Herbert C. Hoover
Herbert Hoover
Master of famine relief and the 31st president, broken by the Great Depression
'Twenty million people are starving. Whatever their politics, they shall be fed!', Hoover's reply when asked whether feeding Russia would not help Bolshevism.
A mining engineer who made a vast fortune, Hoover built his public fame on famine relief across two world wars before becoming the 31st president of the United States in 1929. During the First World War he headed the Commission for Relief in Belgium and the U.S. Food Administration ('food czar') in feeding millions, and after the war he refashioned the American Relief Administration (ARA) into a private body directing relief across Eastern Europe and Russia. When famine struck the Volga in 1921 he answered Gorky's appeal at once and personally drove the Riga agreement, securing the ARA's autonomy in distribution and Soviet gold payments and feeding more than ten million people a day at the operation's peak. He struggled as president amid the Great Depression but remained active in retirement, chairing reform commissions for the Truman and Eisenhower administrations.
Career timeline
- 1874Born into a Quaker family in West Branch, Iowa
- 1895Graduated from Stanford; made a fortune as a mining engineer in China, Australia and beyond
- 1914–1919Chairman of the Commission for Relief in Belgium, feeding occupied Belgium
- 1917–1919Director of the U.S. Food Administration, celebrated as the 'food czar'
- 1919–1923Director of the American Relief Administration, leading relief in Eastern Europe and Russia
- 1921.08.20Conclusion of the Riga agreement, setting the terms of Volga famine relief
- 1921–1928Secretary of Commerce
- 1929–193331st president; lost reelection amid the Great Depression