Herbert Hoover

Herbert Hoover By Mary C. Kimball On August 10, 1874, in a small Quaker community in Iowa, there was born to Jesse Clark Hoover and his wife, Hulda, a baby boy who was to become internationally known for his wonderful service to humanity. Their son was not long to know the loving care of his parents, for his father died in 1880 and his mother in 1884. His father was the village black- smith. He repaired farm machinery and household utensils; he manufac- tured things made of metal and sold farm implements. His two sons, Her- bert and Theodore, inherited this in- ventive turn of their father and later Herbert's two sons showed the same bent. His mother had unusual mental power. After her husband's death, she became a preacher at Quaker meetings and was a very effective exhorter. She was attractive, but shy and reserved. Her son, Herbert, inherited these qual- ities. After their parent's death, the two boys and their sister, Mary, were cared for by their Quaker uncles and aunts. At one time Herbert was sent to live with an uncle, Laban Miles, the United States Government Indian Agent for the Osage tribe in the Indian Terri- tory. During the eight months he spent there he learned much concerning the Redmen. The next two years he lived with his uncle, Allen Hoover, and then went to his uncle, John Min- thorn, in Oregon. Two or three years later he went to his grandfather Miles. but he found him so severe that he de- cided to leave. He went to Portland and Salem, determined to fit himself for the college he desired to enter. In Salem he lived with his Uncle John, but in Portland he lived alone. He attributes a great part of his desire to study science to the visit of a friend of his father's. This man, on his way to investigate a mine, stop- ped off to see the son of his old friend. He stayed at a hotel for two or three days and spent as much time with Herbert as school and chores would permit. His talk was chiefly about the difference between the work and achievement of one with and one with- out a profession. While Herbert never saw this man again, his talk about mining engineering more than any other external influence, determined Hoover's education and adopted pro- fession. He desired to attend high school as a preparation for college, but since he could not earn full wages while going to school, he studied at night and worked all day. Back of his Uncle John's real estate office was a small room half filled with old boxes and bags. He fitted it with a bed, lamp and table. Here he slept and studied. He ate at restaurants and boarding houses. He relates that once he stood entranced before a sign, "Table d' hote 75c," but on reflection he felt that no human stomach could possibly hold all the food that 75c could pay for so he went elsewhere. In two years he felt ready to try the entrance examination for college. Stan- ford, because its "romantic found- ing, picturesque setting, the terms it offered to poor students, the freedom it permitted in the selection of studies, its strong leaning toward science," made Hoover feel that it was the uni- versity he desired to study in. He felt that there he might become like the wonderful man who had visited him In 1891, Professor Swain was sent to Portland to give entrance examina- tions for Stanford. When Hoover read

HERBERT HOOVER 217 the published requirements, he realized that his self-preparation had been one- sided. He found in the examination that he was unprepared in grammar and rhetoric. Fortune was on his side, however, as the professor who was head of the department of mathematics, was a Quaker, and knew a student when he saw him. He was attracted to Herbert by his "evident strength of will." He said, "I observed that he put his teeth together with determina- tion to pass the examination at any cost. He was evidently summoning every pound of energy he possessed to answer correctly the questions before him. I was naturally interested in him. On inquiry, I learned that he had studied only two books of plane geometry and was trying to solve an original problem based on the fourth. While he was unable to do this, he did much better, for the intelligence and superior will he revealed in the attempt convinced me that such a boy needed only to be given a chance. So, al- though he could not pass all of the tests, I told him to come to my room at the hotel after the examination, as I would like to talk with him. He came promptly at the appointed hour with a friend of his. * * * The two boys invited me and Mrs. Swain to stop at Salem to visit them, which we did. I learned there that Herbert Hoover was an industrious, thought- ful, ambitious boy, earning his own living while he studied." Mr. Swain told Hoover that if he would study diligently for the rest of the summer on the literary subjects he was lacking in, and then come early to Stanford for some coaching, he would be admitted to the University. The following October he was en- rolled among the first students. In time he graduated from Stanford and later he became a patron and trustee, doing much for the institution that had done so much for him. When he reached the school he had only $200. He did odd jobs to pay for his board and room. His college life showed many of the characteris- tics for which he is noted today. He did things "promptly, positively, quietly." He showed a marked faculty i<~v "organizing and administering." One time when Dr. Branner heard the students talking about "Hoover's luck," he said: "He has not had luck; he has had reward. If you would work half as hard and half as intelli- gently as he does, you would have half his luck. If I tell any one of you to do a thing for me, I have to come around in half an hour to see if you have done it. But I can tell Hoover to do a thing, and never think of it again. I know it will be done, and he doesn't ask me how to do it, either. If I told him to start to Kamchatka tomorrow to bring me back a walrus tooth, I'd never hear of it again until he came back with the tooth. And then I'd ask him how he had done it." While studying geology he also studied a beautiful, intelligent girl who majored in geology. He decided that she was the girl for him and that he would marry her. Hoover began his mining career in Grass Valley in the Sierras with pick and shovel. The hours were long and the work underground. He rose rap- idly and became night shift boss. He soon decided to get work with the best mining engineer on the coast. Louis Janin. He went to Mr. Janin's office in San Francisco. He was jn- formed that there was no vacancy and a long waiting list. The only help needed was a typist. "All right." said Hoover, "I'll take it. I can't come for a few days, but I'll come next Tues- day, say." (This was Friday.) He knew he had to learn typewriting be- fore he could begin the work. He rented a machine, by Tuesday he cou!d use it. Janin was serving as an expert in a mining case involving a mine in Grass Valley that Hoover knew from work- ing there. When he took the typed sheets that he had copied to his em- ployer he told him that the line of pro-

218 IMPROVEMENT ERA ccdure was all wrong and explained why. In so doing, some facts not yet published, that he had helped to dis- cover while working there, came out. The argument was changed and the case won. Hoover was too valuable to remain a typist so he was made assistant to an older staff man. On his way to his new post he wrote to the geology girl from Nevada and later from Wyoming. Idaho, Arizona, New Mexico. Janin noted that his reports showed knowl- edge of geology and mining, but also keen business sense. He was next sent to manage a mine near Carlisle, New Mexico. Two years after Hoover's gradua- tion, the West Australian mining boom occurred. Janin was asked by a Lon- don firm to recommend a competent man. He talked the conditions over with Hoover and told him he believed there were greater opportunities in Australia for him than the Pacific Coast offered. Just before Hoover started for Europe, Janin said, "Now, look here, Hoover, I have cabled Lon- don swearing to your full technical qualifications and I am not afraid of your letting me down on that. But these conservative Londoners have stipulated that you should be thirty- five years old. I have wired that I was sorry to have to tell them that you are not quite thirty-three. Don't for- get that my reputation depends on your looking thirty-three by the time you get to London. (Hoover was then twenty-three and looked two years younger.) He began growing a beard on his way east. When he appeared before perhaps the greatest mining firm in the world the man spoken to stared at him and said. "How remarkable you Americans are. You have not yet learned to grow old, either individually or as a nation. Now you, for example, do not look a day over twenty-five. How do you do it?" He found life hard in the Australian mining camps. While there were many opportunities to go wrong, he "kept his body and soul clean and just ever- lastingly worked." As a result he made good mines out of bad ones. Dur ing the two years he spent there he made a big reputation in Australian and London mining circles. It was realized that his limit was "the limit of the possible." At this time a Chinaman formed a cabinet in China that decided to effect "a coordinated control of all the mines of the empire." There was established a Department of Mines with Chang Yen Mow at its head. He knew that his fellow-countrymen knew little about mining, so he decided to get a foreigner to assist him in managing the mines of the empire. He wanted his "Director General of the Mines" to know much about mines and to be honest. He asked the firm for which Hoover worked to recommend such a man. They recommended Hoover. The place was offered to him and he accepted. In two weeks after he had received the offer he was on his way to London to make a report to his employers and to get information regarding his new work. He spent two weeks in Lon- don, eight days crossing the Atlantic, two days in New York, five crossing the continent to California. He felt the time had now come to marry the girl, Lou Henry, he had for four years desired for his wife. On Friday, February 10, 1899, they were married at noon in Monterey. At two o'clock they left for San Francisco. At twelve noon on Saturday they sailed for China and were on the boat one month. For centuries the mines in China had belonged to the Crown and had been leased out. If a lessor put money into modernizing the mine more rent was exacted. The mining laws and methods used were very primitive. Hoover "plunged into the work of ex- amining and planning and codifying with the zeal of a naturalist in an un- explored jungle." He examined by day and studied the mining laws of all

HERBERT HOOVER 219 times and all places at night. He sent for experts who had worked with him before in America and Australia and who were devoted to "the Chief" as they called him. The Boxer Uprising compelled Hoo ver to organize a military defense to protect his wife, his home and his em ployees. He and his wife and their Caucasian helpers could have gotten out if he had been willing to desert his Chinese helpers. As his wife would not leave him, they stayed through the siege of Tientsin. While in China he did a great deal of work as consulting engineer and later as general manager of the "Chi- nese Engineering and Mining Com- pany." He built a railway, developed cement works, handled a fleet of steam- ers and built a harbor to give coal a proper outlet. He superintended the work of about twenty thousand men. In 1902 he returned to London. He was now a junior partner in the Eng- lish firm under whose direction he had gone to Australia. As he was the firm's chief engineer and field expert he trav- eled extensively. During one of his stays in the great capital he discovered a defalcation. A man connected with the firm had lost in speculation more than a million dol- lars which he had obtained from the company's friends and clients by issu- ing and selling false stocks. While the firm could not be held technically re- sponsible, Hoover announced that they would make the defalcation good. He thus lost his personal fortune and had a long and difficult struggle to keep the firm in business. After four years' struggle ending with success, he sev- ered his connection with the firm in 1908. He was now thirty-four and was rated as the best consulting mining engineer in the world. He soon went to South Australia and undertook a big constructive piece of work in connection with the build- ing of the Broken Hill Mines, in the great Stony Desert between four and five hundred miles north of Adelaide. The conditions for living and working around these mines were terrible. He rehabilitated two or three abandoned mines and made them profitable. A factor of this success was the origina- tion and development of a process for extracting zinc from ores previously treated for other metals and that had been thrown away as useless. Four- teen million tons of such residue were in the dumps of the Broken Hill Mines. He introduced new processes for han- dling low-grade sulphide ores. He here demonstrated one of his beliefs; viz . that the backbone of mining rests in handling large quantities of low-grade ores, thus making mining a certain, stable business and taking it from the realm of speculation. All this he did in seven months. He returned to London and gath- ered together thirty-five or forty skilled young mining engineers. He became chief consulting engineer for a large number of mining comp_nies. Any- thing he was connected with gave in- vestors confidence in its honesty and success. Two of his largest under- takings were at Kyshtim, Russia, in the Urals, and at Irtish, near Manchuria. His work at Kyshtim shows his en- gineering genius, his social nature, his humane instincts and his idealism and democracy. These mines had for years been the richest producers of their kind in the world. They were con- ducted by old methods, became run down and labor was paid only a pit- tance. Hoover made a thorough ex- amination. He advised that the plant be scrapped, that the miners and their families be moved to a site nearer the source of the ore, and that there a mod- ern plant be built. "First of all he would have nothing to do with a mine whose workers were housed like dogs in tumble-down shacks surrounded by filth and ugliness, deprived of all com- forts and conveniences. Secondly, it was simpler to start new works on modern principles than to spend time and money tryin^ to modernize the old. * * * His plan was to spend

220 IMPROVEMENT ERA several millions. First, to build a house, with shower bath and sanitary plumbing for every man and wife con- nected with the mine. Second, to build new mine buildings and install new machinery. Then to pay every work- man a real wage for his work." His plan was carried out. He brought new life and happiness to the people. He built 350 miles of railroad. Door knobs, steel rails and steamboats were manufactured. Just as the property- was on a paying basis war broke out, so the money invested will probably never be retrieved. One of the best known Russian women in the United States said in 1921. "Why. away back in 1912. I could have told you who was the great American. We in Rus- sia knew all about him from what he had done at Kyshtim. The mines there were the first lesson we had in what American democracy means — in the things that America stands for, in op- portunity and fair dealing, and decent living and hope for the common man. The America of our dreams meant just Herbert Hoover to us Russians." Under his supervision many large undertakings were operated in Colo- rado, Mexico, Korea, the Malay Straits Settlements, South Africa and India. In India he achieved his greatest at- tainment in mining. He developed the greatest silver-lead mines in the world. This took five years. It was necessarv to build eight miles of railroad through a jungle and over two mountain ranges Thirty thousand men were employed. (To be Continued) "Peace Be Unto You" There is power in words and they should be used with great care. The Lord tells us: "For by thy words thou shalt be justified and by thy words thou shalt be condemned." (Matt. 12:37.) Thoughts and words re-act. Alma writes his son Corianton: "That which ye do send out shall return untc you again and be restored." (Alma 41:15.) We should send out good thoughts and predict desirable things for others. At the dedication of the Salt Lake Temple, President Wilford Wodruff said: "If you prophesy anything about this people, prophesy something good." President George Q. Cannon concurred in this statement. An aged lady in trouble talked with a guide on the Temple Block. He was kind to her. Years passed. She came again recently and said: "Ever since you blessed me with peace, I have had peace. Nothing troubles me any- more." The guide does not remember of blessing her with peace, but he fre- quently says, "Peace be unto you." (St. John 20:19). Let us follow his example and say to those who need our encouragement, "Peace be unto you." By sending out peace we receive peace. The way to become happy is to make others happy. "Men are that they might have joy." (2 Nephi 2: 25.) We all should be joy dispensers, making the world happier for our hav- ing lived. A Yale student's motto was: "Look for the best in every person you meet." People are naturally good and we can find things to admire in all our ac- quaintances. When we say encourag- ing, helpful, appreciative words, we brighten their lives and our own like- wise.— Joseph S. Peery.