Hoover, Herbert

Born in Iowa in a Quaker family, his family is of German descent (original surname Huber ). Hoover's father was a blacksmith and trader in agricultural machinery. His father died in 1880, when Herbert was only 6 years old, and his mother in 1884, and he remained an orphan. Since 1885, Herbert lived with his uncle John Mintorn in Oregon .

In 1891, Hoover entered the newly founded Stanford University , where he studied geology . He graduated from the university in 1895.

Mining Engineer

After graduation, Hoover worked at the US Geological Survey (USGS). Since 1897, Hoover worked at the gold mines in Australia . In 1899 he married Lou Henry, whom he met while studying at the university. In the early 1900s he worked in China . In 1901, Hoover became one of the co-owners of the mining company Bewick, Moreing & Co and led its operations in Australia. On official business, he had to visit Burma , China , Australia, India , Egypt and other countries in which the presence of a specialist in mineralogy was required (for six years, Hoover traveled around the globe five times) ^[1] . In his memoirs , written closer to the end of his life, he admits that despite the fact that he had visited many wonderful places in his youth, they practically did not remain in his memory, giving a list of completed business missions and extracted materials, which characterizes him as a purely business person. “He never quoted poems or plays, never talked about works of art,” recalled one of his acquaintances later ^[1] .

Together with several partners, Hoover founded the company Zinc Corporation (after several mergers became part of Rio Tinto ). Since 1908, he worked at the Kyshtym smelter as a mining engineer. He created a joint-stock company of Kyshtym mining plants, buying up enterprises from the heirs of the local South Ural merchant oligarch Rastorguev. In the Kyshtym museum, a book of “reports” is still kept, where there is a record that Hoover owned part of the shares of the enterprise. After the October Revolution, all of Russian industry was nationalized.

World War I

During the outbreak of World War I, Hoover ended up in London . At the request of the American consul, he helped organize the return of 120 thousand Americans who were at the beginning of the war in Europe to their homeland. In the fall of 1914, Hoover organized and led the Committee for Relief in Belgium , which was occupied by German troops. He managed to convince the Germans to allow food supplies to Belgium and not requisition them for their needs, and the British to let the deliveries go through the sea ​​blockade of Germany that they established. The commission led by Hoover grew into a large organization that bought food in America and Australia and delivered it to Belgium, with its fleet of several dozen ships. Hoover himself crossed the front line several dozen times, thus becoming an important unofficial channel of communication between the warring parties.

After the United States entered the war in April 1917, Hoover was appointed head of the US Food Administration by President Wilson .

In 1919, Hoover donated a large sum to Stanford University to create a library and archive of materials devoted to the First World War, which became the basis of the subsequently established Hoover Institute . The archive has become one of the largest repositories of historical materials for the 1917 revolution and Russian emigration .

In 1918-1923, Hoover headed the American Assistance Administration (ARA), which provided food assistance to European countries, including White and Soviet Russia.

In 1919, the ARA supplied food to the anti-Bolshevik Northwest Army . On July 16, 1919, Hoover signed an agreement with North-Western Army General E. Germonius on supplying the Northwest Army, under which the American side pledged to supply 18,147 tons of wheat flour, 58 tons of grain flour, 985 tons of beans and peas, 1,548 tons of condensed and sterilized milk , 1501 tons of lard, 834 tons of surrogate lard. To pay for these supplies, representatives of the Russian Political Conference signed commitments in the amount of $ 8.75 million, another 5 million Finnish marks ($ 308,242) were paid by Yudenich . ^[2]

Bolshevism , said Hoover at the Paris Peace Conference , is worse than war ^[3]

Minister of Commerce

In 1921, Hoover was appointed US Secretary of Commerce by President Harding . In this post, Hoover has done a lot to develop cooperation between the US government and companies, increase international trade, and develop new technologies. In 1927, he was responsible for the aftermath of the catastrophic flood in the Mississippi .

Participation in the fight against hunger 1921-1922 in Soviet Russia

The mass famine of 1921-1922 in Soviet Russia swept 35 provinces with a total population of 90 million people, of whom at least 40 million were starving. On July 13, 1921, Gorky, with the knowledge of the country's leadership, appealed “To all honest people” with a request to help with food and medicine. Herbert Hoover, who headed the American Assistance Administration (ARA), left politics aside to energetically take up work in Russia. He set two conditions: that the American organization was allowed to act independently and that US citizens held in Soviet prisons were released. The demand for independence infuriated Lenin: “The meanness of America, Hoover and the Council of the League of Nations is pure,” he wrote to the Politburo . “We need to punish Hoover, publicly slap him in the face so that the whole world sees, and the Council of the League of Nations, too.” But he had no choice, and he lost. On July 25, Gorky accepted the proposal of Hoover on behalf of the Soviet government. On August 21, ARA signed an assistance agreement with Maxim Litvinov in Riga . Hoover began operations with $ 18.6 million from the US Congress , private donations, and $ 11.3 million from the sale of gold by the Soviet government. By the end of its operations, ARA had spent $ 61.6 million (or 123.2 million gold rubles) in favor of Russia.

On February 9, 1922, the contribution of ARA, American organizations and individuals under its control amounted to $ 42 million, Soviet Russia - about 12 million 200 thousand dollars, F. Nansen's organization, along with others who were under its “wing” ", - about $ 4 million. In May 1922, the ARA fed 6 million 99 thousand 574 people, the Religious Society of Friends ( Quakers ) - 265 thousand, the International Alliance Save the Children Alliance - 259 thousand 751 people, the Nansen Committee - 138 thousand, the Swedish Red Cross - 87 thousand, the German Red Cross - 7 thousand, the British trade unions - 92 thousand, International first aid - 78 thousand 11 people. In the summer of 1922, when its activities were in full swing, the ARA fed 11 million people daily. Other foreign organizations have taken care of another 3 million starving people. The Soviet government and foreign intermediaries imported food during this period, a total of 2 million tons. As a result of this activity, by the beginning of the summer of 1922, "reports of starvation deaths almost ceased to come." In addition, ARA supplied $ 8 million worth of medicines, which helped contain the epidemic . Moreover, in 1922 and 1923. it supplied Russia with sowing grain, making it possible to obtain good yields in subsequent years. Thanks to the structure developed by Hoover, several hundred Americans, ARA employees, with the help of thousands of Soviet citizens, controlled the distribution of food and medicine. At the peak of activity, 300 American citizens and more than 120 thousand nationals worked in ARA. Although the Soviet authorities agreed not to interfere in the activities of the Hoover organization, the Cheka and then the GPU did not take their eyes off it. Later, when the ARA was disbanded, the Soviet authorities sought to find the most sinister motives in its activities, including espionage and the desire to flood Russia with goods that have nowhere else to go.

Losses during the famine of 1921 are difficult to determine, since no one was counting the victims. The largest losses were observed in the Samara and Chelyabinsk provinces, in the autonomous region of the Volga Germans and the Bashkir Autonomous Republic , whose total population decreased by 20.6%. Socially, the rural poor suffered the most, especially those who did not have dairy cattle that saved many families from death. In terms of age, hunger struck the children most painfully, depriving a significant portion of those who managed to survive, their parents and shelter. In 1922, more than one and a half million peasant children, left to their own devices, wandered around, asking for alms and stealing; mortality in homeless shelters reached 50%. The Soviet Central Statistical Bureau determined the population deficit for the period from 1920 to 1922. equal to 5.1 million people. The famine in Russia in 1921, with the exception of military losses, was the largest disaster for that time in European history after the Middle Ages.

The losses would have been significantly greater if Hoover’s philanthropic activity, which saved the lives of at least 9 million people, were not added to all foreign and Soviet aid. In a letter to the head of ARA, Gorky welcomes his action as unparalleled:

“Your help will be recorded in history as a unique, gigantic achievement worthy of the greatest glory, and will long remain in the memory of millions of Russians ... whom you saved from death”

Historian Richard Pipes wrote: “Many statesmen have a prominent place in history because they sent millions of people to death; Herbert Hoover, soon forgotten in Russia, and later President of the United States, has a rare opportunity to take his rightful place in human memory as a savior of millions ” ^[4] .

Presidency

In the 1928 presidential election, Republican candidate Herbert Hoover, who was associated in public opinion with the economic boom of the 1920s, won a landslide victory in five southern states, as well as in New York and in all western and border states of the country. His rival Alfred Smith , a Democratic candidate and a Catholic , was faced with anti-Catholic sentiments, anti-prohibition, and corruption scandals.

At the beginning of his reign, Hoover obtained from Congress the creation of the Federal Farm Administration and intended to carry out reforms in antitrust law , in the distribution of electricity, in rail transport, on the stock exchange and in the banking sector.

However, after the October stock market crash of 1929, the worst economic crisis began - the Great Depression . Hoover decided to cushion the blows of the crisis by stimulating private ownership initiatives, promoting humanitarian action by local management, and private charitable work. He urged entrepreneurs not to reduce production and wages, and he persuaded union leaders not to insist on raising wages.

In the spring of 1930, Congress allocated $ 750 million for community service under the Hoover Plan. Entrepreneurs for only a few months were able to fulfill promises to support production and not reduce wages, but from May-June 1930 they were forced to reduce production. The increase in the number of unemployed has sharply reduced the total payroll. The development of events abroad did not contribute to an improvement in the situation. Assuming that the economic crisis has mainly foreign roots, Hoover proposed introducing a moratorium on the payment of debt on foreign loans and reparations.

At the end of 1931, Hoover was forced to increase the share of state aid to the economy. In January 1932, on his initiative, Congress decided to create a reconstruction financing corporation to issue loans to save railways, banks, credit and construction associations, and other financial institutions. At the same time, Hoover categorically opposed direct federal assistance to the unemployed and vetoed a law passed by Congress to provide direct assistance to individuals and to significantly expand public work. In July 1932, the number of unemployed reached 12 million, but the president insisted that direct federal assistance “demoralize” citizens. An increasing part of the public considered his position to be cruel and inhuman, and Hoover’s reputation as a successful manager also waned.

By the beginning of the campaign for re-election in 1932, the level of industrial production was only 50% of the level of mid-1929, 12 million people remained unemployed, many enterprises were threatened with closure. Hoover was hostilely accepted during campaign trips around the country, and election defeat was inevitable. Hoover's rival, Democratic candidate F. Roosevelt received the vast majority of electoral votes (472 against 59 for Hoover).

Traditionally, it is customary to blame Hoover as the president who failed to propose an effective strategy for overcoming the situation, like the New Deal of his successor Roosevelt ^[5] . Many historians, however, believe that Hoover was simply unlucky: at the peak of the crisis, no measures helped, and the most active president would have stumbled on the borders of his powers, and Roosevelt’s reforms were implemented and became effective when the peak of the depression was already behind. In addition, Roosevelt continued and significantly strengthened a number of measures taken by the Hoover administration. In addition, the tendency to condemn Hoover for his economic policy, insufficiently energetic and effective measures to overcome the crisis explain the inter-party struggle during the reign of Roosevelt between the democratic and republican parties ^[6] .

After the Presidency

Later, Hoover was a critic of the statist policy of Roosevelt , and then advocated not to interfere in the Second World War and to provide the whole of Europe to Hitler . Under Truman and Eisenhower, Hoover presided over a commission on the reform of the state apparatus, wrote many journalistic and historical works, and by the end of his long life was generally rehabilitated in the eyes of the public. He was given a state funeral.

Until September 5, 2012, Hoover held a record for being in the status of ex-president - after leaving the White House, he lived for 31 years.

In honor of Herbert Hoover was named Hoover Dam .

In honor of Herbert Hoover, the asteroid (932) of Houver , discovered in 1920 by the Austrian astronomer Johann Paliz , is named. The name was proposed by the Academic Council of the University of Vienna in connection with the help and support provided by Hoover of Austria after the First World War.

• Washington Award (1919)
• Honorary Doctor of the University of Warsaw (1921) ^[7]
• John Fritz Medal (1929)
• Hoover Medal (1930)

• Hoover Institute
• Hoover Dam
• Hooverville

• Bill Bryson Restless Summer 1927 . - Litres, 2017-10-01. - 616 p. - ISBN 9785040766789 .
• Rothbard Murray . The Great Depression in America: Translated from English / Murray Rothbard. - Moscow: IRISEN: Thought, 2012 .-- 520 p. - (Series History) .; ISBN 978-5-91066-052-0

• G. Hoover: “American Individualism”
• Hoover, Herbert Clark in the Encyclopedia "Around the World"