Herbert Hoover

Herbert Clark Hoover was a mining engineer, humanitarian, administrator, and the 31st President of the United States (1929-1933).

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• Nor are liberal ideals alone sufficient: Ours is a practical people, to whom ideals furnish the theory of political action, upon which they want not only firm assurance, but also effective practice. They want programmes, but they want action to flow from them. They want constructive common sense. They want the development of the common will, not the views of a single individual. They are beginning to realize that words without action are the assassins of idealism. On the other side, they are equally disgusted with seeking for power by destructive criticism, demagoguery, specious promises and sham.
  • Excerpt from a statement to the New York Tribune concerning the 1920 Presidential campaign (29 April 1920)

• You convey too great a compliment when you say that I have earned the right to the presidential nomination. No man can establish such an obligation upon any part of the American people. My country owes me no debt. It gave me, as it gives every boy and girl, a chance. It gave me schooling, independence of action, opportunity for service and honor. In no other land could a boy from a country village, without inheritance or influential friends, look forward with unbounded hope. My whole life has taught me what America means. I am indebted to my country beyond any human power to repay.
  • Letter to Senator George H. Moses, chairman of the Republican national convention, upon learning of his nomination for president (14 June 1928)

• I have... instituted systematic, voluntary measures of cooperation with the business institutions and with State and municipal authorities to make certain that fundamental businesses of the country shall continue as usual, that wages and therefore consuming power shall not be reduced, and that a special effort shall be made to expand construction work in order to assist in equalizing other deficits in employment... I am convinced that through these measures we have reestablished confidence. Wages should remain stable. A very large degree of industrial unemployment and suffering which would otherwise have occurred has been prevented. Agricultural prices have reflected the returning confidence. The measures taken must be vigorously pursued until normal conditions are restored.
  • State of the Union Address (3 December 1929)

• While the crash only took place six months ago, I am convinced that we have now passed the worst and with continuity of effort we shall rapidly recover.
  • Address to the United States Chamber of Commerce (1 May 1930)

• The American people are doing their job today. They should be given a chance to show whether they wish to preserve the principles of individual and local responsibility and mutual self-help before they embark on what I believe to be a disastrous system. I feel sure they will succeed if given the opportunity.
  • Press statement (3 February 1931)

• Let me remind you that credit is the lifeblood of business, the lifeblood of prices and jobs.
  • Address at Des Moines, Iowa, (4 October 1932)

• If, by the grace of God, we have passed the worst of this storm, the future months will be easy. If we shall be called upon to endure more of this period, we must gird ourselves for even greater effort, for today we are writing the introduction to the future history of civilization in America. The question is whether that history shall be written in terms of individual responsibility, and the capacity of the Nation for voluntary cooperative action, or whether it shall be written in terms of futile attempt to cure poverty by the enactment of law, instead of the maintained and protected initiative of our people.
  • Address to the Gridiron Club (27 April 1931)

• A good many things go around in the dark besides Santa Claus.
  • Address to the John Marshall Republican Club, St. Louis, Missouri (16 December 1935)

• Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt.
  • Address to the Nebraska Republican Conference, Lincoln, Nebraska (16 January 1936)

• Older men declare war. But it is youth that must fight and die. And it is youth who must inherit the tribulation, the sorrow and the triumphs that are the aftermath of war.
  • Speech in Chicago, Illinois to the 23rd Republican national convention (27 June 1944)

• What this country needs is a great poem. John Brown’s Body was a step in the right direction. I’ve read it once, and I’m reading it again. But it’s too long to do what I mean. You can’t thrill people in 300 pages... The limit is about 300 words. Kipling’s “Recessional” really did something to England when it was published. It helped them through a bad time. Let me know if you find any great poems lying around.
  • To Christopher Morley, quoted in Saturday Review Treasury (1957)

• The thing I enjoyed most were visits from children. They did not want public office.
  • On his years in the White House, in On Growing Up: Letters to American Boys and Girls (1962)

• Being a politician is a poor profession. Being a public servant is a noble one.
  • On Growing Up: Letters to American Boys & Girls (1962); also quoted in Herbert Hoover On Growing Up: Letters from and to American Children (1990) edited by Timothy Walch

• Honor is not the exclusive property of any political party.
  • Quoted in Christian Science Monitor (21 May 1964)

• When there is a lack of honor in government, the morals of the whole people are poisoned.
  • Quoted in the New York Times (9 August 1964)

• Many years ago, I concluded that a few hair shirts were part of the mental wardrobe of every man. The president differs from other men in that he has a more extensive wardrobe.
  • Quoted in the New York Times (17 October 1964)

• About the time we can make the ends meet, somebody moves the ends.
  • Quoted in obituaries (20 October 1964)

• I outlived the bastards.
  • When asked how he dealt with people who blamed him for the Great Depression, quoted in The Court Years 1939-75 (1980) by William O. Douglas

• I’m the only person of distinction who’s ever had a depression named for him.
  • Quoted in An Uncommon Man (1984) by Richard Norton Smith

The New Day: Campaign Speeches of Herbert Hoover (1928)

• Our country has deliberately undertaken a great social and economic experiment, noble in motive and far-reaching in purpose.
  • On Prohibition

• With impressive proof on all sides of magnificent progress, no one can rightly deny the fundamental correctness of our economic system.

• The swimming hole is still in use. It has the same mudbank. It is still impossible to dress without carrying mud home in one’s inner garments. As an engineer I could devise improvements for that swimming hole. But I doubt if the decrease in mother’s grief at the homecoming of muddy boys would compensate the inherent joys of getting muddy.

• More than ten million women march to work every morning side by side with the men. Steadily the importance of women is gaining not only in the routine tasks of industry but in executive responsibility. I include also the woman who stays at home as the guardian of the welfare of the family. She is a partner in the job and wages. Women constitute a part of our industrial achievement.

• The ancient bitter opposition to improved methods on the ancient theory that it more than temporarily deprives men of employment... has no place in the gospel of American progress.

• I, with other Americans, have perhaps unduly resented the stream of criticism of American life... more particularly have I resented the sneers at Main Street. For I have known that in the cottages that lay behind the street rested the strength of our national character.

• In my public statements I have earnestly urged that there rested upon government many responsibilities which affect the moral and spiritual welfare of our people. The participation of women in elections has produced a keener realization of the importance of these questions and has contributed to higher national ideals. Moreover, it is through them that our national ideals are ingrained in our children.

Speech accepting the Republican Party Presidential nomination, Stanford University (11 August 1928)

• One of the oldest and perhaps the noblest of human aspirations has been the abolition of poverty. By poverty I mean the grinding by undernourishment, cold and ignorance and fear of old age of those who have the will to work. We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land. The poorhouse is vanishing from among us. We have not yet reached the goal, but given a chance to go forward with the policies of the last eight years, and [sic] we shall soon with the help of God be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this Nation. There is no guarantee against poverty equal to a job for every man. That is the primary purpose of the economic policies we advocate.

Campaign speech in New York (22 October 1928)

• Bureaucracy is ever desirous of spreading its influence and its power. You cannot extend the mastery of the government over the daily working life of a people without at the same time making it the master of the people's souls and thoughts. Every expansion of government in business means that government in order to protect itself from the political consequences of its errors and wrongs is driven irresistibly without peace to greater and greater control of the nation's press and platform. Free speech does not live many hours after free industry and free commerce die.

• Liberalism should be found not striving to spread bureaucracy but striving to set bounds to it. True liberalism seeks all legitimate freedom first in the confident belief that without such freedom the pursuit of all other blessings and benefits is vain. That belief is the foundation of all American progress, political as well as economic.

• The American people from bitter experience have a rightful fear that great business units might be used to dominate our industrial life and by illegal and unethical practices destroy equality of opportunity...

• Our people are steadily increasing their spending for higher standards of living. Today there are almost nine automobiles for each ten families, where seven and one-half years ago only enough automobiles were running to average less than four for each ten families. The slogan of progress is changing from the full dinner pail to the full garage. Our people have more to eat, better things to wear, and better homes.

• Wages have increased, the cost of living has decreased. The job of every man and woman has been made more secure. We have in this short period decreased the fear of poverty, the fear of unemployment, the fear of old age; and these fears that are the greatest calamities of human kind.

• My conception of America is a land where men and women may walk in ordered freedom in the independent conduct of their occupations; where they may enjoy the advantages of wealth, not concentrated in the hands of the few but spread through the lives of all; where they build and safeguard their homes, and give to their children the fullest advantages and opportunities of American life; where every man shall be respected in the faith that his conscience and his heart direct him to follow; where a contented and happy people, secure in their liberties, free from poverty and fear, shall have the leisure and impulse to seek a fuller life.
  Some may ask where all this may lead beyond mere material progress. It leads to a release of the energies of men and women from the dull drudgery of life to a wider vision and a higher hope. It leads to the opportunity for greater and greater service, not alone from man in our own land, but from our country to the whole world. It leads to an America, healthy in body, healthy in spirit, unfettered, youthful, eager — with a vision searching beyond the farthest horizons, with an open mind, sympathetic and generous.

Hoover Off the Record (1934)

Quotations from Hoover Off the Record (1934) by Theodore G. Joslin

• So far as the personal side is concerned, the victory was to him who lost and the defeat to him who won. I can say that never in the last fifteen years have I had the peace of mind that I have since the election. I have almost a feeling of elation.
  • On losing the presidency to Franklin Delano Roosevelt

• The President is not only the leader of a party, he is the President of the whole people. He must interpret the conscience of America. He must guide his conduct by the idealism of our people.

• This is not a showman’s job. I will not step out of character.

• Prosperity cannot be restored by raids upon the public Treasury.

The Hoover Policies (1937)

The Hoover Policies (1937) by Ray Lyman Wilbur and Arthur N. Hyde

• It does not follow, because our difficulties are stupendous, because there are some souls timorous enough to doubt the validity and effectiveness of our ideals and our system, that we must turn to a state controlled or state directed social or economic system in order to cure our troubles.

• No country can squander itself to prosperity on the ruin of its taxpayers.

• As a nation we must prevent hunger and cold to those of our people who are in honest difficulties.

• The basis of successful relief in national distress is to mobilize and organize the infinite number of agencies of self help in the community. That has been the American way.

• I am willing to pledge myself that if the time should ever come that the voluntary agencies of the country together with the local and state governments are unable to find resources with which to prevent hunger and suffering ... I will ask the aid of every resource of the Federal Government.... I have the faith in the American people that such a day will not come.

• Our tasks are definite. The first to see that no man, woman, or child shall go hungry or unsheltered through the approaching winter.
  The second is to see that our great benevolent agencies for character building, for hospitalization, for care of children and all their vast number of agencies of voluntary solicitude for the less fortunate are maintained in full strength.
  The third is to maintain the bedrock principle of our liberties by the full mobilization of individual and local resources and responsibilities.
  The fourth is that we may maintain the spiritual impulses in our people for generous giving and generous service—in the spirit that each is his brother’s keeper.

• Reports to the Surgeon General... represent the final word upon the efficient and devoted sense of responsibility of our people in this obligation to our fellow citizens. Overwhelmingly they confirm the fact that the general mortality rate, infant mortality rate, epidemics, the disease rate—are less than in normal times. There is but one explanation. That is, that through an aroused sense of public responsibility, those in destitution and their children are receiving actually more adequate care than even in normal times.

The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: Years of Adventure, 1874-1929 (1951)

• [Engineering] is a great profession. There is the fascination of watching a figment of the imagination emerge through the aid of science to a plan on paper. Then it moves to realization in stone or metal or energy. Then it brings jobs and homes to men. Then it elevates the standards of living and adds to the comforts of life. That is the engineer’s high privilege.
  
  The great liability of the engineer compared to men of other professions is that his works are out in the open where all can see them. His acts, step by step, are in hard substance. He cannot bury his mistakes in the grave like the doctors. He cannot argue them into thin air or blame the judge like the lawyers. He cannot, like the architects, cover his failures with trees and vines. He cannot, like the politicians, screen his shortcomings by blaming his opponents and hope that the people will forget. The engineer simply cannot deny that he did it. If his works do not work, he is damned. That is the phantasmagoria that haunts his nights and dogs his days. He comes from the job at the end of the day resolved to calculate it again. He wakes in the night in a cold sweat and puts something on paper that looks silly in the morning. All day he shivers at the thought of the bugs which will inevitably appear to jolt its smooth consummation.
  
  On the other hand, unlike the doctor his is not a life among the weak. Unlike the soldier, destruction is not his purpose. Unlike the lawyer, quarrels are not his daily bread. To the engineer falls the job of clothing the bare bones of science with life, comfort, and hope. No doubt as years go by people forget which engineer did it, even if they ever knew. Or some politician puts his name on it. Or they credit it to some promoter who used other people’s money with which to finance it. But the engineer himself looks back at the unending stream of goodness which flows from his successes with satisfactions that few professions may know. And the verdict of his fellow professionals is all the accolades he wants.
  • Excerpted from Chapter 11 "The Profession of Engineering"

The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: The Great Depression, 1929-1941 (1952)

• Every collectivist revolution rides in on a Trojan horse of "Emergency". It was a tactic of Lenin, Hitler and Mussolini... The invasion of New Deal Collectivism was introduced by this same Trojan horse.

• The recognition of Russia on November 16, 1933, started forces which were to have considerable influence in the attempt to collectivize the United States.

Herbert Hoover, 1874-1964 (1971)

Herbert Hoover, 1874-1964: Chronology - Documents - Bibliographical Aids (1971) Edited by Arnold S. Rice

• Economic depression can not be cured by legislative action or executive pronouncement.

• I would emphasize again that social and economic solutions, as such, will not avail to satisfy the aspirations of the people unless they conform with the traditions of our race, deeply grooved in their sentiments through a century and a half of struggle for ideals of life that are rooted in religion and fed from purely spiritual springs.

• I am firmly opposed to the government entering into any business the major purpose of which is competition with our citizens... for the Federal Government deliberately to go out to build up and expand... a power and manufacturing business is to break down the initiative and enterprise of the American people; it is the destruction of equality of opportunity amongst our people, it is the negation of the ideals upon which our civilization has been based.
  • On vetoing the "Muscle Shoals Bill" which was the seed for the later creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority

• In no nation are the institutions of progress more advanced. In no nation are the fruits of accomplishment more secure. In no nation is the government more worthy of respect. No country is more loved by its people. I have an abiding faith in their capacity, integrity and high purpose. I have no fears for the future of our country. It is bright with hope.

• In the larger view the major forces of the depression now lie outside of the United States, and our recuperation has been retarded by the unwarranted degree of fear and apprehension created by these outside forces.