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Herbert Hoover

• Herbert Clark Hoover (August 10, 1874 – October 20, 1964) was
the 31st President of the United States (1929–1933).
• Hoover was a professional mining engineer and author.
• As the United States Secretary of Commerce in the 1920s under
Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, he promoted
government intervention under the rubric "economic modernization".
• In the presidential election of 1928, Hoover easily won the Republican
nomination, despite having no previous elected office experience.
• To date, Hoover is the last cabinet secretary to be directly elected
President of the United States, as well as one of only two Presidents
(along with William Howard Taft) to have been elected President
without electoral experience or high military rank.
• The nation was prosperous and optimistic at the time, leading to a
landslide victory for Hoover over Democrat Al Smith.
• Hoover, a trained engineer, deeply believed in the Efficiency
Movement, which held that government and the economy were riddled
with inefficiency and waste, and could be improved by experts who
could identify the problems and solve them.
• When the Wall Street Crash of 1929 struck less than eight months after
he took office, Hoover tried to combat the ensuing Great
Depression with volunteer efforts, none of which produced economic
recovery during his term.
• The consensus among historians is that Hoover's defeat in the 1932
election was caused primarily by failure to end the downward
economic spiral.
• As a result of these factors, Hoover is ranked somewhat poorly among
former US Presidents.
• Hoover was born on August 10, 1874, in West Branch, Iowa.
• He was the first president born west of the Mississippi River, and
remains the only Iowan President.
• His father Jesse Hoover was a blacksmith and farm implement store
owner who was of German (Pfautz, Wehmeyer) and German-Swiss
(Huber, Burkhart) descent.
• Herbert's mother, Hulda (Minthorn) Hoover, was born
in Norwich, Ontario, Canada of English and Irish (probably Scots-Irish)
descent.
• Both were Quakers.
• His father died in 1880, and his mother in 1884, leaving Hoover an
orphan at the age of nine.
• After a brief stay with one of his grandmothers in Kingsley, Iowa,
Herbert lived for the next 18 months with his uncle Allen Hoover in
West Branch. In November 1885, he went to live in Newberg,
Oregon with his uncle John Minthorn, whose own son had died the year
before.
• For two and a half years, Herbert attended Friends Pacific Academy
(now George Fox University), then subsequently worked as an office
assistant in his uncle's real estate office in Salem.
• Though he did not attend high school, the young Hoover attended
night school and learned bookkeeping, typing, and math.
• Hoover entered Stanford University in 1891, the first year of the new
California college.
• None of the first students were required to pay tuition.
• Hoover claimed to be the first student ever at Stanford, by virtue of
having been the first person in the first class to sleep in the dormitory.
• While at the university he was the student manager of both the
baseball and football teams, and was a part of the inaugural Big
Game versus rivalCalifornia (Stanford won).
• In one game in 1894, as manager of the baseball team, Hoover found
the receipts were short.
• He went after the person who had failed to pay the twenty-five cents,
former President Benjamin Harrison.
• Later in life, Hoover called his encounter with Harrison, "his first time
with greatness". Hoover graduated in 1895 with a degree in geology.

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