and others, filled with innuendo and outright lies. Yet it was a bestseller and a popular book club choice.
In 1931 radio announcer Harry Von Zell introduced the President of the United States as “Hoobert Heever.”
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