President Herbert Hoover was born on this day in 1874 in West Branch, Iowa.
10 Notes On Herbert Hoover
1. To me this sums up the man. When he was president he required his White House servants to be invisible. Whenever Hoover or his wife Lou approached they were to jump into the nearest closet to avoid being seen. Hoover never even bothered to learn their names. When FDR became president he was the exact opposite.
2. President Hoover is one of two presidents who did not accept a salary as president. He donated his salary to charity. He was the first president who was a millionaire. The other president who didn’t accept a salary was John Kennedy.
3. He was the greatest president at one thing- fishing. He was an avid fisherman. In his later years I wonder if he ever went fishing with Ted Williams? Probably not but he should have. Hoover loved to fish. Nothing wrong with that.
4. Herbert Hoover was a great success at everything he did prior to his presidency. He was a successful mining engineer, businessman. He began work in public service in 1914. He ran the commission for relief for Belgium. He fed them, saving countless lives. He was the US Food Administrator from 1917 to 1919. He was the Secretary of Commerce for Presidents Harding and Coolidge from 1921 to 1928. Both parties wanted him. He had the resume for POTUS that looked unbeatable. He was very qualified on paper to be POTUS. Just goes to show that a sparkling resume does not make a great president.
5. His presidency was miserable. He goes down as on of the 5ive worst presidents. I have seen some place him at the bottom. The Great Depression came along right after he took office and that was the downfall. He seemed to lose sense of reality, about what was really happening in the country. He was out of touch. As things got worse he seemed to isolate himself even more.
6. When was trounced by Franklin Roosevelt in the 1932 election. Hoover received 39.7 percent of the vote. The amazing thing to me is that millions went out and actually voted for Hoover. How could anyone outside of his family and close friends vote for him? Just goes to show that with the two party system anyone nominated by one of the two major parties will get 40 percent of the vote. What happens with the other 20 percent of the vote is what counts.
7. I can’t recall who said this about Hoover but “He did great things but wasn’t a great man” He also seems to me as a person who loved the idea of loving people, humanity as a whole but was terrible about dealing with people one on one. He reminds me kind of like a Republican Jimmy Carter. Hoover did greater things in his life though then Carter could ever dream of. Hoover was just a strange man. {not as strange as Dick Nixon though] Hoover didn’t have the common touch. He was great sitting behind a desk working on a problem, getting things done.
8. His boyhood home and presidential museum and library in West Branch, Iowa is well worth going to if you are passing through. It is right off of the interstate.
9. Hoover was a very unpopular former president. He would credit President Truman for adding ten years to his life but bringing him back in government after World War II. Truman put him in charge of a commission to make the federal bureaucracy more efficient.
10. Herbert Hoover is one of 4 presidents who lived over 90 years. Ford, Reagan and John Adams were the others. Hoover lived the longest of any president after his presidency was over. He lived 31 years. Jimmy Carter is about to overtake that record.
slicethelife 
Hooverville. I remember my grandfather speaking of him quite unflattering – he was out of touch (Rommney?) Good post thanks.
I’ve heard Romney compared to Tom Dewey…. i kind of think all politicians are out of touch these days.. Hoover seems to me to be the first one who was really out of touch with what was going on…Never heard any old timer say anything good about him…
In 1927 there was a massive flood of the Mississippi Delta. 70,000 sq. miles under water, 700,000 people homeless. Black share croppers were rounded up, over 15,00 were kept at gunpoint in work camps stretching 11 miles along the river. They were prisoners, unable to leave, forced to work sandbagging. Wealthy plantation owners worried that if the blacks were allowed to leave, they’d never return. A sympathetic son of one of the plantation owners came up with a plan to evacuate people. With boats waiting on the river, at the last moment, the plan was scraped under pressure from the plantation owners. Only 33 white women and children were rescued. There were allegations of rape, theft, and abuse in deplorable conditions. President Coolidge dragged his feet, but Hoover, then Secretary of Commerce, sensed an opportunity. The next year being an election year, with Hoover planning to run, he stepped in and coordinated the relief effort. Suddenly the story was news, Hoover took advantage of every photo op. He was front page across the country, pictured with the Red Cross, feeding children, you get the picture. The only blemish was the forced labour, and treatment of the share croppers.Hoover approached Robert Motten, an influential back leader asking him for a report on the situation. He wasn’t pleased with the findings – he offered Motten a deal – in exchange for whitewashing his report, as well as promising black support for Hoovers presidential run – Hoover promised he would divide all the flooded plantations into smaller
parcels, selling them to share croppers for next to nothing. Motten agreed. You can guess how it ended. I’m certainly not a fan of Hoover.
wow.. i had never heard that one.. thanks for sharing…Hoover is hard to understand…he once made a comment on the order of by a person is 40 there is no reason they shouldn’t have made a million dollars…i don’t think he was too grounded in reality..
If you have the chance, the PBS series, Turning Points of History, has a great episode on this story called High River Blues
thanks.. i wrote it down and will be looking for it.. sounds interesting…
Another thought on Hoover – from what I call the prior to his ambitions days. And you’re right, Hoover is messed up, go figure.
In 1921, hoover then Secretary of Commerce, and heading the newly formed ARA (American Relief Administration) was in charge of post WW1 relief efforts for 21 countries in Europe. He read a newspaper article about a plea from a Russian writer named Gorky, begging for outside aid. Russia was on the brink of starvation. Civil war and Bolshevik blunders had pushed Russia over the edge. Impossible grain requisitions left millions without anything to feed themselves, or seed to plant the following year. Hoover tackled the problem, America agreed to help, Russia was divided into a number of regions, each one placed in the hands of an American. America shipped grain, corn, and supplies. The story gets crazy, railway systems were unusable due to neglect, red tape, language, you name it, it was a gong show.
It’s late, and I have to get some sleep, will finish the story tomorrow…
I’ll briefly jump ahead to say that many credit Hoover with saving more lives than anyone who has ever lived. He is definitely an odd one to understand……..