Ya know, Herbert Hoover once
stayed here on this floor. The vacuum guy? No, the President. I’m Mr. Beat
Not to be confused with Herbert Hoover, who this video is about. (turns) As I’ve said before in previous videos, I
think Hoover was a horrible President, and odds are, what little YOU know about him revolves
around him being a bad President as well. (turns) But he was only President for 3.6% of his life, and in that other 97.4%, (Squirrel-
It’s 96.4%!) So what about the other 97.4%? (Squirrel- 96.4%) He accomplished quite
a bit and overcame tremendous odds. You see, I’m secretly hoping (turns)
That this video will change your opinion about Herbert Hoover forever. -Childhood- Herbert Hoover was born on August 10, 1874 in the
small town of West Branch, Iowa. He was the second of three children…the middle child…of Jesse
and Hulda Hoover. Jesse, Herbert’s dad, was a blacksmith who gave that up to open up
a tractor store. Herbert’s mom, Hulda, who was originally from Canada, raised the family but was
also apparently a pretty darn good seamstress. Hulda and Jesse were devout Quakers, members
of a type of Protestant Christianity united by a belief that God can be found in everyone.
The Hoover family undoubtedly valued hard work, generosity, and simplicity. I’m standing in front of Herbert Hoover’s
childhood home. He spent the first 11 years of his life in this house, a very tiny, modest house.
Which was well before the Tiny House Movement, I might add. Look how small this house is. He lived
in this house with his parents and two siblings. Despite his modest upbringing, Hoover always
had very fond memories of his childhood. He may have had fond memories, but dang, I imagine
he also had some pretty terrible memories, too. When Herbert was two, he died. Well, he
almost died. He had stopped breathing while suffering from croup, but his uncle, John
Minthorn, resuscitated him. When Herbert was six, his father suddenly died from a heart attack. This
left Hulda to take care of Herbert and his two siblings on a very meager income. She was able
to scrap money together to survive and provide the kids an education, thanks not only to Jesse’s
insurance he left behind, but also because of her sewing and her basically turning her small home
into an Airbnb. She also became a Quaker minister, even traveling throughout Iowa to preach.
On one such trip, Hulda got sick and never got better. She died from typhoid fever
on February 9, 1884, at the age of 35. Herbert, who was only 9 at the time, was now an orphan.
He ended up separated from his siblings and they lived with different family members. For a year
and a half, Herbert lived with his aunt and uncle, Millie and Allen Hoover, at a farm just
outside West Branch. However, in November 1885, he moved way across the country to live with his
uncle, John Minthorn in Newberg, Oregon. Yep, the same uncle who saved his life. Minthorn, his
wife, Laura, and their family had moved from Iowa to Oregon a year before after their own son had
died. And they indeed took Herbert in like a son. And now I’m standing in front of
Herbert’s aunt and uncle’s house, the home where Hoover lived during
his tween and some of his teen years. Hoover had a hard time adjusting
out here, to say the least. Minthorn was particularly strict with him and
demanded excellence. Minthorn made sure Herbert was educated, enrolling him at the Friends Pacific
Academy. Hoover struggled there both socially and academically, failing pretty much all subjects
except for math. He dropped out at the age of 13, but Minthorn was like, “if you’re not gonna
go to school, you’re gonna work for me.” The young Herbert became an office assistant for
Minthorn’s real estate company in nearby Salem. Over the next few years, he quite enjoyed making
money while learning bookkeeping and typing. Herbert did continue going to school at
night learning more advanced mathematics. And then one day, he found out about this brand
new magical college opening up called Stanford University, located in the beautiful town
of Palo Alto (paw low al tow), California. Well Herbert got in, despite failing
all of his entrance exams except mathematics. He was also a mediocre student
at Stanford, but it was there that he became passionate about geology after working all
over the country for John Casper Branner, the head of the university’s geology department.
Hoover ended up getting a degree in geology, as part of the first class to graduate after
four full years at Stanford. It was also in Stanford’s geology department where
Herbert fell in love. He met Lou Henry, a fellow geology major and the school’s
only female geology major at the time. -There’s gold in them there hills- After Hoover graduated, he sadly left Lou as she
had to finish up school and he had to find work. He had barely made any money while in college,
and found job prospects slim due to the United States being in an economic recession. He finally
found work in the gold mines of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California, but the hours were long
and the pay low. Soon he found work as a mine scout, or someone who goes around and finds
potentially profitable places to dig for gold. In 1897, Hoover got a HUGE break after the
London-based firm Bewick, Moreing, & Company hired him as an engineer for their gold mines
in Western Australia. His salary? $5,000 a year, which is like $170,000 a year in today’s money.
Pretty, pretty good. That said, it was rough work. It was out in the middle of nowhere in the Great
Victoria Desert under bleak conditions. All this time, though, he never stopped staying in
touch with Lou. One day soon after Lou had graduated from Stanford herself in 1898, Hoover
sent her a marriage proposal via telegraph. She wired him back “heck yeah I’ll marry
you,” or something along the lines of that. Hoover made Bewick, Moreing & Company
a lot of money. Like a lot, a lot a lot First of all, he convinced the firm to invest
in some very profitable gold mines. This led to Bewick, Moreing controlling around half of ALL
gold production in Western Australia. But he also made them money as a seemingly ruthless
capitalist. He brought in a bunch of Italian immigrants to work those mines since they
worked for far less wages than the local, unionized workers. He also fought the
minimum wage and worker’s compensation. Oof, not a good look there, Hoover. But
because he made all this money for the firm, they promoted him to be a partner and
sent him to develop gold mines in China. Herbert first made the long trip back to
California. He and Lou married on February 10, 1899. Literally the next day they sailed from
San Francisco to Shanghai, China, then settling in a big house in Tianjin, which was the nearest
big city near the gold mines. While living there, Hoover completely immersed himself with
Chinese culture. He learned Chinese history and attempted to become fluent in Chinese.
Lou became quite fluent herself. Despite this, Herbert unfortunately ALSO learned
how to be racist toward the Chinese, claiming they were bad workers
and “racially inferior.” Despite the racist beliefs, he did
call for reforms for Chinese workers. He might have been influenced by the ongoing
Boxer Rebellion, an anti-foreigner, anti-colonial uprising of the locals that put the Hoovers’ lives
in danger until military forces defeated them in the Battle of Tientsin. In late 1901, Hoover
was promoted again, this time to the operating partner of Bewick, Moreing, & Company. In this
position, he traveled the globe multiple times to various gold mines that needed extra help,
and Lou almost always came along with him. When they weren’t traveling the entire planet,
they were in London. That’s where their two sons were born. There was Herbert Hoover, Jr., born
in 1903 and Allan Hoover, born in 1907. And yep, they traveled with their dad on his work trips
as well. But the travel was wearing Hoover down. Plus, Bewick, Moreing had gotten into
some legal troubles, so Hoover wanted out. In 1908, he sold all his shares in the firm
and became an independent mining consultant and money handler, still based out of London.
Hoover specialized in helping troubled mining operations, earning a reputation by this time as
a “doctor of sick mines.” In the following years, he made investments on literally every continent
and had offices in San Francisco, New York City, Paris, Petrograd, and even Mandalay, in modern-day
Myanmar. He helped start the Zinc Corporation, a company which mined…wait for it…zinc. You
knew that already, didn’t you? He also worked with companies that mined silver, copper,
and lead. In his spare time, he wrote books and gave lectures sharing what he had learned
in the mining industry. Universities published his lectures. In 1912, Herbert and Lou made the
first English translation of De Re Metallica, no not that Metallica…yes that one…which is
an important book about everything metals. By 1914, Hoover was a very wealthy man,
worth around $119 million in today’s money. Throughout his travels, he had
also become acutely aware of the extreme wealth inequality around the world, and had
notably changed his views on workers rights. He now came to realize the extreme importance of unions and called for an eight-hour work
day. He even supported Teddy Roosevelt’s third-party presidential run in the
epic presidential election of 1912. He also figured by this time that he had
earned enough money, it’s time to give back. So he dedicated the rest of
his life to public service. -Going Public- One week before Hoover’s 40th birthday, World
War One broke out. Still living in London, the United States government asked him
and other prominent American businessmen living in Europe to help evacuate the more
than 120,000 Americans trapped on the continent during the war. After Germany invaded Belgium,
Hoover pooled his money with other wealthy friends to organize the Commission for Relief in Belgium,
or CRB. Without any support whatsoever from any government, Hoover raised millions to provide
food and medicine for those trapped in Belgium. Not only that, Hoover worked 14-hour days out
of London overseeing the distribution of more than TWO MILLION TONS OF FOOD TO NINE MILLION
WAR VICTIMS HOLY WOWZA. He crossed the North Sea 40 times to meet with German leaders there to
persuade them to allow food shipments. Impressed with what the CRB was doing, the French government
asked Hoover for help, and Hoover was like “Heck yeah players”, sending lots of
food and medicine to German-occupied Northern France. Later, the journalist and
diplomat Walter Page would describe Hoover as “probably the only man living who has
privately (i.e., without holding office) negotiated understandings with the British,
French, German, Dutch, and Belgian governments.” After the United States entered the war in
1917, President Woodrow Wilson (Wilson!) asked Hoover to run the United States Food
Administration, and Hoover ran it LIKE A BOSS. Instead of rationing, Hoover
called for set days for people to avoid eating certain foods to save
those foods for American soldiers. For example, he’s a big reason why
“Meatless Mondays” became a thing. -The Great Humanitarian- By the end of the war, Herbert Hoover was a
household name. He actually didn’t care for the newfound fame, though. Oh, and by
this time, he and his family had moved back to the United States, having places
in both Washington, D.C. and Palo Alto. President Wilson even brought Hoover to Versailles
for peace negotiations after the war and made him the director general of the American Relief
Administration, an organization created to end widespread famine that had happened in
Europe due to the war. As director general, he even gave aid to Soviet Russia. After a
critic accused him of helping Communists, Hoover responded “Twenty million people
are starving. Whatever their politics, they shall be fed!” Altogether in
that position, Hoover got 34 million tons of American food and supplies to people in
20 war-torn countries. Pretty impressive stuff. Due to his popularity, both the Democratic
Party and Republican Party tried to get him to run for President in the election of 1920.
Hoover decided to join the Republican Party, mostly since he figured they had a better shot at
winning, but many Republicans didn’t want him as their nominee since he had been so loyal to the
Democrat Wilson. Instead, they nominated Ohio U.S. Senator Warren Harding, but after Harding
won the election, he made Hoover his Secretary of Commerce. Hoover was so good at the job that
he arguably caused the Department of Commerce to become as powerful of a government agency as the
Department of State. Contrary to popular belief, Hoover called for the government to be MORE hands
on when it came to the economy. He supported more government regulations on stuff like airplanes and
radio, getting radio stations shut down if they were “non-useful” to the public. He convinced a
wide range of industries to all adopt standardized tools. He also got standardized rules for cars
on roads in order to reduce traffic accidents. That all said, he favored businesses working the
federal government VOLUNTARILY, not by force. And he WAS able to unite all kinds of business
leaders who normally wouldn’t give each other the time of day. He also, more than anything,
made it clear that the goal was to make markets more efficient, and therefore any government
intervention was mainly to get rid of waste, yo. After Harding died while in office and
Calvin Coolidge became President in 1923, he was so impressed with Hoover that he
kept him as the Secretary of Commerce. In my opinion, the most impressive thing
Hoover did as the Secretary of Commerce was not in his job description. After
the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 displaced some 1.5 million people from their
homes, Hoover oversaw the creation of more than 100 tent cities and got more than 600
ships sent to the victims. Not only that, but he somehow managed to raise more than
$270 million in today’s money for victims. Hands down, he was the most effective
Secretary of Commerce the United States has ever had. (turns) Due to that, after Calvin
Cooldige awkwardly announced he would not be seeking re-election, Hoover was the frontrunner
to win the presidential election of 1928. The Republican Party did select Hoover as their
candidate, with Senate Majority Leader Charles Curtis as his running mate. At Hoover’s nomination
acceptance speech, he said, "We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than
ever before in the history of this land... We shall soon with the help of God be in sight of the
day when poverty will be banished from this land.” Uh….yeah man. Little did he
know (Little Did He Know clip) Hoover easily defeated his main opponent, Democrat
Al Smith, the governor of New York. I mean, he DOMINATED. In one of the most lopsided
presidential victories in American history, Hoover got 444 electoral votes and even won states that hadn’t voted for the Republican
candidate in more than 50 years. Hoover had hoped to govern in the progressive
tradition of, believe it or not, Theodore Roosevelt, and things started off great….but
little did he know (little did he know clip) -From Hero to Villain- Similar to when he was Secretary of Commerce, his
goal was improving public-private cooperation, which he called “volunteerism.”
While he was cool with the government influencing business, again
he wanted it to be voluntary. The first concern President Hoover
had was millions of farmers….uh…not making money anymore. To fight this, he
signed the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1929, the first big bill he signed as a matter of fact.
The new law’s goal was to stabilize farm prices by having the federal government simply buy up
a bunch of crops. Unfortunately the law was kind of a failure, as the government couldn’t keep
up with buying all the extra crops farmers had. Regarding growing concerns of extreme wealth
inequality and too much speculation on Wall Street, eh Hoover kind of just ignored that.
And then, what became known as Black Thursday. Oh, and Black Tuesday. October 24, 1929, aka Black Thursday, and October
29,1929, aka Black Tuesday, are two days in which the largest stock market crash in American
history took place, and boy did people freak out! Hoover tried to put a positive spin on it, but
privately he also freaked out a bit. He met with both business and labor leaders, asking
them to avoid wage cuts and worker strikes, hoping this would be a quick recession like
the one that happened between 1920 and 1921. He did what he could to make loans easier
to get. However, by 1930, things were not looking any better. Prices and profits were
falling fast. The Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, was shrinking. Stocks continued
to fall. Unemployment was skyrocketing. But it is a myth that Hoover did nothing to respond to what became known as The Great
Depression. He actually did quite a bit. (turns) The problem was, almost everything he did
didn’t help or even made things worse. First of all, he had a hard time
communicating with Congress trying to pass effective legislation and he had a hard
time communicating with the general public when trying to ease anxieties. The worst law Hoover
signed was arguably the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which was supposed to encourage people to buy
American-made stuff by placing tariffs and thus increasing the cost of imported stuff, including
imported crops. Instead, it led to trading partners retaliating by raising THEIR tariff
rates and ultimately froze international trade, causing companies’ sales to drop everywhere.
Hoover, buddy, what were you thinking? Soon after the law passed, the banks began
to fail. By the end of 1930, 300 had failed and $550 million of deposits were GONE. Poof. By
the end of 1931, nearly 2,300 banks had failed, along with $1.7 billion in deposits. By then, bank
runs were a regular thing. A bank run is a panic in which depositors pull all their money out of
the bank all at once out of fear they might lose ALL of their deposited money if the bank fails. Of
course, this only made the problem freaking worse. Millions of Americans became homeless as they lost
everything. Thousands of them built shanty towns, and critics of Hoover called them “Hoovervilles”
to blame the depression squarely on him. To most Americans, Hoover seemed apathetic
and didn’t do enough. It’s understandable why. When a bill came to his desk to sign that
would give direct federal lending to Americans, he vetoed it, afraid Americans would
become dependent on the government. But again, Hoover DID try to do THINGS
to help people out during the depression. It’s just that much of what he did failed. In an attempt to prevent more banks from failing
and make it easier to loan money out, he created the National Credit Corporation, a voluntary
association of bankers to help each other out, but the organization was extremely ineffective.
After that didn’t work, he called for the creation of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation,
or RFC, that effectively bailed out banks. Congress approved the RFC’s creation, and while
it did prevent several businesses from failing, it didn’t increase banks lending
to Americans like Hoover had hoped. Not only that, Hoover was fixated on keeping
a balanced budget and staying on the gold standard. Today, many economists agree that
if Hoover just approved deficit spending, then Americans could have been saved
from the worst effects of the Depression, but Hoover was too worried about
inflation. Oh, deficit spending just means the government spends borrowed
money instead of money it got from taxes. By the end of his Presidency, he began to
say “screw it, maybe we should dabble in some deficit spending.” He signed the Emergency
Relief and Construction Act, which set aside $2 billion for public works, and he was a big
reason why the Glass–Steagall Act later passed, which separated commercial and investment banking,
but by that time it was too late. Unemployment was 25%. The Dow Jones Industrial Index,
a stock market of huge American companies, had gone down 89%. Bread lines like this
were a common scene. People were suffering. And of course, even though the President
doesn’t have much control over the economy, Hoover got blamed for all the devastation. To add
to his negative image was what became known as the Bonus Army. The Bonus Army was a group
of thousands of starving World War One veterans who marched on Washington, D.C.
in the summer of 1932, demanding an early cash redemption of their service bonus
certificates for fighting in the war. They camped on the National Mall and clashed
with local police, refusing to leave until they got their promised money early. And how did
Hoover’s administration respond? By removing all the veterans off all government land and
burning all their shelters and belongings. No one knows what Hoover’s approval rating was
in 1932, because pollsters didn’t exist back then like they do today, but it couldn’t
have been high at all. Despite this, Hoover was like “I think I’m gonna run for
re-election anyway.” Most Republicans didn’t want to even bother running anyone against Hoover
for the nomination because they knew their party was doomed. In the presidential election of
1932, Hoover got destroyed. His opponent, Franklin Roosevelt, received the
highest percentage of the popular vote ever for a Democratic Party nominee. Hoover
got just 59 electoral votes. Interestingly, Hoover’s last moves in office were sort of a
preview of Roosevelt’s later New Deal measures. Hoover went from being one of the most popular
men in the country to the least popular. Bitter about his loss and how
the country had turned on him, Hoover retired to his Palo Alto home. He and Lou
lived there until her death from a heart attack in 1944. For the rest of his life after that,
Hoover lived permanently at the luxurious Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York City. Between 1933
and 1953, he was the only living ex-president, and he stayed very active. Believe it or not, he
actually hoped to possibly run for re-election, but his popularity wasn’t so good for the rest of
the decade. He spent much of his time leading his public policy organization known as The Hoover
Institution, which he had started back in 1919. Today, it’s one of the most influential
public policy organizations in the world. Most people don’t know that during a 1938 trip
to Europe, Hoover met with the German dictator Adolf Hitler and told him he didn’t appreciate how
Jewish people were being treated in his country. Take that, Hitler. That said, Hoover
opposed getting involved after Hitler invaded neighboring countries in Europe and thus
starting World War Two. After the war ended, Hoover became friends with President Harry Truman,
despite Hoover by this time identifying as a conservative who disagreed with most of Truman’s
policies. In 1946, Truman picked Hoover to tour Allied-occupied Germany and Italy to take
care of the food needs of victims of the war. Once again, this was Hoover’s time to shine. His school meals program in Germany
fed more than 3.5 million children. By the end of the 1940s, Hoover’s popularity
was going back up, and the New York Governor Thomas Dewey even offered him a Senate seat, but
it would have been for only two months so Hoover declined it. Still, Hoover remained politically
active for the rest of his life and was at every Republican National Convention. When Hoover made
public appearances, he often made fun of himself, often regarding his association with the
Great Depression. He wrote several books, most of which criticized the New Deal policies of
Roosevelt. After John F. Kennedy became President, he offered Hoover many positions, but
Hoover, now in his late 80s, declined. Hoover would outlive even Kennedy,
becoming only the second former President up to that point to reach the age
of 90, but he died soon after that, on October 20, 1964. The official cause of
his death was massive internal bleeding. -Legacy- Hoover’s historical reputation
never fully recovered. Even today, the Great Depression and
Hoover’s name are often synonymous. But again, despite his mistakes
reacting to the Depression, Hoover was only in office four short
years. And while most historians view him as one of the worst Presidents in
American history, those same historians often acknowledge he was an amazing humanitarian
and the best Secretary of Commerce ever. He single handedly saved millions and millions
of lives. How many Presidents can say that? In my opinion, we should remember Hoover
not just for being a crappy President, but for feeding the world. The fact is, few human beings have EVER
existed that had as positive of impact as Herbert Hoover. That’s a pretty crazy
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this information in the description buddy so i plan on doing a video biography of every single
president in american history at some point so far i've done herbert hoover obviously george
washington james polk and franklin pierce next up i'm thinking about doing either bill clinton
or dwight eisenhower so i kind of want to just leave it up to you which one should i do next bill
clinton or dwight eisenhower let me know in the comments and i'll try to go to their presidential
library to make the video thanks for watching
