Both of my girls enjoy fiction, in particular historical fiction. Their mother is still holding out a bit, preferring the true events which inspire the stories Julie and Emily read.
“New World Coming: The Roaring Twenties and the Making of Modern America” is my commuter book this year. The UIL Social Studies topic covers this remarkable decade, so my investment in this book is both work and leisure.
Nathan Miller’s reflections on the rise of Herbert Clark Hoover to winning the 1928 Presidential election has been particularly interesting. Hoover’s historic legacy remains, for the most part, his presidency during the stock market crash and subsequent Great Depression. The great irony of his administration’s failure to manage the fallout of those times stands is a personal takeaway after reading and listening to Miller’s 2004 publication.
Hoover’s strong Quaker faith was both an altruistic motivator that led him to solve hunger problems in war-torn Europe during the World War I and the years following. That same faith impeded him during our own country’s greatest economic crisis.
Hoover leaned on the tenets of “belief in the power of the individual, the importance of freedom, and the value of conscientious work and charity” (University of Virginia, Miller Center). How could such noble qualities prevent his presidency from succeeding?
As Hoover had pulled himself up by his bootstraps (an orphan by eight and separated from his siblings to live across the country in Oregon with family), he believed all individuals in a free country such as the United States had the innate power to overcome adversity with hard work. And when charity needed to be dispersed, it should come from cooperative donations of those obliged to help because of their own good fortune.
Before becoming president, Hoover was known as the Great Humanitarian for the work he did during the Wilson administration. Before the days of the Internet, cell phones, or overseas air travel, Hoover efficiently put together a successful plan to feed ten million people in war-torn Europe, particularly Belgium—a country that Germany had obliterated on its way to France.
When the stock market crashed in 1929, leading to the Depression, President Hoover’s belief in the power of the individual to overcome was misguided. Many wealthy patrons had lost their fortunes and could not be tapped to provide humanitarian relief. Shortages, an impacted labor market, bank closures, and fear on a grand scale were beyond charity. Hoover made some attempts with the President’s Organization for Unemployment Relief, but in many ways he did not realize the magnitude of this crisis needed more than voluntarism and cooperation across many sectors. The government had a role to play, and Hoover backed away from that necessity.
This book bears witness to our 31st President’s work ethic, resiliency, engineering skill, integrity, and desire to make a difference. Still, his story will never not include the failings during his four-year-term in office.
Historical nonfiction, when written with keen research and objective eyes as Miller has done, will almost always be a mirror into our own stories: the good, the bad and, hopefully, the noble: Hoover accepted the chance to again do humanitarian food relief work after the Second World War. He lived to the age of 90.
Snyder, Texas, native Sue Jane Sullivan is a retired schoolteacher whose thought-provoking commentary appears occasionally in several West texas newspapers, including The Texas Spur and The Caprock Courier.
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