Herbert Hoover (1929-1933)

Personal Facts:

  1. He was born to Jesse Clark and Huldah Minthorn Hoover in West Branch, Iowa.
  2. His father, a black smith, died when he was six. His mother died two years later and he, his brother Theodore, and sister May, were taken care of by relatives.
  3. He worked on a farm and attended school at Oregon’s Willamette valley.
  4. He later went to work as a office boy at a land settlement near Salem where he studied math in business school.
  1. After meeting with an engineer in Salem, he became determined to become an engineer.
  2. In 1891, he was admitted into Stanford University’s first class. He supported himself by typing, operating a laundry agency, and working as secretary for a geology professor. He received a degree in Mining engineering in 1895.
  3. He spent much of his life after graduation working for various engineering firms all around the world, including China.
  4. During his second year at Stanford, he met Iowa-born Lou Henry, who was also studying geology. On his way to China in 1899, he stopped in California and the couple married. They had two children, Herbert, Jr., and Allan Henry.
  5. He wrote many engineering journals including Principles of Mining.
  6. During W.W.I, he helped transfer Americans stranded in Europe back home. He did the job so efficiently that he was assigned to getting food, clothing, and shelter to thousands of homeless civilians in Europe. He accepted no salary or free.
  7. After the United States entered the war in 1917, he was summoned to come home and become the US food administrator.
  8. After the war, he was appointed chairman of the American Relief Administration. He saw to it that millions of people in war-torn  countries had food. He also established the European Children’s Fund to care for orphaned children in central and eastern Europe.
  9. In 1921, He was appointed secretary of commerce, a position he held till he resigned in 1928.

Presidential Facts

  1. He was the first president to have a telephone on his desk.
  2. He signed the Agricultural Act of 1929, a farm relief legislation that provided for the purchase of surplus farm products.
  3. He signed the Smoot-Hawley Act, which raised tariffs and contributed to the Great Depression.
  4. He Created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, a federal body that lent money, to insurance companies, banks, and railroads.
  5. Used tanks and troops to break up the “Bonus Army,” a group of W.W.I veterans who sought promised payments of war certificates.
  6. He and his wife translated from a Latin 16th century book on mining called De Re metallica.

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