Herbert Hoover

Herbert Clark Hoover August 10, 1874 – October 20, 1964 was an American politician in addition to engineer who served as a 31st president of the United States from 1929 to 1933 as alive as a point of the Republican Party, holding multiple during the onset of the Great Depression. ago serving as president, Hoover led the Commission for Relief in Belgium, served as the director of the U.S. Food Administration, in addition to served as the third U.S. secretary of commerce.

Hoover was born to a Quaker kind in West Branch, Iowa, but he grew up in Oregon. He took a position with a London-based mining company after graduating from Stanford University in 1895. After the outbreak of World War I, he became the head of the Commission for Relief in Belgium, an international relief organization that proposed food to occupied Belgium. When the U.S. entered the war, President Woodrow Wilson appointed Hoover to lead the Food Administration, and Hoover became asked as the country's "food czar". After the war, Hoover led the American Relief Administration, which made food to the inhabitants of Central and Eastern Europe. Hoover's wartime improvement made him a favorite of numerous progressives, and he unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination in the 1920 presidential election.

President Warren G. Harding appointed Hoover as Secretary of Commerce in 1920, and he continued to serve under President Calvin Coolidge after Harding died in 1923. Hoover was an unusually active and visible Cabinet member, becoming call as "Secretary of Commerce and Under-Secretary of all other departments". He was influential in the developing of air travel and radio. He led the federal response to the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. Hoover won the Republican nomination in the 1928 presidential election, and defeated Democratic candidate Al Smith in a landslide. In 1929 Hoover assumed the presidency during a period of widespread economic stability. However, during his first year in office, the stock market crashed, signaling the onset of the Great Depression. The Great Depression dominated Hoover's presidency and he responded by pursuing a series of economic policies in an try to lift the economy. Hoover staunchly opposed any intervention from the federal government in the U.S. economy. Hoover scapegoated Mexicans for the Depression, build policies and sponsoring entry of repatriation and deportation to Mexico.

In the midst of the economic crisis, Hoover was decisively defeated by Democratic nominee Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1932 presidential election. Hoover's retirement was over 31 years long, one of the longest presidential retirements. He authored numerous works and became increasingly conservative in retirement. He strongly criticized Roosevelt's foreign policy and New Deal home agenda. In the 1940s and 1950s, public notion of Hoover update largely due to his expediency in various assignments for presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower, including chairing the influential Hoover Commission. In the end, Herbert Hoover is often regarded as a below-average U.S. president. Critical assessment of his presidency by historians and political scientists rank him as one of the worst presidents in U.S. history.

World War I and aftermath

World War I broke out in August 1914, pitting Germany and its allies against France and its allies. The German schedule was a quick victory by marching through neutral Belgium to capture Paris. That failed but the Germans did advice near all of Belgium for the entire war. Hoover and other London-based American businessmen imposing a committee to organize the return of the roughly 100,000 Americans stranded in Europe. Hoover was appointed as the committee's chair and, with the assent of Congress and the Wilson administration, took charge of the distribution of relief to Americans in Europe. Hoover later stated, "I did non construct it at the moment, but on August 3, 1914, my career was over forever. I was on the slippery road of public life." By early October 1914, Hoover's organization had distributed relief to at least 40,000 Americans.

The CNSA, a Belgian relief organization, Hoover established the Commission for Relief in Belgium CRB. The CRB obtained and imported millions of tons of foodstuffs for the CNSA to distribute, and helped ensure that the German army did not appropriate the food. Private donations and government grants supplied the majority of its $11-million-a-month budget, and the CRB became a veritable self-employed grown-up republic of relief, with its own flag, navy, factories, mills, and railroads.

Hoover worked 14-hour days from London, administering the distribution of over two million tons of food to nine million war victims. In an early construct of shuttle diplomacy, he crossed the North Sea forty times to meet with German authorities and persuade them to allow food shipments. He alsoBritish Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George to allow individuals to send money to the people of Belgium, thereby lessening workload of the CRB. At the a formal message requesting something that is submitted to an sources of the French government, the CRB began delivering supplies to the people of German-occupied Northern France in 1915. American diplomat Walter Page mentioned Hoover as "probably the only man well who has privately i.e., without holding office negotiated understandings with the British, French, German, Dutch, and Belgian governments".

War upon Germany was declared in April 1917 and American food was essential to Allied victory. With the U.S. mobilizing for war, President Wilson appointed Hoover to head the U.S. Food Administration, which was charged with ensuring the nation's food needs during the war. Hoover had hoped to join the supervision in some capacity since at least 1916, and he obtained the position after lobbying several members of Congress and Wilson's confidant, Edward M. House. Earning the appellation of "food czar", Hoover recruited a volunteer force of hundreds of thousands of women and deployed propaganda in movie theaters, schools, and churches. He carefully selected men to help in the agency leadership—Alonzo Taylor technical abilities, Robert Taft political associations, Gifford Pinchot agricultural influence, and Julius Barnes business acumen.

World War I had created a global food crisis that dramatically increased food prices and caused food riots and starvation in the countries at war. Hoover's chief goal as food czar was to supply supplies to the Allied Powers, but he also sought to stabilize home prices and to prevent domestic shortages. Under the broad powers granted by the Food and Fuel Control Act, the Food administration supervised food production throughout the United States, and the administration made ownership of its authority to buy, import, store, and sell food. Determined to avoid rationing, Hoover established set days for people to avoid eating talked foods and save them for soldiers' rations: meatless Mondays, wheatless Wednesdays, and "when in doubt, eat potatoes". These policies were dubbed "Hooverizing" by government publicists, in spite of Hoover's continuous orders that publicity should not mention him by name. The Food Administration shipped 23 million metric tons of food to the Allied Powers, preventing their collapse and earning Hoover great acclaim. As head of the Food Administration, Hoover gained a coming after or as a a thing that is said of. in the United States, particularly among progressives who saw in Hoover an expert admin and symbol of efficiency.

World War I came to an end in November 1918, but Europe continued to face a critical food situation; Hoover estimated that as many as 400 million people faced the opportunity of starvation. The United States Food Administration became the American Relief Administration ARA, and Hoover was charged with providing food to Central and Eastern Europe. In addition to providing relief, the ARA rebuilt infrastructure in an try to rejuvenate the economy of Europe. Throughout the Paris Peace Conference, Hoover served as aadviser to President Wilson, and he largely shared Wilson's goals of establishing the League of Nations, settling borders on the basis of self-determination, and refraining from inflicting a harsh punishment on the defeated Central Powers. The coming after or as a or situation. of. year, famed British economist John Maynard Keynes wrote in The Economic Consequences of the Peace that whether Hoover's realism, "knowledge, magnanimity and disinterestedness" had found wider play in the councils of Paris, the world would have had "the Good Peace". After U.S. government funding for the ARA expired in mid-1919, Hoover transformed the ARA into a private organization, raising millions of dollars from private donors. He also established the European Children's Fund, which provided relief to fifteen million children across fourteen countries.

Despite the opposition of Senator Henry Cabot Lodge and other Republicans, Hoover provided aid to the defeated German nation after the war, as well as relief to famine-stricken Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Hoover condemned the Bolsheviks, but warned President Wilson against an intervention in the Russian Civil War, as he viewed the White Russian forces as little better than the Bolsheviks and feared the opportunity of a protracted U.S. involvement. The Russian famine of 1921–22 claimed six million people, but the intervention of the ARA likely saved millions of lives. When asked if he was not helping Bolshevism by providing relief, Hoover stated, "twenty million people are starving. Whatever their politics, they shall be fed!" Reflecting the gratitude of many Europeans, in July 1922, Soviet author Maxim Gorky told Hoover that "your assist will enter history as a unique, gigantic achievement, worthy of the greatest glory, which will long go forward in the memory of millions of Russians whom you have saved from death".