[Transcriber's Note:The following inconsistent or typographical errors were corrected:

Page 27: to-day corrected to todayPage 63: type-writer corrected to typewriterPage 67: Hooved corrected to HooverPage 85: Pekin corrected to PekingPage 150: praccally corrected to practicallyPage 169: frans corrected to francsPage 331: progresively corrected to progressivelyPage 364: necessary corrected to necessity]

HERBERT HOOVERTHE MAN AND HIS WORK

BYVERNON KELLOGGAUTHOR OF "HEADQUARTERS NIGHTS, " ETC. 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANYNEW YORK LONDON1920

COPYRIGHT, 1920, BYD. APPLETON AND COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

DEDICATEDTO MY COMPANIONS OF THEC. R. B. 

PREFACE

No man can have reached the position in the public eye, can have hadsuch influence in the councils of our own government and in the fate ofother governments, can have been so conspicuously effective in publicservice as has Herbert Hoover, without exciting a wide public interestin his personality, his fundamental attitude toward his great problemsand his methods of solving them. This American, who has had to live inthe whole world and yet has remained more truly and representativelyAmerican than many of us who have never crossed an ocean or nationalboundary line, is an object of absorbing interest today among the peopleof his native land. He is hardly less interesting to millions in otherlands. He has carried the American point of view, the American manner, the American qualities of heart and mind to the far corners of theearth. He has no less revealed again, as other great Americans have donebefore him, these American attributes to America itself. 

Many questions are being asked about the life and experiences of thisman before he entered upon his outstanding public service and about thedetails of his personal participation in the work of the great wartimeprivate and governmental organizations under his direction. 

This book is the attempt of an observer, associate and friend to tell, simply and straightforwardly, the personal story of the man and his workup to the present. 

V. K. 

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

PREFACE vii

I. CHILDREN 1

II. THE CHILD AND BOY 10

III. THE UNIVERSITY 31

IV. THE YOUNG MINING ENGINEER 59

V. IN CHINA 80

VI. LONDON AND THE REST OF THE WORLD 102

VII. THE WAR: THE MAN AND HIS FIRST SERVICE 124

VIII. THE RELIEF OF BELGIUM; ORGANIZATION AND DIPLOMATIC DIFFICULTIES 140

IX. THE RELIEF OF BELGIUM; SCOPE AND METHODS 165

X. AMERICAN FOOD ADMINISTRATION; PRINCIPLES, CONSERVATION, CONTROL OF EXPORTS 199

XI. AMERICAN FOOD ADMINISTRATION; GENERAL REGULATION; CONTROL OF WHEAT AND PORK, ORGANIZATION IN THE STATES 225

XII. AMERICAN RELIEF ADMINISTRATION 256

 APPENDICES

 APPENDIX I 283

 APPENDIX II 291

 APPENDIX III 311

 APPENDIX IV 334

CHAPTER I

CHILDREN

It was a great day for the children of Warsaw. It was a great day fortheir parents, too, and for all the people and for the PolishGovernment. But it was especially the great day of the children. The manwhose name they all knew as well as their own, but whose face they hadnever seen, and whose voice they had never heard, had come to Warsaw. And they were all to see him and he was to see them. 

He had not announced his coming, which was a strange and upsetting thingfor the government and military and city officials whose business it isto arrange all the grand receptions and the brilliant parades forvisiting guests to whom the Government and all the people wish to dohonor. And there was no man in the world to whom the Poles could wish todo more honor than to this uncrowned simple American citizen whose namewas for them the synonym of savior. 

For what was their new freedom worth if they could not be alive to enjoyit? And their being alive was to them all so plainly due to the heartand brain and energy and achievement of this extraordinary American, whosat always somewhere far away in Paris, and pulled the strings thatmoved the diplomats and the money and the ships and the men who helpedhim manage the details, and converted all of the activities of these menand all of these things into food for Warsaw--and for all Poland. It wasfood that the people of Warsaw and all Poland simply had to have to keepalive, and it was food that they simply could not get for themselves. They all knew that. The name of another great American spelled freedomfor them; the name Herbert Hoover spelled life to them. 

So it was no wonder that the high officials of the Polish Government andcapital city were in a state of great excitement when the news suddenlycame that the man whom they had so often urged to come to Poland wasreally moving swiftly on from Prague to Warsaw. 

Ever since soon after Armistice Day he had sat in Paris, directing withunremitting effort and absolute devotion the task of getting food to themouths of the hungry people of all the newly liberated but helplesscountries of Eastern Europe, and above all, to the children of thesecountries, so that the coming generation, on whom the future of thesestruggling peoples depended, should be kept alive and strong. And now hewas preparing to return to his own country and his own children to takeup again the course of his life as a simple American citizen at home. 

But before going he wanted to see for himself, if only by the mostfleeting of glimpses, that the people of Poland and Bohemia and Serviaand all the rest were really being fed. And especially did he want tosee that the children were alive and strong. 

When he came to Paris in November, 1918, at the request of the Presidentof the United States, to organize the relief of the newly liberatedpeoples of Eastern Europe, terrible tales were brought to him of thesuffering and wholesale deaths of the children of these ravaged lands. And when those of us who went to Poland for him in January, 1919, tofind out the exact condition and the actual food needs of thetwenty-five million freed people there, made our report to him, a singleunpremeditated sentence in this report seemed most to catch his eyes andhold his attention. It did more: it wetted his eyes and led to a specialconcentration of his efforts on behalf of the suffering children. Thissentence was: "We see very few children playing in the streets ofWarsaw. " Why were they not playing? The answer was simple andsufficient: The children of Warsaw were not strong enough to play in thestreets. They could not run; many could not walk; some could not evenstand up. Their weak little bodies were bones clothed with skin, but notmuscles. They simply could not play. 

So in all the excitement of the few hours possible to the citizens ofWarsaw and the Government officials of Poland to make hurriedpreparation to honor their guest and show him their gratitude, one thingthey decided to do, which was the best thing for the happiness of theirguest they could possibly have done. They decided to show him that thechildren of Warsaw could now walk!

So seventy thousand boys and girls were summoned hastily from theschools. They came with the very tin cups and pannikins from which theyhad just had their special meal of the day, served at noon in all theschools and special children's canteens, thanks to the charity ofAmerica, as organized and directed by Hoover, and they carried theirlittle paper napkins, stamped with the flag of the United States, whichthey could wave over their heads. And on an old race-track of Warsaw, these thousands of restored children marched from mid-afternoon tilldark in happy, never-ending files past the grand stand where sat the manwho had saved them, surrounded by the heads of Government and thenotables of Warsaw. 

They marched and marched and cheered and cheered, and waved their littlepans and cups and napkins. And all went by as decorously and in asorderly a fashion as many thousands of happy cheering children could beexpected to, until suddenly from the grass an astonished rabbit leapedout and started down the track. And then five thousand of these childrenbroke from the ranks and dashed madly after him, shouting and laughing. And they caught him and brought him in triumph as a gift to their guest. But they were astonished to see as they gave him their gift, that thisgreat strong man did just what you or I or any other human sort of humanbeing could not have helped doing under like circumstances. They saw himcry. And they would not have understood, if he had tried to explain tothem that he cried because they had proved to him that they could runand play. So he did not try. But the children of Warsaw had no need tobe sorry for him. For he cried because he was glad. 

But the children of Warsaw were not the only children of Poland thatHoover was interested in and wanted to see. His Polish family was alarge and scattered one; there were nearly a million children in italtogether, and some of them were in Lodz and some in Cracow and othersin Brest-Litovsk and Bielostok and even in towns far out on the Easternfrontier near the Polish-Bolshevist fighting lines. But of course hecould not visit all of them, and much less could he hope to visit allthe rest of his whole family in Eastern Europe. For while an especiallylarge part of it was in Poland, other parts were in Finland, Esthonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and some of it was in Czecho-Slovakia and Austria, and other parts were in Hungary, Roumania, and Jugo-Slavia. Altogetherthis large and diverse family of Mr. Hoover's in Eastern Europe numberedat least two and a half million hungry children. And it only asked forhis permission to be still larger. For at least a million more babiesand boys and girls thought they were unfairly excluded from it, becausethey were sure that they were poor and weak and hungry enough to beadmitted, and being very hungry, and not being able to get enough foodany other way, was the test of admission to Mr. Hoover's family. 

When the American Relief Administration, which was the organizationcalled into being under Hoover's direction in response to PresidentWilson's appeal to Congress soon after the armistice, saw that itsgeneral assistance to the new nations could probably be dispensed withby the end of the summer of 1919, the director realized that somespecial help for the children would still be needed. The task of seeingthat the underfed and weak children in all these countries of EasternEurope, extending from the Baltic to the Black Sea, received theirsupplementary daily meals of specially fit and specially prepared food, could not be suddenly dropped by the American workers. There could be noconfidence that the still unstable and struggling governments would beable to carry it on successfully. But with the abolition of the blockadeand the incoming of the year's harvest, and with the growing possibilityof adequate financial help through government and bank loans, thevarious new nations of Eastern Europe could be expected to arrange foran adequate general supply of food for themselves without furtherassistance from the American Relief Administration. 

Just what the nature and methods of this assistance were, and how theone hundred million dollars put into the hands of the ReliefAdministration by Congress were made to serve as the basis for thepurchase and distribution to the hungry countries of over seven hundredmillion dollars' worth of food, with the final return of almost all ofthe original hundred million to the United States Government (if not inactual cash, at least in the form of government obligations), will betold in a later chapter. Also how it was arranged, without calling onthe United States Government for further advances, that the feeding ofthe millions of hungry children of Eastern Europe could go on as it isnow actually going on every day under Hoover's direction, until the timearrives, some time this summer, when it can be wholly taken over by thenew governments. 

But just now I want to tell another story. 

CHAPTER II

THE CHILD AND BOY

The account of Mr. Hoover's sympathetic interest in the child sufferersfrom the Great War, and of his active and effective work on theirbehalf, makes one wonder about his own childhood. He is not so old thathis childhood days could have been darkened by the one war which didmean suffering to many American children, especially those of the South. He was not born in the South, nor of parents actually afflicted bypoverty, and did not spend his early days in any of the comparativelyfew places in America, such as the congested great city quarters andindustrial agglomerations of poor and ignorant foreign working-people, where real child distress is common; so he certainly did not, as agrowing child, have his ears filled with tales of child suffering, orwith the actual crying of hungry children. 

There was one outstanding fact, however, in his relations as a child tothe world and to the people most closely about him, which may have hadits influence in making him especially susceptible to the sight of childmisfortune. This is the fact that he, like many of his later wards inEurope, was orphaned at an early age. But he was by no means a neglectedorphan. So I hardly think that his own personal experience as an orphanis a sufficient explanation of the passionate interest in the specialfate of the children, which he displayed from the beginning of the warto its end. 

Nor can the explanation lie in the coldly reasoned conclusion that themost valuable relief to a people so stricken by catastrophe that itsvery existence as a human group is threatened, is to let whatevermortality is unavoidable fall chiefly to the old and the adult infirmfor the sake of saving the next generation on which alone the futureexistence of the group depends. This actual fact Hoover always clearlysaw; but the thing that those close to him saw quite as clearly was thatthis alone accounted for but a small part of his intensive attention tothe children. 

It is, then, neither any sad experience in his own life, nor anysociologic or biologic understanding of the hard facts of humanexistence and racial persistence, that does much to explain hisparticular devotion to the health and comfort of the millions ofsuffering children in Europe. The explanation lies simply, althoughmysteriously, in his own personality. I say mysteriously, for, despiteall the wonderful new knowledge of heredity that we have gained sincethe beginning of the twentieth century, the way by which any of us comesto be just the sort of man he is is still mostly mystery. Herbert Hooveris simply a kind of man who, when brought by circumstances face to facewith the distress of a people, is especially deeply touched by thedistress of the children, and is impelled by this to use all of hisintelligence and energy to relieve this distress. What we can know ofhis inheritance and early environment may indeed reveal a littlesomething of why he is this kind of man. But it certainly will notreveal the whole explanation. 

Herbert Hoover, or, to give him for once his full name, Herbert ClarkHoover, was born on August 10, 1874, in a small Quaker community ofIowa which composed, at the time of his birth, most of the village ofWest Branch in that state. That is, he usually says that he was born onAugust 10, but sometimes he says that this important day was August 11. He seems to slide his birthday back and forth to suit the convenience ofhis family when they wish to celebrate it. He does this on the basis ofthe fact that when, in the midst of the general family excitement in themiddle of the night of August 10-11, one of the busy Quaker auntspresent bethought herself, for the sake of getting things straight inthe family Bible, to say: "Oh, doctor, just how long ago was it thatbaby was born?" she got the following answer, "Just as near an hour agoas I can guess it. " Thereupon she looked at the clock on the wall, andthe doctor looked at his watch, and both found it exactly one o'clock ofan important new morning!

Herbert's Quaker father, Jesse Clark Hoover, died in 1880, and hisQuaker mother, Hulda Minthorn, in 1884. The father had had the simpleeducation of a small Quaker college and was, at the time of Herbert'sbirth, the "village blacksmith, " to give him the convenient title usedby the town and country people about. But really he was of thatambitious type of blacksmith, not uncommon in the Middle West, whoseshop not only does the repairing of the farm machines and householdappliances, but manufactures various homely metal things, and does alittle selling of agricultural implements on the side. Jesse Hoover'smind was rather full of ideas about possible "improvements" on themachines he repaired and sold. And his two sons, Herbert and Theodore, and Herbert's two sons, Herbert, Jr. , and Allan, are all rather given tothe same "inventiveness" about the home. 

Hulda Randall Minthorn Hoover, Herbert's mother, was a woman of unusualmental gifts. After her husband's death she gave much attention tochurch work, and became a recognized "preacher" at Quaker meetings. Inthis capacity she revealed so much power of expression and exhortationthat she was in much demand. Her death, in 1884, came from typhoidfever. Those who knew her speak of her "personality. " They say that shehad color and attractiveness, although she was unusually shy andreserved. One can say exactly the same things of her son Herbert. 

The immediate Hoover ancestry is Quaker. The more remote is Quaker mixedwith Dutch and French Huguenot. The Dutch name was spelled with an _e_instead of the second _o_. All of Herbert's grandparents were Quakers, and the Quaker records run back a long time. One of the family branchesruns into Canada, with the story of a migration there of a group ofrefugees from the American colonies during the Revolution. Theseemigrants came from prosperous farms in Pennsylvania, but while theywanted to be free from England's control, they could not, as Quakers, agree to fight for this freedom. So as the neighbors were inclined to bea little "unpleasant" about this, and as Canada was just then offeringfree farms to colonists, they packed up their movables and _trekked_north. 

Another Canadian branch, French Huguenot in origin, has traditions ofhurried removals from France into Holland before St. Bartholomew'sNight, and of later escapes into the same country. But all finallydecided that Europe anywhere was impossible, and hence they determinedon a wholesale emigration to Canada. Here by chance they settled downside by side with the little Quaker group which had come fromPennsylvania. Close association and intermarrying resulted in theQuakerizing of the European Huguenots--their beliefs were essentiallysimilar, anyway--so in time all the descendants of this double Canadianline were Quakers. 

There were two other children in Jesse and Hulda Hoover's family: one aboy, Theodore, three and a half years older than Herbert, and the othera girl, Mary, who was very much younger. Theodore, like his youngerbrother, became a mining engineer, and after a dozen years ofprofessional and business experience with mines all over the world--partof the time in connection with mining interests directed by hisbrother--is now the head of the graduate department of miningengineering in Stanford University. 

After the father's and mother's death, the three Hoover orphans cameunder the kindly care of various Quaker aunts and uncles, and especiallyat first of Grandmother Minthorn. This good grandmother took specialcharge of little Mary, and pretty soon carried her with her out toOregon, where she had a son and daughter living. There had been a littleproperty left when the father died, enough to provide a very slenderincome for each child. But if the dollars were few the kind relativeswere not, and the little Hoovers never suffered from hunger. 

These relatives were not limited to Iowa, and the boy Herbert soon foundhimself in a new and strange environment, surrounded by a different raceof human beings, whose red-brown skin and fantastic trappings greatlyexcited his boyish wonder and imagination. For he was sent to live withhis Uncle Laban Miles, U. S. Government Indian Agent for the Osage tribein the Indian Territory, who was one of the many Quakers who haddedicated their lives to the cause of the Indians at that time. HereHerbert spent a happy six or eight months, playing with some littlecousins and learning to know the original Americans. For when otherpastimes palled there were always the strange and wonderful red peopleto watch and wonder about. 

But his life among the original Americans was interrupted by thesolicitous aunts and uncles, who, realizing that an abundance ofbarbarians and a paucity of schools might not be the best ofsurroundings for a child coming to its first years of understanding, decided on bringing him back into a more civilized and Quakerishenvironment; at least one less marked by tomahawks, bows and arrows, andother tangible suggestions of a most un-Quakerish manner of life. 

So he was sent back to Iowa, where he lived for two very happy years inthe home of Uncle Allan Hoover. To this uncle, and to his wife, AuntMillie, the impressionable boy became strongly attached. And there weresome energetic young cousins always on hand to play with. The olderbrother Theodore, or Tad, was living at this time with another uncle, aprosperous Iowa farmer, also much loved by both of the boys. He livednear enough to permit frequent playings together of the two, and onanother farm, with Grandmother Minthorn, was still the baby sister Mary, who was, however, too young to be much of a playmate for the brothers. Indeed, the country all around bristled with the kindly uncles and auntsand other relatives and playmates, all interested in making lifecomfortable and happy for the little orphans. 

There was also an especially attractive little black-eyed girl, MildredBrook, who lived on a near-by farm, who later went to the same Quakeracademy at Oskaloosa as Theodore, and is now Mrs. Theodore Hoover. Inthose days she was known as "Mildred of the berry-patches, " as all thechildren for miles around associated her in their minds with theluxuriant vines on the farm of her Uncle Bransome with whom she lived. Her home was the children's Mecca in the berry season. 

Herbert Hoover's memories of those days are filled with lively incidentsand boyish farm adventure. There was the young calf, mutual property ofhimself and a cousin of like age, which was fitted out with a boy-madeharness and trained to work, eventually getting out of hand in a cornfield and dragging the single-shovel cultivator wildly across and alongrows of tender growing grain. Later the calf was restored to favor whenit was triumphantly attached to a boy-made sorghum mill, which actuallyworked, and pressed out the sweet juice from the sorghum cane. 

Winter had its special joys of skates and sled; spring came withmaple-sugaring, and summer with its long days filled with a thousandenterprises. There were fish in the creek which you might catch if youcould sit still long enough, without too violent wiggling of the hookwhen the float gave its first faint indications of a bite. It was twomiles to school, and most of the time the children had to walk. But thatwas only good for them, and there was, of course, a good deal ofchurchgoing and daily family prayers, but there were always convenientlaps for tired little heads--being in church was the necessary thing, not being awake in church. 

It was a joyous and wholesome two years, the kind that thousands ofMississippi Valley farms have given to hundreds of thousands of Americanlittle boys; the kind that gives them a good start in health andhappiness towards a sturdy and simple adolescent life. But the time hadcome for young Herbert to learn new surroundings. For some reason, apparently not clearly remembered now, it was decided by the consultinguncles and aunts that young Herbert should go to Oregon, and join theHoover and Minthorn relatives there. Perhaps, even probably, it wasbecause of the presumably superior educational advantages of Oregon inthe existence of the Newberg Pacific Academy that led to the decision. We may imagine that Herbert uttered no affirmative vote in the conclavethat decided on his departure from the Iowa farm, and when he once gotout to the superior place, he was less than ever in favor of theproceeding. But the conscientious uncles and aunts were inexorable asthe Fates. 

They meant to be the kindest of Fates, of course. They knew that theyknew so much better than the little boy what was best for him. Andprobably they did. But this little pawn on the chessboard of life, movedabout with ever so excellent intention by firm and confident hands, musthave thought sometimes that he would have liked to have some little partin deciding these moves. But if one starts as pawn, one must find theway as pawn clear across the board to the king row before one can cometo the higher estate of the nobler pieces. 

The actual going from Iowa to far-away Oregon was not so unbearable, because of the excitement of the tremendous journey and the actual funof it. It was not made, to be sure, as Herbert would have preferred it, in a long train of picturesque prairie schooners, drawn up in a circleeach night to repel attacking Indians, as his storybooks described alltranscontinental journeys; but in an overfull tourist-car on therailroad. Herbert's most vivid memories of the week's journey are of thewonderful lunch baskets and boxes filled with fried chicken, boiledhams, roast meats, countless pies and layer-cakes, caraway-seed cookies, and great red apples. Herbert Hoover had no food troubles in thosedays!

Arrived in Oregon he found himself in the family of Uncle John Minthorn, his mother's brother, a country doctor of Newberg, and the principal ofthe superior educational institution. Uncle John did not live on a farm, but on the edge of a small town, which was a mistake, according toHerbert's way of looking at it. And the Pacific Academy of Newberg, Oregon, could not be compared in interest with the district villageschool of West Branch, Iowa. 

After two or three years of life with Dr. John, young Herbert was handedover to the care of a Grandfather Miles, for Dr. John decided to give upcountry doctoring in order to go into the land business "down in Salem, "the capital city. Therefore, as little Herbert's schooling in theacademy which he was attending all the time he was living with Dr. John, could not be interrupted, he was placed in the home of this GrandfatherMiles on a farm just on the edge of the academy town. 

Herbert's life with Grandfather Miles does not seem to have been a veryhappy one, for the old gentleman did not believe in spoiling littleboys by too much kindness. There were many chores to do before and afterschool, and little time for playing. And the chores just had to be done, and not be forgotten as they sometimes were. Probably this strictness ofdiscipline was a good thing for the small boy. But, like other smallboys, he did not like it. So, also, like many other small boys, hedecided to run away. 

Running away may not be the exclusive prerogative of young Americans, but some way it is hard for me to picture European boys of fourteengoing off on their own. And yet perhaps they do. At any rate it is sucha favorite procedure with us that hardly one of us--I mean by us, American males--has not had a try at it or connived at some neighbor'sson trying it. My own experience was only that of a conniver. Aschoolmate of thirteen, whose father believed in a more vigorous methodof correcting wayward sons than my father did, ran away from his houseto as far as our house. There my brother and I secreted him in aclothes-closet for the nearly three hours of freedom that he enjoyed inhalf-smothered state. Then the stern father came over, discovered himand haled him away to proper discipline. I shall never forget the howlsof the captured fugitive, nor the triumphant and accusing remark to us, shouted by the terrible capturer as he dragged off his victim: "Now yesee what liars ye are!" For, of course, we had done our impotent best tothrow the hunter off the track. It was several days before I could lieagain without a violent trembling. 

But Herbert Hoover ran away for keeps. He did not run away to shipbefore the mast or to kill Indians. Nor did he run very far, only toPortland and to Salem, which his geography had already taught him werethe principal city and capital, respectively, of the state of Oregon. And he ran away with the full knowledge and even tolerance of hisrelatives. But he went away to be independent, and to fit himself forthe special kind of college to which he had already decided to go. InSalem he lived again with his Uncle John, helping in the real estatebusiness, but in Portland he lived entirely on his own. 

That part of his reason for running away which was connected withpreparing for a college of his own choosing seems to have come aboutbecause of a difference of opinion that had arisen between young Herbertand his Quaker relatives with regard to the future course of hiseducation. They had taken it quite as a matter of course that from thelittle Quaker academy in Newberg he would go to one of the reputableQuaker colleges of the country. But Herbert had come to a different ideaabout this matter of further education, and, as is characteristic ofhim, this idea had led to a decision, and the decision was on the rapidway to lead to action. In other words, Herbert had made up his mind thathe wanted to study science, and for that purpose wanted to fit himselffor and go to a modern scientific university. Also, he wanted to be, just as soon as he possibly could, on an independent financial footing. He probably did not express these wishes, in his boy's vocabulary, byany such large mouthful of phrases; he probably said to himself, "I wantto earn my own living, and go to a university where I can learnscience. "

Just what led him to the decision about the modern university andscience is not easy for the grown-up Herbert Hoover of today to tell. But he is pretty sure that a large part of this determination came fromthe casual visit of a man whom he had never seen before and has neverseen or heard of since, but who was an old friend of his father. 

This man, on his way through the town to look at a mine he ownedsomewhere in eastern Oregon, dropped off at Newberg so that he might seethe little son of his Iowa friend. He was a "mining man, " and, from theimpression that Mr. Hoover still has of him, probably a mining engineer. He stayed at the local hotel for two or three days, and saw what hecould of young Herbert between school-hours and chore-times. Hisconversation was apparently mostly about the difference in the work andachievements in the world of the man who had a profession and the onewho had not. It was illustrated, because the speaker was a miner, byexamples in the field of mining. The talk also was much aboutengineering in general and about just what training it was necessary fora boy to have in order to become a good engineer, with much emphasisput on the part in this training which was to be got from a university. He also explained the difference between a university and a smallacademy-college. 

And then the man went on to his mine. He invited the fascinated boy togo with him for a little visit, but permission for this was notobtained. The trails of this man and Herbert Hoover have never touchedagain, and yet this stray mining engineer, whose name, even, we do notknow, almost certainly was more responsible than any other externalinfluence in determining Hoover's later education and adoptedprofession. 

In Portland Herbert got a job in a real estate office as usefulboy-of-all-work, including particularly the driving of prospectivepurchasers about to see various alluring corner lots in town andinviting farmsteads in the surrounding country. For his work he receivedsufficient wages to pay for all of his very modest living. He had hopedto go to the high school to prepare himself for college, but found thathe could not do this and earn his full wages at the same time. So asthe wages were a first necessity, he gave up his high-school plans anddevoted himself to study at nights and odd hours of the day. Hediscovered a little back room in the real-estate office half filled withold boxes and bags, of which no one else seemed to be aware, and this hefitted up with a bed, a little table and a lamp, and made of it, with aboy's enthusiasm--especially the enthusiasm of a boy who had knownIndians--a secret cave in which he lived in a mysterious and excitingway. He slipped out to little restaurants and cheap boarding-places forhis meals. 

He remembers once standing fascinated before a sign that read: "Tabled'hôte, 75 cents"; but after thinking twice of indulging in a singlegreat eating orgy, he decided that no human stomach, much less his ownsmall one, could possibly hold all the food that seventy-five centswould pay for, and that therefore he could not get all of his money'sworth. So he went on to some fairer bargain. 

There was a bank-vault just across the alley from his secret back roomin the real estate office, and many a night did young Herbert lie awakein his cave hearing his imaginary bank-robbers mining their way into thevault and escaping with much rich treasure. But mostly young Herbertstudied in that secret cave of his, and that he studied hard and to goodpurpose is proved by the fact that in little more than two years he felthimself ready to attempt the entrance examinations for college. 

CHAPTER III

THE UNIVERSITY

For some time the newspapers had been full of accounts of the foundingand approaching opening of Stanford University at Palo Alto, California. Soon after Leland Stanford, Jr. , the only child of Senator and Mrs. Leland Stanford, died in Rome in 1884, the Stanfords announced theirintention to found and endow with their great wealth a new university inCalifornia. The romantic character of the founding and the picturesquesetting of the new university in the middle of a great ranch on theshores of lower San Francisco Bay, with the foothills of the Santa CruzMountains rising from its very campus, its generous provision forstudents unable to meet the expenses of the older institutions of theEast, and the radical academic innovations and freedom of selection ofstudies decided on by the Stanfords and David Starr Jordan, the eminentscientific man selected to be the first president of the newuniversity--all this, together with the evident strong leaning of theinstitution toward science, as revealed by the character of thepresident, faculty and curriculum, combined to assure young Hoover thatthis was the modern scientific university of his dream, just made toorder for him. It was exactly the place where he could become a miningengineer like the wonderful man he had always remembered. 

So when it was announced in the Portland papers that a professor fromStanford would visit the city in the early summer of 1891, to holdentrance examinations for the university, which was to open in theautumn, Herbert decided to try the examinations. But when he came tocompare thoughtfully his store of knowledge with the publishedrequirements he would have to meet, he found that his self-preparationhad been rather one-sided. For in this preparation he had followed hisinclinations more than the prescribed schedules of college entrancerequirements. Why should one waste a lot of time, he had thought, andbe bored during the wasting, by studying grammar if one could alreadytalk intelligibly to people? And why should one not revel in complicatedproblems of figures and geometrical designs that really took some hardthinking to work out, if hard thinking was just what one liked to do?

So, much to his distress he found out, as the examinations went on, thathe was decidedly unprepared in some of the required lines such asgrammar, rhetoric, etc. And even in mathematics, his favorite study andthe one in which he made his best showing, he had not been able tocover, in his limited time for study, the whole ground required forcollege entrance. He seemed doomed to be refused the coveted certificateof admission. 

But the Fates worked for him. In the first place, Professor Swain, theexamining professor--now president of Swarthmore College--was the headof Stanford's department of mathematics. In the second place, he was aQuaker, and a man who liked the right sort of boys. And so a candidatewho was a little weak in the languages, but was strong in arithmeticand geometry--and was a brave Quaker boy, besides--was not to be toosummarily turned down. 

This kind and wise examiner has described to me, recently, how he wasfirst attracted to the young Quaker in the group of candidates beforehim by his evident strength of will. "I observed, " said President Swain, "that he put his teeth together with great decision, and his whole faceand posture showed his determination to pass the examination at anycost. He was evidently summoning every pound of energy he possessed toanswer correctly the questions before him. I was naturally interested inhim. On inquiry I learned that he had studied only two books of PlaneGeometry, and was trying to solve an original problem based on thefourth book. While he was unable to do this, he did much better; for theintelligence and superior will he revealed in the attempt convinced methat such a boy needed only to be given a chance. So although he couldnot pass all of the tests, I told him to come to my rooms at the hotelafter the examinations, as I would like to talk with him. He camepromptly at the appointed hour with a friend of his, the son of a bankerin Salem, Oregon. The two boys invited me and Mrs. Swain to stop atSalem to visit them, which we did. I learned there that Herbert Hoover, for that was the boy's name, was an industrious, thoughtful, ambitiousboy earning his own living while he studied. "

All this was enough for the wise teacher. And an arrangement wasmutually agreed on between examiner and examined to the effect that ifyoung Hoover would work diligently for the rest of the summer on theliterary necessities of the situation, and come on early to Stanford fora little special coaching, he might consider his probabilities foradmission to the university so high as to be reckoned a sure thing. 

Well, it all turned out as desired by both candidate and examiner. AndHerbert Hoover was enrolled the following October among the firststudents, the "pioneer class" of Stanford University, and was actuallythe first Stanford student to inhabit the beautiful great new dormitorycalled Encina Hall. It was not only his university of dreams come true, but it was really to be the university of his graduation, the _almamater_ of a boy without any other mother. And it was the university ofwhich he was to become, in later successful years, a patron and trustee. Stanford did much for Herbert Hoover; but so has he done much forStanford. 

Any university means many things, for all their lives, to those who havecome timidly and wonderingly to its doors as boys and girls, and havegone out on that final day of happy reward and tearful good-byes as menand women eager to try themselves against the world outside of shelteredschool-rooms. And most of these things are to most persons who haveknown them, things of pleasant and loving memory. 

Stanford is like any other university in this relation to its graduates. But there seems to be something unusually strong and yet at the sametime unusually intangible in the ties that bind its former students toit. Perhaps the explanation lies as much in the special character of itsstudents, at least its pioneer ones, as in the special character of theinstitution itself. The students who came to Stanford in its earlieryears came because it was different from other colleges, and becausethey did this it is likely that they themselves were different fromother students. Like the restless, seeking pioneers that came over thedesert and mountains to the Pacific Coast to find a different life fromthat of worn tradition and old ways, their descendants and the latercoming youth, who had mixed with them and been infected by their seekingspirit, flocked to this institution that offered a different kind ofcollege atmosphere. 

Its low-arcaded quadrangle of mission buildings of yellow stone andheavy red tiles, nestling under high hills that run back to mountains, surrounded by wide grain fields flecked with rounded live-oaks and tallstrange eucalyptus trees, and neighbored by great barns and well-keptpaddocks and exercising tracks in which sleek trotting horses of famousPalo Alto breeding lounged or trained, was a strange new setting forstudying Greek and Latin and mathematics and science. 

"_Die Luft der Freiheit weht_" is the Stanford motto; and there wastruly no more likely place for the winds of freedom to blow than overand through this college on a California ranch. And its founders didwell to find for its first head a man than whom no other Americanscholar had given clearer indications of being anxious to break withclogging scholastic tradition. 

The university itself, so tenderly conceived as a memorial to a boy lostto his parents, and so generously established as an opportunity forother boys, some of whom, like the hero of our story, might have hadtheir parents lost to them, is an almost unique example of a greateducational institution maintained by the fortune of a single family. All of the Stanford millions are returned today to the country in whichthey were accumulated in the form of a great endowment and of thebeautiful halls in which thousands of students have found a freetraining for independent existence and right citizenship. These studentswear the Stanford cardinal as a red badge of obligation, not anarchy. Noother college in the country had more of its sons and daughters, inproportion to their total number, devoting themselves to their country'sservice during the Great War. If Herbert Hoover was the mostdistinguished of the serving sons of Stanford he was not more eager anddevoted than many others. 

But we leave Our Hero waiting too long upon the threshold of his dreamuniversity come true. It had been agreed, you remember, between youngHoover and his friendly examiner in Portland that the candidate foradmission should come to the Stanford Farm--which is the students' namefor the campus, and which literally described it in those beginningdays--before the time of the opening of the university to be coached inthe two or three studies in which his preparation was deficient. 

So he came down from the North a month before the announced time foropening, a lonesome boy without any friends at Stanford except the goodQuaker professor of mathematics, and with all of his savings from the"real estate business" tucked away in an inside pocket. They amountedin grand total to about two hundred dollars. 

It was less simple getting to Stanford in those first days than it isnow. There was not even a beginning then of the beautiful thriving townof Palo Alto that stands today with convenient railway station, just atthe entrance to the long palm-lined avenue that runs straight up to themain university quadrangle. It was all grain field then, part of thegreat Hopkins estate, where now the college town welcomes the annuallyincoming Freshmen, and offers them convenient lodging places of allgrades of comfort and quick trams and motor busses to the university. 

Young Hoover had to get off at Menlo Park, the station for a few greatcountry houses of California railway and bonanza kings, which offered nowelcome for small boys with a few saved dollars in their inside pockets. He had to find a casual hackman to carry him and his bag and trunk tothe university a couple of miles away. But even there he found no placeyet ready to house him. So someone advised him to go to Adelanta Villa, a mile or more back from the university, in the hills, where a numberof the early arrivals among the men of the new faculty were living. Andthere he did go, and found a warm and simple welcome and hospitality. Hewas soon ensconced in the old mansion and doing odd jobs about theestablishment to help pay for his board and lodging. 

Between jobs he was feverishly at work on the finishing touches for hisfinal entrance tests, and probably quite as feverishly worrying aboutthem. He felt pretty safe on everything but the requirements in Englishcomposition. As a matter of fact, when he came to that fearful test heignominiously failed in it, and, indeed, did not finally get therequired credit in it until nearly ready to graduate! But he was passedin enough of the entrance requirements to be given Freshman standing, "conditioned in English, " a phrase not unfamiliar to other collegestudents. He had, however, added something to his score by a Hooverian_tour de force_. 

Noting that a credit was offered in physiology, about which he knewnothing technically, he reasoned that as everyone, of course, knewalready a little something about his insides and how they worked, oneought to be able to find out a little more from some textbook, and thatthe two littles might make enough for passing purposes. Thereupon withthat prompt and positive reaction to stimulus which has beenconspicuously characteristic of him all his life, he got a book, read ithard all of the day and night before the examination--and passed inphysiology!

The story of Herbert Hoover's college life reveals no startling featuresto distinguish it from the college careers of other thousands of boys, endowed with intelligence, energy, and ambition, but not with money, andhence forced to earn their living as they went along. Nevertheless itdoes reveal many of the main characteristics that we know so well today. For he did things all through those four years in the same way that hedoes them today, promptly, positively, and quietly. They were mostlyalready done before it was generally recognized that he was doing them. 

His two hundred dollars could not last long even in a college of notuition fees and an unusually simple student life. He had to earn hisway all the time, and he earned it by hard work, directed, however, bygood brains. Many a story, most interesting but, unfortunately, mostlyuntrue, has been told of his various expedients to earn the moneynecessary for his board and lodging, clothes, and books. Not a few ofthese stress his expertness as waiter in student dining-rooms. Undoubtedly he would have been an expert waiter if he had been a waiterat all. But he was not. A famous San Francisco chef has often beenquoted in interesting detail as to the "hash-slinging" cleverness of thefuture American food controller in the dining-room which this chefmanaged--by the way, just _after_ Hoover left college--in the greatStanford dormitory in those early days. But, though interesting, thesedetails are mythical. As are also the accounts of the care he took ofprofessorial gardens, although that would have been an excellentsubstitute for the outdoor exercise and play which he found little timefor in college except in geological field excursions and camps. Nor washe ever nurse to the professorial babies, which also has been oftenplaced to his credit by imaginative story-tellers. 

For at the very beginning of his college life Herbert Hoover and anotherdistinguished son of Stanford, known to the early students as Rex Wilburand to the present ones as Prex Wilbur--for he is now the university'spresident--put their heads together and decided that if they had anybrains at all in those heads they would make them count in this littlematter of earning their way through college. And both of them did. 

In most of the things that Herbert Hoover did as a college boy to earnhis needed money he revealed an unusual faculty for "organizing" and"administering" which is precisely a faculty that as a man he hasrevealed to the world in highest degree. He organized, at some profit tohimself, the system of collecting and distributing the laundry of thecollege boys which had been done casually and unsatisfactorily byvarious San José and San Francisco establishments. He acted also asimpresario, at a modest commission, for various lecturers andmusicians, developing an arrangement for bringing visiting stars fromSan Francisco to the near-by university. 

More important in its permanent influence on student activities was hiswork in reorganizing the system of conducting general student bodyaffairs, especially the financial side of these affairs. In his Senioryear he had been made treasurer of the student body and on taking officefound little treasure and much confusion. Each of the many studentactivities had its own separate being, its own officers and ownfunds--or debts--and a dangerous freedom from general student control. Hoover worked out a system by which all control was vested in theofficers of the general student body, and all funds passed into and outof a general treasury. The Hoover system of student affairs managementprevails, in its essential features, in the university today. 

In later years, as trustee of the university, he was the initiatingfigure in reorganizing the handling of all the institution's manymillion dollars worth of properties, and so his organizing genius isevidenced today at Stanford both in the management of studentactivities and in the handling of the financial affairs of the wholeuniversity. 

But the work that he did in his student days that paid him best, becauseit brought him more than money, was that which he did partly for, andpartly at the recommendation of his "major" professor, Dr. John CasperBranner, a great geologist and remarkable developer of geologicalstudents. 

Dr. Branner has been one of Stanford's greatest assets from the day ofits opening in all his successive capacities as professor, vice-president, and president, and he still wields a benign influence onthe institution as resident professor and president emeritus. It was theparticular good fortune of young Hoover to find that his early decisionto become a mining engineer, like the wonderful man who had visited himin Newberg, led him, when he came to the university, into theclass-rooms and laboratories of this kind and discerning scholar. Dr. Branner quickly discovered "good material, " something that he was alwayslooking for, in this industrious, intelligent, and ambitious Quakerboy; and Herbert Hoover found in his major professor not only a teacherbut a friend, who, in both relations, has had a great influence, all forthe best, in his life. It is an interesting illumination of thedemocracy of American education to note that while the professor becamethe university's president the student became one of its trustees. 

The first money-earning work that student Hoover did for Dr. Branner, except for various little jobs about the laboratory or office, was asummer's work on a large topographic model of Arkansas which that statewas having prepared by Dr. Branner after a new method devised by him. Part of this summer was spent in the field in Arkansas and the rest ofit wrestling with the model in the basement of the professor's house. 

Two summers were spent in work with the U. S. Geological Survey in theCalifornia Sierras around Lake Tahoe and the American River underWaldemar Lindgren, one of the greatest of American scientific miningengineers. This work was on the relations of the famous Sierra placergold deposits to the original gold-bearing veins and lodes, andresulted in tracing those comparatively recent placers back to the oldmountain slopes and valleys. It was a fascinating problem successfullycarried through. The young geologist's association with Lindgren, whosestandards of personal character and regard for the dignity and ethics ofhis profession were of the highest, was a source of much valuableeducation. 

All this summer activity was of value to young Hoover not only for thehelp it afforded him in his struggle for existence, and for the outdoorexercise it involved, but for the practical experience in geologicalwork which it gave him to mix in with his lecture room and laboratoryacquisitions and to test them by. He seemed to have no difficulty ingetting all of this kind of work he had time to do. In fact, some of theother students used to speak a little enviously and suggestively about"Hoover's luck" in this connection. Dr. Branner happened to overhearsome remarks of this kind from a group around a laboratory table one dayand promptly broke out on them in his forcible manner. 

"What do you mean, " he said, "by talking about Hoover's luck? He has nothad luck; he has had reward. If you would work half as hard and half asintelligently as he does you would have half his luck. If I tell any oneof you to go and do a thing for me I have to come around in half an hourto see if you have done it. But I can tell Hoover to do a thing, andnever think of it again. I know it will be done. And he doesn't ask mehow to do it, either. If I told him to start to Kamchatka tomorrow tobring me back a walrus tooth, I'd never hear of it again until he cameback with the tooth. And then I'd ask him how he had done it. "

Dr. Branner was as kind to his boys as he was stern when sternness wasneeded. Hoover came down with typhoid in his Junior year, just at a timewhen his finances could not afford such an expensive luxury. So Dr. Branner sent him to a hospital and saw that he was cared for by the bestof physicians and nurses and told him to forget about paying for it alluntil after he had graduated. And that probably meant that the goodprofessor had to go for some time without buying books, which was whathe usually did with his extra money. 

Another unfortunate illness was announced to the busy student by anoutbreak of little red spots on his body which were declared by thecollege physician to be the result of poison oak. But they were not;they meant measles, and measles needs prompt attention. Unfortunatelyyoung Hoover's neglected case affected his eyes to such an extent thatfor several years afterward he had to wear glasses. And out of this grewthe familiar Stanford tradition that Herbert Hoover ruined his eyeswhile in college by over-much night work on his studies!

As a matter of fact Hoover was no college grind. He studied hard enoughat what he liked or thought important for his fitting to be a miningengineer, but he did not dodge getting a few credits from well-known"snap" courses, and he got through other required, but, to his mind, superfluous ones without doing much more work on them than necessary. Hehad a disconcerting habit of starting in on a course and then if hefound it uninteresting or unpromising as a contributor to the specialeducation he was interested in, of simply dropping out of the classwithout consultation or permission. But he did dig hard into what hethought really counted; his record in the geology department was anunusually high one. 

But with all his work and study he found time for some other kinds ofactivity. At least the two Irwin boys, Will and Wallace, who wereStanford's most ingenious disturbers of the peace in pioneer days, claimthat Hoover, in his quiet effective way, made a few contributions of hisown to the troubles of the faculty. But such contributions from otherswere generally credited--or rather debited--to the more notoriousoffenders, so that they had to suffer not alone for their own brilliantinspirations but for those of other less conspicuous collaborators. Wallace, for what seemed to the faculty sufficient reasons, was, as hehas himself phrased it, "graduated by request, " while Will had hisSenior year encored by the faculty, so that it took him five years, instead of the more conventional four, to graduate. In fact, I rememberthat even as this fifth year was drawing near its close, the facultycommittee of discipline, of which I was a reluctant member, seriouslyconsidered letting Will go in the same way that Wallace had gone. Butsome of us argued that if we should let Will graduate in the more usualway we should be rid of him soon anyway and without risking the barepossibilities of doing him an injustice. President Jordan alwaysmaintained that Will had good stuff in him, and he used his amelioratinginfluence with the faculty committee. So Will Irwin is today one ofStanford's best-known alumni. 

Herbert Hoover's haunting trouble all through his college course wasthat unpassed entrance requirement in English composition. Indeed, hedid not pass in it until about a week before he graduated, although hetried it regularly every semester all through his four years. How hefinally got his passing mark has been told me by Mrs. Hoover. She knowsbecause she was there through most of the long agony. 

After failing regularly at each semester's trial principally, he thinks(and Mrs. Hoover is inclined to agree), because he always had to takeit under a particularly meticulous instructor, his predicament began toworry even his professors in the geology department. It looked as iftheir star student might not be allowed to graduate. Finally a date wasset by the English department for a last trial before the end of hisSenior year. 

A day or two before this date the professor of paleontology, J. P. Smith, famed not only for his erudition but for his especial kindness toall geology students--especially if they did well in paleontology--cameto the worrying Senior with a paper that Hoover had written sometimebefore on a paleontological subject, and said to him: "Look here, youwill never pass that examination in the state you are in. Take thispaper; it's fine. Copy it in your best hand; remember that handwritinggoes a long way with professors of English; look up every word in thedictionary to be sure you have got the right one; then put in all thepunctuation marks you ever saw, and bring it back to me. " Hoover did it. 

Then Professor Smith disappeared with the paper in his study, but sooncame out with it, abundantly blue-penciled. "Now take it and re-copy itwith all these indicated changes, and bring it back again. " Again theinterested Senior obeyed his mentor. Then the professor left thelaboratory with the paper in his hand. Hoover awaited his return withever-increasing interest. Pretty soon he came back with a cheerfulsmile, handed Hoover the paper, and said: "Well, you've passed; althoughyou probably don't deserve it. "

Professor Smith, it seems, had carried the paper, not to the fatalinstructor, but to the head of the English department and had said tohim: "See here; your instructor is holding up the best man we have fromgraduating. Now look at this paper of Hoover's. Is there anything thematter with it? Doesn't it make good sense? Isn't it well written? Isn'tit well punctuated?"

The English head glanced over it impatiently--he was translating Dante, his dearest recreation, at the moment--and then roared out: "Well, itlooks all right. I suppose Instructor X has to live up to the rules, butif the boy can do this well for you it's good enough for us. " And withhis Dante pencil he wrote a large "Passed" across the paper. 

Someway all this does not sound like an account of life at theconventional university. Nor does Professor J. P. Smith, who used tointerrupt his lecture to wake up a dozing student with a sharp butkindly "Here, Jack, wake up, this is an important point and I willsurely ask about it in examination, " seem to be of the conventional typeof professor. And most Freshmen coming to Yale or Harvard would hesitatea little before taking the advice of some workman about the campus togo, with bag and trunk, in search of board and lodging to a house fullof professors. 

But as I said at the beginning, Stanford was different. It is preciselybecause it was, that Hoover's particular college experiences andacquisitions were what I have tried to suggest, and not what you mightthink they would be from your knowledge of other universities. And whileStanford has converged somewhat with years toward the more usualuniversity type--colleges get more alike as they get older--it has stillan atmosphere peculiarly its own. But it was in the first days thatthis atmosphere was so very distinctive. Its president and faculty andstudents, all living closely together in the middle of a great ranch ofseven thousand acres of grain fields, horse paddocks, and hills wherejack rabbits roamed and coyotes howled, were thrown together into onegreat family, whose members depended almost entirely on one another forsocial life. And each department was a special smaller family within thegreat one. Life was simple and direct and democratic. Real thingscounted first and most; there was little sophistication. Work was theorder of the day; recreations were wholesome. 

The geology family was an especially close and happy one. Some of Dr. Branner's former assistants and students had followed him out toCalifornia. They were the older members of the family. Almost all ofthem are now well-known geologists and mining engineers. So also aremany of his younger ones. The family went on long tramps and campstogether. The region about Stanford is singularly interesting from ageologist's point of view; and in those days it was a _terra_ more orless _incognita_. Everybody was discovering things. It was real livegeology. Lectures and recitations were illustrated, not by lanternslides, but by views out of the window and revelations in the field. 

And at the same time these young geologists learned real life; they hadcome to know intimately real men and women, all fired with theenthusiasm of a new venture, new opportunities, and a high ideal. Withall this, Herbert Hoover learned, in particular, one additional veryimportant thing. He learned that a certain unusual girl, beautiful, intelligent, and unspoiled, a lover of outdoors, and, as proof of herunusualness, a "major" student in geology, was the girl for him. Havinglearned this he decided to marry her. And later, she decided that he haddecided right. 

And so with all his experience at earning his living by organizinganything needing organizing, and with his stores of geological loregained from lecture room and textbook and field work and close personalassociation with his able and friendly professors, and, finally, withthe knowledge that he had already found exactly the right girl for him, Herbert Hoover went out from Stanford, in 1895, with his Pioneer Class, ready to open his oyster. But he had only himself to rely on in doingit. 

CHAPTER IV

THE YOUNG MINING ENGINEER

Herbert Hoover began his mining career very simply and practically bytaking his place as a real workman in a real mine, with no favors shown, following in this the emphatic advice given by Dr. Branner to everystudent graduating from his department. He went up into the miningregion near Grass Valley in the Sierras where he had already studiedwith Waldemar Lindgren, and became a regular miner, a boy-man with pickand shovel working long hours underground or sometimes on the surfaceabout the plant. But always he had his eyes wide open and always he waslearning. He preferred the underground work because he wanted first toknow more about the actual occurrence of the ore in the earth than aboutthe mill processes of extracting the mineral from it. 

Here he worked for several months, and gradually rose to the position ofnight shift-boss or gang foreman. But he began to realize that he wasexhausting the learning opportunities of this particular place and kindof work, and so one night deep down in the mine, when for sudden lack ofore-cars or power or some other essential, work was held up for the lasthalf hour of his shift, he went off into a warm corner, curled himselfup in a nice clean wheelbarrow and slept away the last half hour of hispick and shovel experience. 

He had decided to get into association, some way, with the best miningengineer on the Coast. There was no question about who this was at thattime. It was Louis Janin in San Francisco. So he appeared at Mr. Janin'soffice as a candidate for a job, any job so that it was a job underLouis Janin. 

But the famous engineer, well disposed as he was toward givingintelligent, earnest young men who wanted to become mining engineers, achance, had to explain that not only was there no vacant place in hisstaff but that a long waiting list would have to be gone through beforeHoover's turn could come. He added, as a joke, that he needed anadditional typist in his office, but of course----. The candidate for ajob interrupted. "All right, I'll take it. I can't come for a few days, but I'll come next Tuesday, say. " Janin was a little breathless at therapidity with which things seemed to get settled by this boyish, veryboyish, young man, but as they were apparently really settled he couldonly say, "All right. "

Now the reason that the new typewriter boy could not begin until nextTuesday--this was on a Friday--was that he had in the meantime to learnto write on a typewriter! Trivial matter, of course, in connection withbecoming a mining engineer, but apparently necessary. So learning whatmake of machine he would have to use in the office, he stopped, on hisway to his room, at a typewriter shop, rented a machine of proper make, and by Tuesday had learned to use it--after a fashion. 

That kind of boy could not remain for long a typist in the office of adiscerning man like Louis. Perhaps certain idiosyncrasies of spellingand a certain originality of execution on the machine helped bring abouta change of duties. But chiefly it was because of a better reason. Thisreason was made especially clear by an incident connected with animportant mining case in which Janin was serving as expert for the siderepresented by Judge Curtis Lindley, famous mining lawyer of SanFrancisco. The papers which indicated the line of argument which JudgeLindley and Mr. Janin were intending to follow came to Hoover's desk tobe copied. As he wrote he read with interest. The mine was in the GrassValley region that he knew so well. He not only copied but he rememberedand thought. The result was that when the typewriter boy delivered thepapers to the mining engineer they were accompanied by the casualstatement that the great expert and the learned attorney were all wrongin the line of procedure they were preparing to take! And he proceededto explain why, first to Mr. Janin's indignant surprise but next to hisgreat interest, because the explanation involved the elucidation ofcertain geologic facts not yet published to the world, which thetypewriter boy had himself helped to discover during his work in theGrass Valley region. 

The outcome was that Janin and his new boy went around together to JudgeLindley's office where after due deliberation the line of argument wasaltered. The further result was that the boy parted from his typewriter, first to begin acting as assistant to various older staff men on tripsto various parts of the Coast for mine examinations, then to make minorexaminations alone, and finally to handle bigger ones. The letters fromthe young mining engineer to the girl of the geology department, stillat Stanford, came now in swift succession from Nevada, Wyoming, andIdaho, and then very soon after from Arizona and New Mexico. Littlemines did not require much time for examination and reports signed"Hoover" came into Janin's office with bewildering rapidity. Janin likedthese reports; they not only showed geological and mining knowledge, butthey showed a shrewd business sense. The reporter seemed never to losethe perspective of cost and organization possibilities in relation tothe probable mineral richness of the prospects. And the reports saideverything they had to say in very few and very clear words. 

Herbert Hoover was not only moving fast; he was learning fast, and hewas rising fast in Janin's estimation. He had a regular salary orguarantee now with a certain percentage of all the fees collected byJanin's office from the properties he examined. What he was earning nowI do not know, but we may be sure it was considerably more than theforty-five dollars a month which he had begun with as typewriter boy, afew months before. 

The work was not entirely limited to the examination of prospects andmines. In one case at least it included actual mine development andmanagement. Mr. Janin had in some way taken over, temporarily--for suchwork was not much to his liking: he preferred to be an expert consultantrather than a mine manager--a small mine of much value but muchcomplication near Carlisle, New Mexico. This he turned over to hisenterprising assistant to look after. 

It was Hoover's first experience of the kind, and it was made a ratherhectic one by conditions not technically a regular part of mining. Thetown, or "camp, " was a wild one with drunken Mexicans havingshooting-bees every pay day and the local jail established at the bottomof an abandoned shaft, not too deep, into which the prisoners were letdown by windlass and bucket. It was an operation fairly safe if thesheriff and his assistants were not too exhilarated to manage thewindlass properly, or the malefactors, too drunk to hang on to thebucket. Otherwise, more or less regrettable incidents happened. Also, itled to a rather puzzling situation when the sheriff had to take care ofhis first woman prisoner, a negro lady of generous dimensions and muchvolubility. 

But the mine was well managed and Hoover acquired more merit with hisemployer. And soon came the new chance which led to much bigger things. It was now the spring of 1897, two years after Hoover's graduation, andthe time of the great West Australia mining boom. English companies weresending out many engineers, old and young, to investigate and handlemining properties in the new field, and were looking everywhere forcompetent men. Janin was asked by one of these London firms to recommendsomeone to them. He talked it over with Hoover, telling him that itmight be a great opportunity. It might, of course, not be; it woulddepend on the prospect--and the man who handled it. Janin expressed hisentire confidence in the young man before him, and his belief that theopportunity was greater than any the Pacific Coast then had to offer. Hewould be more than glad to keep Hoover with him, but he wanted to befair to him and his future. The young man was all for giving hostages tofortune, and so the recommendation, the offer, and the acceptance flewby cable between San Francisco and London, and Hoover prepared to startat once to England for instructions, as had been stipulated in theoffer. 

Just before he started, however, Janin caused him some uneasiness bysaying, "Now look here, Hoover, I have cabled London swearing to yourfull technical qualifications, and I am not afraid of your letting medown on that. But these conservative Londoners have stipulated that youshould be thirty-five years old. I have wired that I was sorry to haveto tell them that you are not quite thirty-three. Don't forget that myreputation depends on your looking thirty-three by the time you get toLondon!" And Hoover had not yet reached his twenty-third birthday, andlooked at least two years younger even than that. He began growing abeard on his way across the continent. 

The London firm had stipulated, too, that their new man should beunmarried. Hoover was still that, although he had begun to get impatientabout what seemed to him an unnecessary delay in carrying out hisdecision already made in college. As a matter of fact, there was stillno definite engagement between him and the girl of the geologydepartment, but there was an informal understanding that some day theremight be a formal one. So Hoover appeared before the head of the great London house--perhapsthe greatest mining firm in the world at that time--without encumberingwife and with the highest of recommendations, but with a singularlyyouthful appearance for an experienced mining engineer of thirty-five. In fact, the great man after staring hard at his new acquisition burstout with English directness, "How remarkable you Americans are. You havenot yet learned to grow old, either individually or as a nation. Nowyou, for example, do not look a day over twenty-five. How the devil doyou do it?"

The days were days of wonder for the homegrown young Quaker engineer. Across America, across the ocean, then the stupendous metropolis of theworld and the great business men of the "city, " with week-ends under thewing of the big mining financier at beautiful English country houseswith people whose names spelled history. And then the P. And O. Boat toMarseilles, Naples, Port Said, Aden, and Colombo, and finally to be putashore in a basket on a rope cable over a very rough sea at Albany inWest Australia. There he was consigned, with the dozen other first-classpassengers, mining adventurers like himself, to quarantine in a tenthospital on a sand spit out in the harbor with the thermometer neverregistering below three figures, even at night. 

And then he came to the Australian mine fields themselves in a desertwhere the temperature can keep above one hundred degrees day and nightfor three weeks together. Also there is wind, scorching wind carryingscorching dust. And surface water discoverable only every fifty or sixtymiles. Of course one expects a desert to be hot and dry--that's why itis a desert--but the West Australian desert rather overemphasizes thenecessities of the case. It is a deadly monotonous country although notwholly bare; there is much low brush just high enough to hide you fromothers only half a mile away; a place easy to get lost in, and hard toget found in when once lost. 

All of this desert was being prospected by thousands of men of a dozennationalities, all seeking and suffering, for gold. The railroad had gotin only as far as Coolgardie, but the prospectors were far beyond therail head. They carried their water bags with enough in them to keepthemselves and their horses alive between water holes. In the real "backblocks" they could not carry enough for horses, so they used camelswith jangling bells and gaudy trappings of gay greens, orange, scarlet, and vivid blues, making strange contrasts with the blue-gray bush. Alongthe few main roads moved dusty stages, light, low, almost spring-lessthree-seated vehicles, with thin sun-tops overhead and boxes and bags infront, behind and underneath, and all swarmed about by pestilentialflies, millions of flies, sprung from nowhere to harass the thirsty, weary travelers. 

But only the agents and engineers rode in the stages; it cost too muchfor the little prospectors, the "dry-washers, " who carried their fewprovisions and scanty outfit in packs on their backs, and tramped thetrails, stopping here and there to toss the dry soil into the air andwatch for the gold flakes to fall into the pan while the lighter earthblew off in the wind. 

In the camp were gathered a motley crew, mostly hard, reckless men, whodrank and bet their gold dust away as fast as they found it. Buteverywhere they were finding gold, and all the time came new reports andrumors of more farther on. The headquarters of Hoover's employers werein Coolgardie when he arrived, but were soon moved on to Kalgoorlie, following the railroad. The offices were in one of the three or fourstone, two-story buildings, which lifted themselves proudly above theruck of sweltering little toy-like houses of corrugated iron. Fortythousand people were supposed to be living in this "camp" at one time, buying water at two shillings six pence the gallon, which wascheap--they were paying seven shillings in some other camps. At first itwas all brought by rail from the coastal plains four hundred miles away, but when the mines began to get down they struck water at a few hundredfeet. But it was salt, and expensive condensing plants had to be set up, which kept the price still high. Coolgardie once boasted of having the"biggest condensing plant in the world, " with rows on rows of enormouscylindrical corrugated iron tanks lying on their sides, over acres ofground, with all the pumps and boilers and steam pipes to keep thesetanks supplied. Water was cheap there, only twelve or fifteen shillingsthe hundred gallons. 

But out in the prospects and on the trails there was no such aqueousluxury. There was no water for washing and little to drink. And thatlittle was mostly drunk as a terrible black tea, like lye, heated andre-heated, with now a little more water added, now another handful ofleaves. I have a well-vouched-for story of an Australian girl who wentinto this gold-paradise with her husband who was manager, at a largesalary, of one of the first mines. She used to take a cupful of waterand carefully wash the baby and afterward the little girl, and thenherself. After that it was saved for the husband to rinse the worst offwhen he came home from the mine. But he could have an additional halfcup to finish with because he was so dirty. And they tried not to usesoap with it so that finally, after letting it settle, it could be addedto the horses' drinking water. It was not that the family could notafford to pay for water, but there was simply no water to buy. 

Into this cheerful hell came the young Quaker engineer, from the heavenof California and the "city" offices of London where sat the big menwho were intent on having their share of the big things in WestAustralia. He was to do his best for his particular big men, but how hewas to do it was mostly for him to find out. His firm had alreadyacquired interests in several promising properties. He was to helpdevelop these mines and perhaps to find new ones to be taken on. Ajunior member of his firm was already on the ground when Hoover arrived, but he remained only a few months. It was a long way to London andHoover could get few instructions. It was up to him. It was a hard lifewith many opportunities to go wrong in any of many ways. But he kept hisbrain clear, his body and soul clean, and just everlastingly worked. 

There were all kinds of work to do, and all sorts of new things to learnabout mines and mining. The ore occurred in the rock in a mannerdifferent from that in any other known gold field, so finding it andgetting it out, and then getting the mineral out of the strange new kindof ore, required resourcefulness, "original research, " as the scientistssay, and constructive imagination. And the technical problems ofdiscovering and manipulation once solved, there was still neededorganization, system, and administration to make the mine a paying one. 

But all these things were exactly the young engineer's specialties. Hewas from the beginning, as we already know, and conspicuously is today, resourceful, original, capable of prompt decision, an organizer andadministrator. Although there were many trained engineers in WestAustralia, there was no one to equal him in these specialties of his. And very soon his firm's mines, which had so far had little benefit ofexecutive ability coupled with technical knowledge and originality, began to pay and their stocks went up on the London market--which wasthe criterion of success in the eyes of the men in the "city. " About thestock ratings Hoover knew little and perhaps cared less. He did care, however, about making good mines out of bad ones. And that was exactlywhat he was doing. 

And very soon he did the other successful thing that the big men inLondon hoped for and that he kept always working for. He uncovered thebig new mine. He had turned up several promising leads but theirdevelopment proved disappointing. But the "Sons of Gwalia" realized hishopes from the beginning. It was out from Kalgoorlie four or five dayshard riding, near a smaller camp called Leonora. He went out and tookpersonal charge of the opening up and equipping of the whole mine andplant, living in a little "tin" house and gathering about him a staff ofthe best of the firm's assistants collected from all over the Colony. Itwas hot, although the climbing mercury usually stopped at about onehundred degrees. But that only further inflamed the enthusiasm of thegroup. They had the real thing, and they had a real leader--a veryboyish looking boy of scant twenty-five. They forgot to watch thethermometer. They were more interested in water and transportation andlabor and all the other things that are as necessary to a good mine asthe gold in the ore-veins. 

Occasionally, however, they had some relaxation. For one thing, theythought sometimes about food. One of the men had his wife with him, andshe imported chickens and later even ducks which never, however, setweb-foot in water. And they had a garden because they decided they wereso in need of green vegetables. They turned a little priceless waterfrom the condenser into the garden; but not enough for the vegetablesand too much for the accountant's books. After estimating that the oneundersized cabbage they raised cost them £65 worth of water, hediscouraged further gardening. 

They had also a pet emu. So did the wife of the manager of another minenear-by. They used to arrange to have the emus meet occasionally andthere was always a glorious fight. Once when they had got the lady's emuover for a visit, one of the Australian boys thought it would lookamusing in trousers. So he took off his overalls and after immenseexertion got them on the legs of the creature, with the straps securelyfastened over its neck and back. But the great bird became so enragedthat the men could not safely get near enough to it to get off itsclothing, and even its mistress feared ever to approach it again. Therewas also a pet goat named Sydney that ate several boxes of matches andhad to have its internal fires extinguished by the only availableliquid, which was the tinned butter that had yielded to the one hundredand ten degrees. Sydney lived through the experience but had alwaysafter that a delicate interior and was petted more than ever inconsequence. And there was a tennis court occasionally wetted down withthe beer that always went stale while they were saving it for stateoccasions. It was all a happy, glorious time--because they haddiscovered and were making one of the great mines of West Australia. 

Hoover was now twenty-four, and a man of large reputation in miningcircles in Australia and London, with a salary to correspond. He hadspent about twenty-four months in West Australia, although they ran overall of one and parts of two other years, so that he is generallycredited with having remained there three years. And he could have goneon among the Australian mines for as many years as he liked, for the bigmen in London now fully realized that they had in this young Americanengineer the unusual man, and that his only limit in Australia would bethe limit of the possible. But the new opportunity and the newexperience were calling. 

Just about this time a young Chinaman of royal family in Peking had madea successful _coup d'état_ and had formed a cabinet for the first timein the history of China, and this cabinet decided, naturally also forthe first time in the history of China, to effect a coördinated controlof all the mines of the Empire. There was, therefore, established aDepartment of Mines, with a wily old Chinaman, named Chang Yen Mow, atits head. He understood that Chinamen knew little about mining, andhence decided to find a foreigner to help him manage the mines of theEmpire. He also thought that a foreigner, thus attached as an officialto his department, could be of particular help to him in dealing withother foreigners inclined to exploit Chinese mines more for their ownbenefit than China's. This official was to be in a position much likethat of an undersecretary in a cabinet department, and was to be giventhe title, in the Chinese equivalent, of "Director-General of Mines. "He was to have a salary appropriate to such a large title. With all thisdecided, it only remained to find the proper foreigner, who should be aman who knew much about mines and was honest. There was, as we know, just such a man in Western Australia. 

CHAPTER V

IN CHINA

When Chang Yen Mow, the new head of the new Department of Mines of thenew Chinese Government, began to look about for the foreigner who shouldknow much about mines and be honest, and who would therefore be a fitman to occupy the new post of Director-General of Mines, he bethoughthimself of an English group of mining men with whom he had once had somebusiness relations. The principal expert advisor of this group had beenthe man who was now the head of the great London mining firm for whichHerbert Hoover was working, and working very successfully, in WestAustralia. Chang applied to this group for a recommendation of asuitable man for him. And this group in turn applied to the head ofHoover's firm. Or, perhaps, Chang applied directly to the great Londonmining man. The exact procedure, which is not very important, anyway, bywhich the head of Hoover's firm came to have the opportunity of makingthe recommendation, is a little obscure today. The important points inthe whole matter, however, which are not at all uncertain, are that hedid have it, and that he recommended Herbert Hoover, and that Chang YenMow, acting on the recommendation, offered the place, through him, tothe youthful Quaker engineer, and, finally, that the competent andconfident boy of twenty-four, always ready for the newer, bigger thing, promptly accepted it. 

In two weeks after the cable offer and answer, a feverish fortnightdevoted to a rapid clearing up of things in Australia, Hoover was on hisway to London, to report personally to his employers about their ownaffairs as well as to get some information about the new undertaking. Hewanted to find out before he got to China, if he could, something ofwhat would be expected of a Director-General of Mines of the ChineseEmpire. Perhaps he had in mind the possible necessity of "getting up" alittle special knowledge about Chinese mines and mining ways before hetackled his new job, just as he had got up enough physiology inthirty-six hours to help get him into Stanford University, and enoughtypewriting in a week-end to fit him for entrance into Louis Janin'soffice in San Francisco. 

However, after two weeks in the metropolis, eight or nine days on theAtlantic, two or three in New York, and five on the transcontinentaltrains, he found himself again in California and ready to make fromthere his second start to the far-away lands from which his loudestcalls seemed to come--ready, that is, except for one thing. He was now, let us remember, at this beginning of the year 1899, not yet twenty-fiveyears old, not that by half a year, indeed, and a half year could mean, as we have already seen, a great deal in his life. And he was a boy-manwith a record already behind him of achievement and a position alreadyin his hands of much responsibility and large salary. So he declaredthat the time had now come for the carrying out of the decision he hadmade in his college days of four years before. It was the littlematter, you will promptly guess, and guess correctly, of marrying thegirl of the geology department. He arrived in San Francisco the first ofFebruary, 1899. He spent the next few days in Monterey, "the old Pacificcapital" of Stevenson's charming sketch, but of chief interest to Hooveras the place where Lou Henry--that was her name--lived. And here theywere married at noon of Friday, February 10. At two o'clock they leftfor San Francisco, and at noon the next day sailed for the empire ofChina. 

Into the sleepy, half Mexican, historic town on the curving sands of theshores of the blue Bay of Monterey this swift, breathlessly swift, boyengineer had come from distant Australia, by way of Marseilles andLondon, had clutched up the beautiful daughter of the respected townbanker, and was now carrying her off to distant China, where she was tolive in all the state becoming the wife of the Director-General of Minesof the Celestial Empire. It was a bit too much for the old Pacificcapital, which did not know--for it was not told--that the suddenappearance of the meteor bridegroom had been preceded by manyastronomical warnings in the way of electric messages that came to theprospective bride from Australia and London and New York. Anyway, itwasn't quite fair to the town, which tries to maintain old Mexicantraditions, that go back to Spain, of a full assortment of festivitiesincident to any proper marrying. But Monterey has long been reconciledto this missed opportunity, and now reveals a just pride as the hometown of the woman who has played such an active rôle in the career ofher distinguished husband. 

The hurrying couple, at least, had time for breath-taking--andhoneymoon--when once on board ship. For it is a month's voyaging fromSan Francisco to China--or, at least, was then. They had for seat-matesat table Frederick Palmer, the war correspondent, and wife, which wasthe beginning of a friendship that still endures. And there were forother interesting companions a secretary of our legation at Peking andhis wife, and a missionary pair who may or may not have survived theBoxer massacres. 

The work in China was at first rather simple. Mines, of course, therewere and had been for uncounted centuries. But what was needed by thenew Department was some sort of survey of the mineral resources andmining possibilities of the Empire, and a tentative framing of a code ofmining laws, so that the new development of the mines of the countrywhich Chang hoped to initiate could be carried on to best advantage, andin such a way that private enterprise could participate in it. Forcenturies the mines had been Crown property and the ruler had simply letthem out directly, or through the viceroys, for either a stipulatedannual rental or for as much "squeeze" as could be wrung from thelessees in any of several various ways. And there had to be some rentalor "squeeze" for each of the many officials that could get within arm'slength of the mining business. The tenure of the use of the mines by thelessees was usually simply the period of the continued satisfaction ofthe lessor. 

All this had not made for any extensive new opening up of the country'smineral resources, or for the scientific development of the minesalready long known. One could not afford to put much capital intoprospecting or into modernizing the mining methods when each improvementsimply meant either more rent or "squeeze, " or the giving up of themine. So the ores were mined and the metals extracted from them by theminers according to the methods of their ancestors as far back ashistory or tradition went, and it was all done under a set of mininglaws as primitive as the mining methods themselves. There were enormouspossibilities of improvement. It would have been hard for any miningengineer to do anything at all to the situation without improving it. For Hoover, with his technical education in metallurgical processes, hisexperience in handling various and difficult mining situations, and hisgenius for organizing and systematizing, the opportunity was simplyunique. He plunged into the work of examining and planning and codifyingwith the zest of a naturalist in an unexplored jungle. In the day timehe made his examination; at nights he studied the mining laws of alltime and all the world. 

He built up a staff as rapidly as it could be put together andcorrelated with the tasks before it. He had sent in advance for two orthree men he had worked with in America and for some of his most ableand dependable associates in West Australia, including Agnew, a millexpert, and Newbery, a metallurgist, son of a famous geologist, both ofthem devoted to "the Chief. " That was Hoover's _sobriquet_ among hisearly mining associates; just as it was later among the members of hissuccessive great war-time organizations. He has just naturally--notartificially--always been "the Chief" among his co-workers andassociates. 

His Caucasian staff of perhaps a dozen was greatly overshadowed innumber by his Chinese staff, composed chiefly of semitechnicalassistants, draftsmen, surveyors' assistants, interpreters, etc. A fewof the Chinese helpers had had foreign training; there was one fromYale, for example, and another from Rose Polytechnic; the latter sodevoted to American baseball that he was greatly disappointed in the newDirector of Mines when he found he was not a baseball player. But hethought better of him when he learned that he had at least managed hiscollege team. The staff had its headquarters in Tientsin, where werealso the principal laboratories for the mineralogists, assayers, andchemists. Some of the men gave their time to the technical work, andothers were engaged in collecting and correlating everything that hadbeen published in the foreign languages about the geology and mines' ofChina, while Chinese scholars hunted down and translated into Englishall that had been printed in Chinese literature. But the Director andmost of his immediate experienced assistants were chiefly occupied withthe exploring expeditions into the interior and the examination of theold mines and new prospects. Especially did some immediate attentionhave to be given to the mines already being actually worked, for theMinister let it be known that he expected the new Director to pay theway of the Department as soon as possible from the increased proceeds ofthe mines which were to arise from the magic touch of the foreignexperts. 

These expeditions were elaborate affairs, contrasting strangely withHoover's earlier experiences in America and Australia. The Chinesemajor-domo in charge insisted that the make-up and appearance of theoutfit should reflect the high estate of the Director of Mines, so thatevery movement involved the organization of a veritable caravan ofponies, mules, carts, men on foot, and sedan chairs carried by coolies. These chairs were for the Director and his wife, who, however, would notuse them, preferring saddle horses. But the proud manager of theexpedition insisted that they be carried along, empty, to show theadmiring populace that even if the strange foreign potentates amazinglypreferred to ride in a rather common way on horseback they could atleast afford to have sedan chairs. Imagine a prospecting outfit in theCalifornia Sierra or the West Australian bush with sedan chairs! Andthere were cooks and valets and cot beds and folding chairs and mosquitobed curtains and charcoal stoves and an array of pans and pots likeOscar's in the Waldorf kitchens, and often a cavalry guard oftwenty-five or fifty men, superfluous but insistent and always hungry. Whether the expedition found any mines or not it was at least animpressive object lesson to the Celestial myriads that the new ImperialDepartment of Mines knew how to hunt for them in proper style. When Mrs. Hoover once remonstrated with one of the interpreters of the cavalcadeabout such an unnecessary outfit, the answer was: "Mr. Hoover is suchexpensive man to my country we cannot afford to let him die for want ofsmall things. "

A similar state had to be lived up to in the Director's home inTientsin. The house was a large, four-square, wide-veranded affair, inwhich a dozen to fifteen servants, carefully distinguished as "No. 1Boy, " "No. 2 Boy" and so on down the line, waited, according to theirown immemorial traditions, on the Director and his wife. These servantshad curious ways, and a curious language in the odd pidgin English thatenabled the door boy to announce that "the number one topside foreigndevil joss man have makee come, " when the English Bishop called, and thetable boy to announce a dish of duckling as "one piecee duck pups, " orof chicken as "one piecee looster. " The social scale among the fewforeign residents was very precisely defined, and the social life of theforeign colony highly conventionalized, so that the unassuming, practical-minded young engineer of the high title and social positionwho was terribly bored--as he is today--by social rigmarole, and who wasthought rather queer by the conventional-minded small diplomats andmiscellaneous foreign residents because, as one of them put it, "healways seems to be _thinking_, " was glad to be out of all this as muchas possible and on the road, even if it had to be with the ludicrouscaravan of state. Sometimes even all the attempted comfort andsuperfluous luxury of the caravan did not prevent the expedition fromhaving serious hardships and running into real danger. An expeditionacross the great Gobi desert that lasted for thirty-nine days wassuccessfully accomplished only after hard battling with heat, hunger andthirst, and even with hostile natives. 

Some of the results expected from this imported miner were ratherstartling. For instance, age-long rumor had it that the Emperor'shunting park at Jehol overlay immensely valuable gold deposits. TheMinister intimated to the Director that he would like to know the realfacts about this as soon as possible. As the park lay in alittle-explored region of southern Manchuria and was a place of muchhistorical as well as geological interest, the Director decided to makea personal examination of it. After the expedition had been out severaldays, he was told that on the next they would come in sight of the GreatRoyal Park. Accordingly on the next day the guide of the caravan tookhim, with one or two of the Caucasian members of his staff and aninterpreter, off from the road the grand retinue was following, and bywinding paths up to a hill top which commanded a superb prospect. 

"There, " said the interpreter, with a wave of his hand toward thestretching prospect of beautiful valleys, low broad hills and mountainside, "there is the Hunting Park of Jehol. " Then, turning complacentlyto the Director of Mines, he asked, simply: "Is there gold beneath it?"And interpreter and guide, and later, even more important officials, were stupefied to learn that the wonderful imported man who knew allabout gold could not say offhand, from his vantage point, miles away, whether there was gold under the Park or not. And, more disturbingstill, that he probably could not say anything about it at all withoutactually tramping over the sacred soil and perhaps sacrilegiouslydigging into it. 

Such occasionally necessary confessions of incompetence made a littletrouble, but only a little. However much the under men lacked knowledgeabout minerals and mines and how to find out about them, the head of theDepartment, Chang, knew enough to know that if his young Directorconfessed inability to meet certain demands it was because there wasmore wrong with the demands than with the engineer. But the real fly inthe ointment soon began to make itself visible. It was not adisillusionment on the part of the Chinese officials in connection withtheir foreign expert, but a disillusionment on his part in regard to hisreal position and opportunities for accomplishing something for China. He began more and more clearly to realize that he could investigate andadvise as much as he liked but that he could really do, in hisunderstanding of doing, comparatively little. The modern West cannotmake over the immemorial East in a day or even a year. 

Gradually the young engineer came to realize that while his examinationsand reports were all very welcome, and whatever he could suggest forimprovement in technical detail, resulting in immediate greater outputof the mines already working, was gladly accepted, there was nowillingness to accept advice leading to changes in administrative andgeneral organization matters. And to the modern engineer efficiency inthese matters is as much a part of successful mining as skilled diggingand good metallurgy. Suggestions looking toward getting more work out ofthe men, or cutting down the payrolls by removing the thirty per cent ofthe names on them that seemed to have no bodily attachments, werefrowned on. These things interfered with "squeeze, " and "squeeze" was atraditional part of Chinese mining. Foreign advisors and helpers wereall very well when they found gold, but not so well when they foundgraft. A crisis was visible in the offing. But this particular crisisdid not arrive, for another larger and more serious one came moreswiftly on and arrived almost unheralded. It was the Boxer Uprising. 

The outbreak found Hoover at Tientsin having but recently returned fromPekin with Mrs. Hoover, and both just recovering from severe attacks ofinfluenza. If opportunity for thorough organizing of the mines of Chinahad failed him he now had full scope for organizing a military defenseof his home and wife and his many employees, foreign and native, forTientsin, for a month, was the scene of hot fighting. It was a besiegedhousehold in a beleaguered city. Hoover could have gotten out with hiswife and few Caucasian assistants at the beginning of the trouble, buthe would not desert his few hundred Chinese helpers and theirfamilies--and his wife would not desert him. So they staid on togetherthrough all the rifle and shell fire and conflagrations of the Tientsinsiege, building and defending barricades of rice and sugar sacks, organizing food and water supplies, and cheerfully "carrying on" in theface of certain death, and worse, if the outnumbering fanatic Boxershappened to win. 

But there were occasional lighter incidents amid the many grave ones ofthe fighting weeks. Mrs. Hoover tells one, her favorite story of thosedays, in something like the following words. "We had a cow, famous andinfluential in the community, which cow was the mother of a promisingcalf. One day the cow was stolen and Mr. Hoover set out to find her. With three or four friends and half a dozen attendant Chinese boys hetook out the tiny calf one night and by the light of a lantern led thelittle orphan, bleating for its mother, about the streets of the town. Finally, as they passed in front of the barracks of the Germancontingent of the international defending army, there came, from within, an answering moo, and Mr. Hoover, addressing the sentry, demanded hiscow. The sentry made no move to comply, but, summoning all his_Wörterbuch_ English, countered with the inquiry: 'Is that the calf ofthe cow inside?' Upon receiving an affirmative reply to his Ollendorffquestion, he calmly declared, 'Also, then, calf outside must join itselfto cow inside. ' And thereupon by aid of a suggestive manipulation of hisbayonet, he confiscated the calf, and sent Mr. Hoover homeempty-handed. "

As one of the precursors of the Boxer affair Chang Yen Mow got into thebad graces of the government, gave up his position and was forced toflee from Pekin and take refuge in Tientsin. Even here he was draggedout of his palace and stood up before a firing squad, and escaped withhis life only through vigorous interference by his Director of Mines. Because he thought that he might save from probable confiscation avaluable coal mining property at Tongshan about eighty miles fromTientsin, he desired to transfer this property outright to Hoover's namefor the protection of the foreign title. Hoover refused this, but didundertake to go to Europe on a contract with Chang to enlist the aid ofthe Belgian and British bondholders of the Company to protect theproperty. These men rescued and reorganized the Company, dispatchedtheir own financial agents to China, and appointed Hoover chief engineerto superintend the real development of the great property. 

The wily old Celestial finding, after all, that China was not to bepartitioned by the powers that had defended it against the Boxers, andthat private property was not to be confiscated, now proposed to breakhis contract so eagerly made. And there seemed to be no hope that thecurious course of Chinese law would ever compel him to recognize hisprevious agreements. But there was something in the persistent, indomitable pressure of the quiet but firm young Belgian agent, named deWouters, who had come back with Hoover, and of the young American, whichdid finally compel the old Chinaman, after much trouble and delay, tolive up to his contract. 

Years later the situation, with kaleidoscopic picturesqueness, took onanother hue, and Hoover found himself defending Chang's interests fromthe overzealous attempts of some of the foreign owners to get more outof the mines than was their fair share. In making the originalcontracts it had been agreed to have a Chinese board with a Chinesechairman, as well as a foreign board. This led to much difficulty andsome of the Europeans declared that the young American had been much atfault in consenting to an arrangement which left so much share in thecontrol to the Chinese, and they repudiated this arrangement. Hoover andde Wouters had a long hard struggle in getting justice for old Chang, but just as their persistence had earlier held Chang up to hisagreements for the sake of the European owners of the undertaking, sonow, directed in the opposite direction, it succeeded in getting justicefor Chang and his Chinese group. 

The affair brought him into business relations with another Belgiannamed Emile Francqui, of keen mind and great personal force, who, withde Wouters, were, strangely enough, later to be chief and firstassistant executives, respectively, of the Great Belgian Comité Nationalduring the long hard days of the German Occupation. It was with thesemen among all the Belgians that Hoover was to have most to do inconnection with his work as initiator and director of the Commission forRelief in Belgium. 

But we are now, in the story of Herbert Hoover, only in the year 1900, and the Belgian Relief did not begin until 1914. And Hoover was still tohave many experiences as engineer and man of affairs, before he was tomeet his Belgian acquaintances again under the dramatic conditionsproduced by the World War. 

He had now his opportunity really to do something in China in line withhis own ideas of doing things in connection with mines, and not withthose of Chinese mining tradition. As consulting engineer, and latergeneral manager of the "Chinese Engineering and Mining Company" heattacked the job of making Chang's great Tongshan coal properties agoing concern. This job involved building railways, handling a fleet ofocean-going steamers, developing large cement works, and superintendingaltogether the work of about 20, 000 employees. A special one among theundertakings of the twelve months or more given to this enterprise wasthe building of Ching Wang Tow harbor to give his coal a proper seaoutlet. Altogether it was a "mining" job of all the variety and hugenessof extent that the twenty-seven-year-old miner and organizer found mostto his liking. And despite obstacles and complications due both to hisChinese and Caucasian company associates he did it successfully, enjoyedit immensely, and got from it much education and experience. But he wasready after about a year of it to turn his attention to the rest of theworld. 

CHAPTER VI

LONDON AND THE REST OF THE WORLD

In 1902, now twenty-eight years old, Herbert Hoover returned to Londonas a junior partner in the great English firm with which he had beenearlier associated as its star field man in West Australia. But, thoughwith an actual headquarters office in London, he was mostly anywhereelse in the world but there. He was still the firm's chief engineer andprincipal field expert and upon him fell much of the responsibility ofthe firm's actual mining operations in the field as distinguished fromits financial operations in the "city. " He probably spent little morethan a tenth of his time in London, and this was also true in his latercareer when he had given up his connection with the firm and was wholly"on his own" as independent consulting engineer and mine-organizer. Andthis explains what has often puzzled many of the people who came to knowhim and his household in London. He and it were so little "English. "His home in London seemed always to be a bit of transplanted America, and, in particular, a bit of transplanted California. As a matter offact, in all his years of London connections there was hardly one thatdid not see him and his family in America including an inevitable stayin California. He maintained offices in New York and San Francisco andhad no slightest temptation, much less desire, ever to become anexpatriate. 

But this is getting ahead of the story. There is one outstandinghappening in his London experience that insistently demands telling. Itis the happening that meant for him the greatest setback in hisotherwise almost monotonously successful career. And yet, although thishappening meant temporary financial ruin for him, it was, in its way, only another success, a success of revealing significance to those whowould like to know the real man that Herbert Hoover is. 

After one of his returns to London, and in the absence of the head ofthe firm in China, he discovered a defalcation of staggeringproportions. A man connected with the firm had lost in speculation overa million dollars obtained from friends and clients of the firm, by theissuance and sale of false stock. Technically the operations of thedefaulter were of such a character that the firm could not be heldlegally liable. But the junior partner swept the technicalities asidewith a single gesture. He announced that they would make good all of theobligations incurred by the defaulter. This meant the immediate loss ofhis own personal fortune, and it meant a serious difference of opinionwith the absent head of the firm, whose frantic cables came, however, too late to overrule the decision of the junior partner. 

There ensued a long bitter struggle, most of it falling on the juniorpartner with the Quaker conscience, to make good the losses withoutactually putting the firm out of business. For going on with thebusiness was essential to the making good. It was a gruelling fouryears' struggle, but with success at the end of it. And then theAmerican engineer, now grown forever out of youth to the man who hadexperienced the down as well as the up in life, gave up his connectionwith the firm and launched on that career of independent andself-responsible activity which has been his ever since. This was in1908. Hoover was now thirty-four years old and probably the leadingconsulting mining engineer in the world. 

His work soon took him back to Australia, the land of his first notablesuccess, but this time into South Australia instead of West Australia. Here he took personal charge of a large constructive undertaking inconnection with the rehabilitation of the famous Broken Hill Mines. These mines were in the inhospitable wastes of the Great Stony Desert, four or five hundred miles north of Adelaide, the port city. The livingand working conditions in the desert were a little worse than awful, butby his technical and organizing ability he brought to life the two orthree abandoned mines which constituted the Broken Hills properties, and, adding to them some adjoining lower grade mines, converted thewhole group from a state of great but unrealized possibilities into oneof highly profitable actualities. An important factor in thisachievement was his origination and successful development of a processfor extracting the zinc from ores that had already been treated for theother metals and then cast aside as worthless residues. There werefourteen million tons of these residues on the Broken Hills dumps andfrom them he derived large returns for the company that he had organizedto purchase the property. 

He also introduced new metallurgical processes for the profitablehandling of the low-grade sulphide ores that constituted most of themineral body of the mines. Indeed, this work in South Australia did muchto help prove to him what has long been one of his cardinal beliefs, namely, that the safe backbone of mining lies in the handling of largebodies of low-grade ores. When such great ore-bodies are given thebenefit of proper metallurgical processes and large organizing andintelligent building up of exterior plants, mining leaves the realms ofspeculation and becomes a certain and stable business operation. 

All this successful work in South Australia occupied but seven months. Back in London again he gathered about him a remarkable staff of skilledyoung mining engineers, mostly Americans. There were thirty-five orforty of them, indeed, not on salary or fixed appointment, but men eagerto attach themselves to him for the sake of working with him or for himin connection with the ever-increasing number of his large enterprisesin the way of reorganization and rehabilitation of mines scattered allover the world. He became the managing director or chief consultingengineer of a score of mining companies, and the simple association ofhis name with a mining enterprise gave investors and other engineers aperfect confidence in its success and its honest handling. 

Two of his largest undertakings were in Russia, one at Kyshtim, in theUrals, the other at Irtish on the Siberian plains near Manchuria. TheKyshtim property was a great but run-down historic establishment, on anestate of an area almost equal to that of all Belgium. One hundred andseventy thousand people lived on the estate, all dependent on themining establishment for their support. The ores were of iron andcopper, but the mines were so far from anywhere that not only did theseores have to be smelted at the mine mouths, but factories had to beerected to manufacture the metal into products capable of compacttransportation. When Hoover took over the bankrupt properties he foundhimself not only with mining and manufacturing problems to solve, butwith what was practically a relief problem to face. For the underpaidworkmen and their unfortunate families were in a state of great misery. He succeeded not only in modernizing and rehabilitating the materialpart of the great establishment, but at the same time in rescuing andrevivifying a suffering laboring population of helpless Russians. 

The Irtish properties were near the Manchurian border, a thousand milesup the Irtish River from Omsk, a mere remote bleak spot on the wild, bare Siberian steppes. But at this spot lay extensive deposits of zinc, iron, lead, copper and coal, all together. He had first of all to build350 miles of railroad to make the spot at all accessible. And the actual"mining" operations included everything from digging out and smeltingthe ores to manufacturing all sorts of things from metal door-knobs tosteel rails and even steamboats to ply on the Irtish River. He put alarge sum of English, Canadian and American money--including much of hisown--into the work of building up a great establishment which was juston a paying basis when the war broke out. It is all now in the hands ofthe Bolsheviki, with a most dubious outlook for the recovery of any ofthe money put into it. 

Other large operations under his direction were in Colorado, Mexico, Korea, the Malay Straits Settlement, South Africa, and India (Burma). The Burma undertaking has been, in its outcome at least, and, indeed, inmany other respects, Hoover's greatest victory in mining engineering andorganization. It is today the greatest silver-lead mine in the world, although it started from as near to nothing as a mine could be and yetbe called a mine. It took him and his associates five years totransform some deserted works in the heart of a jungle into the foremostproducer of its kind in all the world. This mine is far away in thenorth of Burma, almost on the Chinese border. They had first to buildeighty miles of railroad through the jungle and over two ranges ofmountains, a sufficient feat of engineering in itself, and then tocreate and organize at the end of this line everything pertaining to agreat mining plant. Thirty thousand men were employed in establishingthe mine. 

Altogether Hoover and his associates had in their employment, in thevarious mining undertakings under way in 1914, about 175, 000 men, andthe annual mineral output of the mines being handled by them was worthas much as the total annual output of all the mines in California. Andpractically all of these successful mines had been made out ofunsuccessful ones. For Hoover really developed a new profession inconnection with mining; a profession of making good mines out of badones, of making bankrupt mining concerns solvent, not by manipulation onthe stock exchange but by work in the earth, in the mills, in the mineoffices. He works with materials, not pieces of paper. It takes him fromthree to five years to bring a dead mine to life; the mine must havemineral in it, to be sure, to start with, but he does all the rest. Thatlittle matter of having mineral in it is the whole thing, you may think. But if you do, you must think again. The history of mining is more ahistory of how mines with mineral in them have not succeeded in becomingmines where the mineral could be profitably got out of them, than of howsuch mines have succeeded. A successful mine is infinitely more than ahole in the ground with mineral at its bottom. It is railroads andsteamers, mills, housing for men, men themselves, organization, system, skill, brains, all-around human capacity. Herbert Hoover is a greatminer because he is--I say it bluntly and not from any blindhero-worship--a great man. 

If he is, he can do more than mine greatly; he can do other thingsgreatly. Well, he can, and he has done them. We come to that part of hisstory now, the part that begins when the World War began, when theworld saw with amazement that grew into ever greater amazement anunknown miner, that is, unknown except to other miners, calmly do thingsthat only great men can do. But we who know now the story of the boy andthe man of the years before the war are not so much amazed. We know thathe is the kind of man, who had had the kind of experience, the kind ofworld education, who with opportunity can do things the world callsgreat and be the great man. But just for a few minutes before we beginwith August, 1914, the time when Herbert Hoover began a new chapter inhis work because the world had begun a new epoch in its history, let ushave a glimpse of this man outside of his mines and his offices. Let ussee him in his home, with his family, with his books if he has any, andwith his friends of whom he has many. 

His two children, Herbert and Allan, were born in 1903 and 1907respectively. Living first in apartments, the Hoovers felt that they andthe boys and the dog Rags needed more room, or perhaps, better, different kind of room, room for an energetic family of Americans togrow up in Western American fashion, as far as this could be compassedin London. And so they found, farther west, in a short street just offKensington High Street and close to Kensington Gardens, a roomy oldhouse with a garden with real trees in it and some grass andflower-beds. It had been built long before by somebody who liked room, and then rebuilt, or at least made over and added to, by Montin Conway, the Alpinist and author. For generations it had been called "The RedHouse, " a name that became in the succeeding years more and more widelyknown to Americans living in, coming to, or passing through London, forit became a well-known house of American foregathering. 

I knew it first in 1912 when I was doing some work in the British MuseumLibrary. The bedroom to which my wife and I were shown was inhabitedalready by a happy and very vocal family of little Javanese seed birdsand green parrakeets, a part of the boys' menagerie which had to findrefuge from the other animals already housed in their adjoining rooms. Out in the garden there were pigeons fluttering in and out of a cote, and hens solemnly inspecting the newly-seeded flower-beds. A big silverPersian cat, and a smaller yellow Siamese one regularly attendedbreakfasts, and Rags irregularly attended everything. The cats were Mr. Hoover's favorites. He liked to have one on his lap as he talked. 

There were bookshelves in all of the rooms, and I noted that the owner, however many the guests had been, or long the evening, never went up tobed without a book in his hand. I came later to know how fixed thisnight-reading habit had become, for in the Belgian relief years when wehad frequently to cross the perilous North Sea together on our way fromThames-mouth to Holland or back in one of the little Dutch boats whichused to run across twice a week until most of the boats had been blownup by floating mines, Hoover used always to fix an electric pocket lampor a stub of a candle to the edge of his bunk and read for a while afterturning in. He has had little time for reading in daytime, but yet hehas read enormously. It is this night-reading that explains it. 

The shelves in "The Red House" contained many books about geology andmining and metallurgy. But they contained many others as well. Especially were they burdened with books on economics and politicalscience. And they bore lighter loads of stories. Sherlock Holmes wasthere _in extenso_. The books on civics and economics and theories offinance were well thumbed and some of them margined with roughlypenciled notes. I should say they had been studied. A frequent eveningvisitor, who came by preference when there had been no guests at dinner, was a well-known brilliant student of finance and economics, formerlyeditor of the best-known English financial weekly and now editor of avery liberal, not to say radical, weekly of his own. He and Hoover heldlong disquisition together, each having clear-cut ideas of his own andglad to try them out on the keen intelligence of the other. As a merebiologist, whose little knowledge was more of the domestic economy ofthe four and six-footed inhabitants of earth than of the social scienceand politics of the bipedal lords of creation, my rôle was chiefly thatof fascinated listener. 

Although he likes books and even likes writing, Hoover makes no claimsto authorship himself. Nevertheless he has found time to put somethingof his knowledge, based on firsthand experience of the fundamentals anddetails of mining geology, and mining methods and organization, into abook which, under the title of _Principles of Mining_, has been awell-known text for students of mining engineering since its appearancein 1909. The book is a condensation of a course of lectures given by theauthor partly in Stanford and partly in Columbia University. Although itcontains an unusual amount of original matter and old knowledgeoriginally treated for the kind of book it professes to be, namely acompact manual of approved mining practice, the author's preface is amodel of modest appraisement of his work. One of its paragraphs simplydemands quotation:

 "The bulk of the material presented [in this book] is the common heritage of the profession, and if any may think there is insufficient reference to previous writers, let him endeavor to find to whom the origin of our methods should be credited. The science has grown by small contributions of experience since, or before, those unnamed Egyptian engineers, whose works prove their knowledge of many fundamentals of mine engineering six thousand eight hundred years ago. If I have contributed one sentence to the accumulated knowledge of a thousand generations of engineers or have thrown one new ray of light on the work, I shall have done my share. "

In the latter chapters of the book Hoover, having devoted the earlierchapters to technical methods, treats of the administrative andfinancial phases of mining. The last chapter is devoted to the"character, training, and obligations of the mining engineeringprofession" in which he sets up a standard of professional ethics forthe engineer of the very highest degree and reveals clearly his owngenuinely philanthropic attitude toward his fellow men. In thediscussion of mining administration there is a concise but illuminatingtreatment of the subject of labor unions. After discussing contract workand bonus systems he says:

 "There is another phase of the labor question which must be considered, and that is the general relations of employer and employed. As corporations have grown, so likewise have the labor unions. In general, they are normal and proper antidotes for unlimited capitalistic organization. 

 "Labor unions usually pass through two phases. First, the inertia of the unorganized labor is too often stirred only by demagogic means. After organization through these and other agencies, the lack of balance in the leaders often makes for injustice in demands, and for violence to obtain them and disregard of agreements entered upon. As time goes on, men become educated in regard to the rights of their employers and to the reflection of these rights in ultimate benefit to labor itself. Then the men, as well as the intelligent employer, endeavor to safeguard both interests. When this stage arrives, violence disappears in favor of negotiation on economic principles, and the unions achieve their greatest real gains. Given a union with leaders who can control the members, and who are disposed to approach differences in a business spirit, there are few sounder positions for the employer, for agreements honorably carried out dismiss the constant harassments of possible strikes. Such unions exist in dozens of trades in this country, and they are entitled to greater recognition. The time when the employer could ride roughshod over his labor is disappearing with the doctrine of _laissez faire_ on which it was founded. The sooner the fact is recognized, the better for the employer. The sooner some miners' unions develop from the first into the second stage, the more speedily will their organizations secure general respect and influence. 

 "The crying need of labor unions, and of some employers as well, is education on a fundamental of economics too long disregarded by all classes and especially by the academic economist. When the latter abandon the theory that wages are the result of supply and demand, and recognize that in these days of international flow of labor, commodities and capital, the real controlling factor in wages is efficiency, then such an educational campaign may become possible. Then will the employer and employee find a common ground on which each can benefit. There lives no engineer who has not seen insensate dispute as to wages where the real difficulty was inefficiency. No administrator begrudges a division with his men of the increased profit arising from increased efficiency. But every administrator begrudges the wage level demanded by labor unions whose policy is decreased efficiency in the false belief that they are providing for more labor. "

Three years before publishing the _Principles of Mining_ Hoover hadcollaborated with a a group of authors in the production of a bookcalled _Economics of Mining_. And three years later, that is in 1912, heprivately published, in sumptuous form, with scrupulously exactreproduction of all of its many curious old woodcuts, an Englishtranslation of Agricola's "De Re Metallica, " the first great treatise onmining and metallurgy, originally published in Latin in 1556, only onehundred years after Gutenberg had printed his first book. "De ReMetallica" was the standard manual of mining and metallurgy for 180years. Georgius Agricola, the author, was really one Georg Bauer, aGerman of Saxony, who, following the custom of his time used forpen-name the literal Latin equivalents of the words of his German name. 

This translation, with its copious added notes of editorial commentary, was the joint work of Hoover and his wife--it was Mrs. Hoover, indeed, who began it--and occupied most of their spare time, especially theirevenings--and sometimes nights!--and Sundays, through nearly five years. They had been for some time collecting and delving in old books on Chinaand the Far East and ancient treatises on early mining and metallurgicalprocesses, and had accumulated an unusual collection of such books, ransacking the old bookshops of the world in their quest. In 1902, Mrs. Hoover while looking up some geology in the British Museum Library, stumbled again on Agricola, which she had forgotten since the days shewas in Dr. Branner's laboratory. By invoking the services of one oftheir friends among the old book dealers the Hoovers soon owned a copy. Caught especially by the many curious and only half understandablepictures in it they began to translate bits from it here and there, especially the explanations of the pictures, and in a little while theywere lost. Nothing would satisfy them short of making a completetranslation. It became an obsession; it was at first their recreation;then because it went very slowly it seemed likely to become their lifeavocation. 

They found an early German translation, which, however, helped themlittle. The translator had apparently known little of mining and not toomuch of Latin. They went to Saxony, to the home of Agricola, hoping toget clues to the difficult things in the book by seeing the region andmines which had been under his eyes while writing it, and findingtraditions of the mining methods of his time. But it was as if a spongehad been passed over Agricola and his days. Fire had swept over thetowns he had known and all the ancient records were gone. The towns, rebuilt, and the mines of which he had written were there, but of himand of the ancient methods he wrote about there was hardly record oreven tradition. They went to Freiberg, where has long existed thegreatest German school of mines, the greatest mining school in theworld, indeed, until the American schools were developed--probably theGermans would not admit even this qualification--and there they found nomore to help them than in Agricola's own towns. In fact, the Freibergprofessors seemed rather irritated by the advent of these searchers forancient mining history, for, as the savants explained, the Freibergmethods and machines were all the most modern in the world; there were"no left-overs, no worn-out rubbish of those inefficient ages" aroundGermany's great school of mines. 

So the Hoovers were little rewarded by their pilgrimage to Germany forhelp in their attempt to resuscitate the Saxon Agricola. But they kepton mining in the big tome and finally, in the fifth year of theirdevoted spare-time labors they had before them a completed translation. 

CHAPTER VII

THE WAR: THE MAN AND HIS FIRST SERVICE

From the first day of the World War Herbert Hoover has been a worldfigure. But much of what he has done and how he has done it is stillonly hazily known, for all the general public familiarity with his nameas head of the Belgian relief work, American food administrator, and, finally, director-general of the American and Allied relief work inEurope after the armistice. The public knows of him as the initiator andhead of great organizations with heart in them, which were successfullymanaged on sound business principles. But it does not yet know thespecial character of Hoover's own personal participation in them, hisoriginal and resourceful contributions to their success, and theformidable obstacles which he had constantly to overcome in making thissuccess possible. There was little that "just happened" whichcontributed to this success; that which did just happen usually happenedwrong. Things came off because ideals were realized by practical method, decision, and driving power. I should like to be able to give the peopleof America a revealing glimpse, by outline and incident, of all this. And I should like, too, to be able to make clear the pure Americanism ofthis man; to disclose the basis of belief in the soundness of theAmerican heart and the practical possibilities of American democracy onwhich Hoover banked in determining his methods and daring his decisions. This belief was the easier to hold inasmuch as he has himself thesoundness of character, the fundamental conviction of democracy, and thetrue philanthropy that he attributes to the average American. He is hisown American model. 

To call Herbert Hoover "English" as a cheap form of derogation, is toreveal a surprising paucity of invention in criticism. It is also unfairto about as American an American as can be found. The translation ofAgricola, an account of which closed our last chapter, stretched overthe long time that it did, not alone because Mr. And Mrs. Hoover couldgive only their spare hours to it, but also because they could turn toit only while they were in London where the needed reference books wereavailable. And their presence in London was so discontinuous that theirtranslating work was much more marked by interruption than continuity. The constant returns to America where there were the New York and SanFrancisco offices to be looked after personally, and the many trips tothe mining properties scattered over the world, limited Hoover's Londondays to a comparatively small number in each year. A London office was, to be sure, necessary between 1902 and 1914 because of the advantage toa world miner of being close to affairs in the world's center of mininginterests. And it was also necessary during Belgian relief days becauseof its unequaled accessibility, by persons or cable, from all the vitalpoints in the complex international structure of the relieforganization. But in all this period of London connection, except in theBelgian relief period, Hoover was a familiar figure in mining circlesin both New York and San Francisco, and although rarely able to cast hisvote in America he maintained a lively interest in American majorgovernmental affairs. 

Hoover kept up, too, an active interest in the development of his _almamater_, Stanford University, and especially in its geology and miningengineering department. In 1908 he was asked to join its faculty, anddelivered a course of lectures on the principles of mining, whichattracted such favorable comment that he repeated it shortly after incondensed form in Columbia University. On the basis of his experience asa university student of mining, and as a successful mine expert andoperator, and as an employer of many other university graduates fromuniversities and technical schools Hoover has formed definiteconclusions as to what the distinctive character of professionaluniversity training for prospective mining engineers should be. Itdiffers from a widely held view. 

He believes that the collegiate training should be less practical thanfundamental. The attempts, more common a decade ago than now perhaps, to convert schools of mining and departments of mining geology intoshops and artificial mines, do not meet with favor in his eyes. Vocational, or professional, training in universities should leave mostof the actual practice to be gained in actual experience and work aftergraduation. If the student is well-grounded in the fundamental scienceof mining and metallurgy, in geology and chemistry and physics andmechanics, he can quickly pick up the routine methods of practice. Andhe can do more. He can understand their _raison d'être_, and he canmodify and adapt them to the varying conditions under which they must beapplied. He can, in addition, if he has any originality of mind at all, devise new methods, discover new facts of mining geology--the interiorof the earth is by no means a read book as yet--and add not only hisnormal quota of additional wealth to the world, as a routine worker, butan increment of as yet unrealized possibilities, as an originalinvestigator. In Hoover's own choice of assistants he has selected amongmen fresh from the universities or technical schools those who have hadthoroughly scientific, as contrasted with much technical, or so-calledpractical, training. 

His interest in universities and university administration and methodshas always been intense. It has been reciprocated, if his honorarydegrees from a dozen American colleges and universities can be assumedto be evidence of this. In 1912 he was made a trustee of Stanford andfrom the beginning of this trusteeship until now he has taken an activepart in the university management, giving it the full benefit of hisconstructive service. His most recent activity in this connection hasconcerned itself with the needed increase and standardization of facultysalaries so that for each grade of faculty position there is assured atleast a living minimum of salary. He was the originating figure andprincipal donor of the Stanford Union, a general club-house for studentsand faculty, which adds materially to the comfort of home-wanderingalumni and to the democratic life of the University. In all the greatUniversity plant there was no place for a common social meeting-groundfor faculty, alumni, and undergraduates. The Union provided it. IfStanford did much for Hoover in the days when he was one of itsstudents, he has loyally repaid his obligation. 

But all of these accounts of Hoover's various activities still leaveunanswered many questions concerning the more intimate personalcharacteristics of the man to whom the World War came in August, 1914, with its special call for service. He was then just forty years old, known to mining engineers everywhere and to the alumni and faculty andfriends of Stanford University and to a limited group of businessacquaintances and personal friends, but with a name then unknown to theworld at large. Today no name is more widely known. Today millions ofEuropeans call him blessed; millions of Americans call him great. My ownbelief is that he and his work did more to save Europe from completeanarchy after the war than any other influence exerted on its peoplefrom the outside, and that without it there was no other sufficientinfluence either outside or inside which would have prevented thisanarchy. 

Hoover's kinds of work are many, but his recreations are few. His chiefform of exercise--if it is exercise--is motoring. He does not playoutdoor games; no golf, tennis, but little walking. He has no system ofkicking his legs about in bed or going through calisthenics on rising. And yet he keeps in very good physical condition, at least he keeps insufficiently good condition to do several men's days' work every day. Hehas a theory about this which he practices, and which he occasionallyexplains briefly to those who remonstrate with him about his neglect ofexercise. "You have to take exercise, " he says, "because you overeat. Ido not overeat, and therefore I do not need exercise. " It sounds verysimple and conclusive; and it seems to work--in his case. 

He likes social life, but not society life. He enjoys company but hewants it to mean something. He has little small talk but plenty ofsignificant talk. He saves time by cutting out frills, both business andsocial. His directness of mental approach to any subject is expressed inhis whole manner: his immediate attack in conversation on the essenceof the matter, his few words, his quick decisions. He can make thesedecisions quickly because he has clear policies to guide him. I recallbeing asked by him to come to breakfast one morning at Stanford after hehad been elected trustee, to talk over the matter of faculty standards. His first question to the two or three of us who were there was: What isthe figure below which a professor of a given grade (assistant, associate, or full professor) cannot maintain himself here on a basiswhich will not lower his efficiency in his work or his dignity in thecommunity? We finally agreed on certain figures. "Well, " said Hoover, "that must be the minimum salary of the grade. "

He knows what he wants to do, and goes straight forward toward doing it;but if difficulty too great intervenes--it really has to be verygreat--he withdraws for a fresh start and tries another path. I alwaysthink of him as outside of a circle in the center of which is his goal. He strikes the circle at one spot; if he can get through, well and good. If not he draws away, moves a little around the circumference andstrikes again. This resourcefulness and fertility of method areconspicuous characteristics of him. To that degree he is "diplomatic. "But if there is only one way he fights to the extreme along that way. And those of us who have lived through the difficult, the almostimpossible, days of Belgian relief, food administration, and generalEuropean after-the-war relief, with him, have come to an almostsuperstitious belief in his capacity to do anything possible to humanpower. 

He has a great gift of lucid exposition. His successful argument withLloyd George, who began a conference with him on the Belgian relief workstrongly opposed to it on grounds of its alleged military disadvantagesto the Allies, and closed it by the abrupt statement: "I am convinced;you have my permission, " is a conspicuous example, among many, of hisway of winning adherence to his plans, on a basis of good grounds andlucid and effective presentation of them. He has no voice for speakingto great audiences, no flowers of rhetoric or familiar platitudes forprofessional oratory, but there is no more effective living speaker tosmall groups or conferences around the council table. He is clear andconvincing in speech because he is clear and precise in thinking. He isfertile in plan and constructive in method because he has creativeimagination. 

The first of his war calls to service came just as he was preparing toreturn to America from London where he had brought his family fromCalifornia to spend the school vacation of 1914. Their return passagewas engaged for the middle of August. But the war came on, and with ithis first relief undertaking. It was only the trivial matter--trivial incomparison with his later undertakings--of helping seventy thousandAmerican travelers, stranded at the outbreak of the war, to get home. These people, rich and poor alike, found themselves penniless andhelpless because of the sudden moratorium. Letters of credit, travelers'checks, drafts, all were mere printed paper. They needed real money, hotel rooms, steamer passages, and advice. And there was nobody inLondon, not even the benevolent and most willing but in this respectpowerless American ambassador who could help them. At least thereseemed none until Hoover transferred the "relief" which hadautomatically congested about his private offices in the "city" duringthe first two days to larger headquarters in the Hotel Savoy. Hegathered together all his available money and that of American friendsand opened a unique bank which had no depositors and took in no money, but continuously gave it out against personal checks signed by unknownbut American-looking people on unknown banks in Walla Walla and Fresnoand Grand Rapids and Dubuque and Emporia and New Bedford. And he foundrooms in hotels and passage on steamers, first-class, second-class orsteerage, as happened to be possible. Now on all these checks andpromises to pay, just $250 failed to be realized by the man who took arisk on American honesty to the extent of several hundred thousanddollars. 

Some of the incidents of this "relief" were pathetic, and some werecomic. One day the banker and his staff, which was composed of his wifeand their friends, were startled by the apparition in the front officeof a group of American plains Indians, Blackfeet and Sioux, all in themost Fenimore Cooperish of full Indian dress, feathers and skins, war-paint and tomahawks. They had been part of a Wild West show andmenagerie caught by the war's outbreak in Austria, and had, afterincredible experiences, made their way out, dropping animals and baggageas they progressed, until they had with them only what they had on, which in order to save the most valuable part of their portablefurniture, was their most elaborate costumes. They had got to London, but to do it they had used up the last penny and the last thing theycould sell or pawn except their clothes, which they had to wear to covertheir red skins. Hoover's American bank saw these original Americansoff, with joyful whoopings of gratitude, for Wyoming. 

But the work was not limited to lending the barely necessary funds tothose who wished to borrow. He raised a charitable fund among these samefriends for caring for the really destitute ones until other reliefcould come. This came in the shape of the American Government's "ship ofgold, " the battle-ship _Tennessee_, sent over to the rescue. Hoover wasthen asked by Ambassador Page and the Army officers in charge of theLondon consignment of this gold to persuade his volunteer committee tocontinue their labors during its distribution. With this money availableall who were able to produce proof of American citizenship could begiven whatever was necessary to enable them to reach their own country. 

And then came the next insistent call for help. And in listening to it, and, with swift decision, undertaking to respond to it, Herbert Hooverlaunched himself, without in any degree realizing it, on a career ofpublic service and corresponding abnegation of private business andself-interest, that was to last all through the war and through thearmistice period, and is today still going on. In all this period of warand after-war service he has received no salary from government orrelief organizations but, on the contrary, has given up a large incomeas expert mining engineer and director of mining companies. In addition, he has paid out a large sum for personal expenses incurred inconnection with the work. 

The call was for the relief of Belgium. I know the story of Hoover inhis relation to the relief of Belgium very well because I became one ofhis helpers in it soon after the war began and remained in it until theend. But it is a hard story to tell; there is too much of it. My specialduties were of a kind to keep me constantly in touch with "the Chief, "and I was able to realize, as only a few others were, the load ofnerve-racking responsibility and herculean labor carried by him behindthe more open scene of the public money-gathering, food-buying andtransporting, and daily feeding of the ten million imprisoned people ofoccupied Belgium and France. In the relief of these helpless peoplesHoover put, perhaps for the first time, certainly for the first time onany such enormous scale and with such outstanding success, philanthropyon a basis of what dear old Horace Fletcher, shut up with us in Belgiumduring the Occupation, would permit to be referred to by no other phrasethan the somewhat hackneyed one of "engineering efficiency, " unless wewould use a new word for it which he coined. In fact he used the newword "Hooverizing" as a synonym for efficiency with a heart in it, twoyears before it became familiar in America with another meaning. And Iprefer his meaning of the word to that of the food-saving meaning withwhich we became familiar in Food Administration days. 

CHAPTER VIII

THE RELIEF OF BELGIUM; ORGANIZATION AND DIPLOMATIC DIFFICULTIES

Despite the general popular knowledge that there was a relief of Belgiumand that Hoover was its organizer and directing head, there still seemsto be, if I may judge by the questions often asked me, no very wideknowledge of just why there had to be such relief of Belgium and howHerbert Hoover came to undertake it. A fairly full answer to thesequeries makes a proper introduction to any account, however brief, ofhis participation in this extraordinary part of the history of the war. 

The World War began, as we all most vividly remember, with thesuccessful, although briefly but most importantly delayed invasion ofBelgium. And this invasion resulted in producing very promptly not onlya situation appalling in its immediate realization, but one of evenmore terrifying possibilities for the near future. For through the hazeof the smoke-clouds from burning towns and above the rattle of themachine guns in Dinant and Louvain could be seen the hovering specter ofstarvation and heard the wailing of hungry children. And how the specterwas to be made to pass and the children to hush their cries was soon theproblem of all problems for Belgium. 

Within ten weeks after the first shots of the War all of Belgium exceptthat dreary little stretch of sand and swamp in the northwestern cornerof it that for over four years was all of the Kingdom of Belgium underthe rule of King Albert, was not only in the hands of a brutal enemy butwas enclosed and shut away from the rest of the world by a rigid ring ofsteel. Not only did the Germans maintain a ring of bayonets andelectrified wire fence--this latter along the Belgian-Dutchfrontier--around it, but the Allies, recognizing that for all practicalpurposes, Occupied Belgium was now German territory, had to include itin their blockade of the German coast. Thus no persons or supplies couldpass in or out of Belgium except under extraordinary circumstances, such as a special permission from both Germany and Allies or a daringand almost impossible blockade-running. 

Now Belgium is not, as America is, self-sustaining as to food. If anenemy could completely blockade us, we could go on living indefinitelyon the food we produce. But Belgium could not; nor could England orFrance or Italy. Belgium is not primarily an agricultural country, despite the fact that what agriculture it does have is the mostintensive and highly developed in Europe. It is an industrial country, the most highly industrialized in Europe, with only one sixth of itspeople supporting themselves by agriculture. It depends upon constantimportations for fifty per cent of its general food needs andseventy-five per cent of its needed food-grains. 

The ring of steel about Belgium, then, if not promptly broken, plainlymeant starvation. The imprisoned Belgians saw, with the passing days, their little piles of stored food supplies get lower. They hadimmediately begun rationing themselves. The Government and cities hadtaken possession of such small food stocks as had not been seized by theGermans for their armies, and were treating them as a common supply forall the people. They distributed this food as well as they could duringa reign of terror with all railways and motors controlled by theirconquerors. They lived in those first weeks on little food but muchhope. For were not their powerful protectors, the French and English, very quickly going to drive the invaders back and out of their country?But it soon became apparent that it was the Allied armies that werebeing driven not only out of Belgium but farther and farther back intoFrance. So the Allies could do nothing, and the Germans would do nothingto help them. Indeed, everything the Germans did was to make mattersworse. There was only one hope; they must have food from outsidesources, and to do this they must have recourse to some powerful neutralhelp. 

Belgium, and particularly Brussels, has always had its American colony. And it was to these Americans that Belgium turned for help. Many membersof the colony left as soon after the war began as they could, but some, headed by Minister Brand Whitlock, remained. When the Belgian court leftBrussels for Antwerp, and later for Le Havre, part of the diplomaticcorps followed it, but a smaller part stayed in Brussels to occupy forthe rest of the war a most peculiar position. Mr. Whitlock elected tostay. It was a fortunate election for the Belgians. Also it meant manythings, most of them interesting, for the sympathetic Minister. 

When the American expatriates in Belgium who wished to leave after thewar began, applied to Minister Whitlock for help to become repatriates, he called to his assistance certain American engineers and business menthen resident in Brussels, notably Messrs. Daniel Heineman, MillardShaler, and William Hulse. He also had the very effective help of hisFirst Secretary of Legation, Mr. Hugh Gibson, now our Minister toPoland. These men were able to arrange the financial difficulties of thefleeing Americans despite closed banks, disappearing currency, andgeneral financial paralysis. When this was finished they readily turnedto the work of helping the Belgians, the more readily because they werethe right sort of Americans. 

Their first effort, in coöperation with the burgomaster of Brussels anda group of Brussels business men, was the formation of a CentralCommittee of Assistance and Provisioning, under the patronage of theMinisters of the United States and Spain (Mr. Whitlock and the Marquesde Villalobar). This committee was first active in the internal measuresfor relief already referred to, but soon finding that the shipping aboutover the land of the rapidly disappearing food stocks of the country andthe special assistance of the destitute and out-of-work--the destructionof factories and the cessation of the incoming of raw materials hadalready thrown tens of thousands of men out of employment--must bereplaced by a more radical relief, this committee resolved to approachthe Germans for permission to attempt to bring in food supplies fromoutside the country. 

Burgomaster Max had already written on September 7 to Major GeneralLuettwitz, the German Military Governor of Brussels, asking forpermission to import foodstuffs through the Holland-Belgium border, andthe city authorities of Charleroi had also begun negotiation with theGerman authorities in their province (Hainaut) to the same end, butlittle attention had been paid to these requests. Therefore theAmericans of the committee decided, as neutrals, to take up personallywith the German military authorities the matter of arranging imports. 

A general permission for the importation of foodstuffs into Belgium byway of the Dutch frontier was finally obtained from the Germanauthorities in Belgium, together with their guarantee that all suchimported food would be entirely free from requisition by the Germanarmy. Also, a special permission was accorded to Mr. Shaler to go toHolland, and, if necessary, to England to try to arrange for obtainingand transporting to Belgium certain kinds and quantities of foodstuffs. But no money could be sent out of Belgium to pay for them, except afirst small amount which Mr. Shaler was allowed to take with him. 

In Holland, Mr. Shaler found the Dutch government quite willing to allowfoodstuffs to pass through Holland for Belgium, but it asked him to tryto arrange to find the supplies in England. Holland already saw that shewould need to hold all of her food supplies for her own people. SoShaler went on to England. Here he tried to interest influentialAmericans in Belgium's great need, and, through Edgar Rickard, anAmerican engineer, he was introduced to Herbert Hoover. 

This brings us to Hoover's connection with the relief of Belgium. Butthere was necessary certain official governmental interest on the partof America and the Allies before anybody could really do much ofanything. Hoover therefore introduced Shaler to Dr. Page, the AmericanAmbassador, a man of heart, decision, and prompt action. This was onOctober 7. A few days before, on September 29, to be exact, Shalertogether with Hugh Gibson, the Secretary of the American Legation inBrussels who had followed Shaler to London, had seen Count Lalaing, theBelgian minister to England, and explained to him the situation insideof Belgium. They also handed him a memorandum pointing out that therewas needed a permit from the British Government allowing the immediateexportation of about 2, 500 tons of wheat, rice, beans, and peas toBelgium. Mr. Shaler had brought with him from Brussels money provided bythe Belgian _Comité Central_ sufficient to purchase about half thisamount of foodstuffs. 

The Belgian Minister transmitted the request for a permit to the BritishGovernment on October 1. On October 6 he received a reply which he, inturn, transmitted to the American Ambassador in London, Mr. Page. Thisreply from the British Government gave permission to export foodstuffsfrom England through Holland into Belgium, under the German guaranteesthat had previously been obtained by Mr. Heineman's committee, on thecondition that the American Ambassador in London, or Americansrepresenting him, would ship the foodstuffs from England, consigned tothe American Minister in Brussels; that each sack of grain should beplainly marked accordingly, and that the foodstuffs should bedistributed under American control solely to the Belgian civilpopulation. 

On October 7, the day that Hoover had taken Shaler to the AmericanEmbassy and they had talked matters over with Mr. Page, the Ambassadorcabled to Washington outlining the British Government's authorizationand suggesting that, if the American Government was in accord with thewhole matter as far as it had gone, it should secure the approval of theGerman Government. After a lapse of four or five days, Ambassador Pagereceived a reply from Washington in which it was stated that theAmerican Government had taken the matter up with Berlin on October 8. 

After an exchange of telegrams between Brussels, London, Washington, andBerlin, Ambassador Page was informed on October 18 by Ambassador Gerard, then American Ambassador in Berlin, that the German Government agreed tothe arrangement, and the following day confirmation of this was receivedfrom Washington. 

Sometime during the course of these negotiations Ambassador Page and theBelgian authorities formally asked Hoover to take on the task oforganizing the relief work, if the diplomatic arrangements came to asatisfactory conclusion. His sympathetic and successful work in lookingafter the stranded Americans, all done under the appreciative eyes ofthe American Ambassador, had recommended him as the logical head of thenew and larger humanitarian effort. Hoover had agreed, and his firstformal step, taken on October 10, in organizing the work, was to enlistthe existing American Relief Committee, whose work was then practicallyover, in the new undertaking. He amalgamated its principal membershipwith the Americans in Brussels, and on October 13, issued in the name ofthis committee an appeal to the American people to consolidate allBelgian relief funds and place them in the hands of the committee fordisposal. At the same time Minister Whitlock cabled an appeal toPresident Wilson to call on America for aid in the relief of Belgium. 

Between October 10 and 16 it was determined by Ambassador Page and Mr. Hoover that it was desirable to set up a wholly new neutralorganization. Hoover enlisted the support of Messrs. John B. White, Millard Hunsiker, Edgar Rickard, J. F. Lucey, and Clarence Graff, allAmerican engineers and business men then in London, and these men, together with Messrs. Shaler and Hugh Gibson, thereupon organized, andon October 22 formally launched, "The American Commission for Relief inBelgium, " with Hoover as its active head, with the title of chairman, Ambassador Page and Ministers Van Dyke and Whitlock, in The Hague andBrussels, respectively, were the organization's honorary chairmen. A fewdays afterward, at the suggestion of Minister Whitlock, Señor Don Merrydel Val, the Spanish Ambassador in London, and Marques de Villalobar, the Spanish Minister in Brussels, both of whom had been consulted in thearrangements in Belgium and London, were added to the list of honorarychairmen. And, a little later, there were added the names of Mr. Gerard, the American Ambassador at Berlin, Mr. Sharp, our Ambassador at Paris, and Jongkeer de Weede, the Dutch Minister to the Belgian Government atLe Havre where it had taken refuge. At the same time the name of theCommission was modified by dropping from it the word "American" indeference to the official connection of the Spanish diplomats with it. The new organization thus became styled "The Commission for Relief inBelgium, " which remained its official title through its existence. Thisname was promptly reduced, in practical use by its members, withcharacteristic American brevity, to "C. R. B. , " which, pronounced"tsay-er-bay, " was also soon the one most widely used in Belgium andOccupied France by Belgian, French, and Germans alike. 

I have given this account of the organization and status of theCommission in so much detail because it reveals its imposing officialappearance which was of inestimable value to it in carrying on itsrunning diplomatic difficulties all through the war. The officialpatronage of the three neutral governments, American, Spanish and Dutch, gave us great strength in facing the repeated assaults on our existenceand the constant interference with our work by German officials andofficers. I have earlier used the phrase "satisfactory conclusion ofdiplomatic arrangements. " There never was, in the whole history of theCommission, any satisfactory conclusion of such arrangements; there weresufficiently satisfactory conditions to enable the work to go oneffectively but there was always serious diplomatic difficulty. Ministers Whitlock and Villalobar, our "protecting Ministers" inBrussels, had to bear much of the brunt of the difficulties, but theCommission itself grew to have almost the diplomatic standing of anindependent nation, its chairman and the successive resident directorsin Brussels acting constantly as unofficial but accepted intermediariesbetween the Allies and the Germans. 

The "C. R. B. " was organized. It had its imposing list of diplomaticpersonages. It had a chairman and secretary and treasurer and all therest. But to feed the clamoring Belgians it had to have food. To havefood it had to have money, much money, and with this money food in largequantity had to be obtained in a world already being ransacked by thepurchasing agents of France and England seeking the stocks that thesecountries knew would soon be necessary to meet the growing demands oftheir armies and civilians drawn from production into the great game ofdestruction. Once obtained, the food had to be transported overseas andthrough the mine-strewn Channel to Rotterdam, the nearest open port ofBelgium, and thence by canals and railways into the starving country andits use there absolutely restricted to the civil population. Finally, the feeding of Belgium had to begin immediately and arrangements had tobe made to keep it up indefinitely. The war was not to be a short one;that was already plain. It was up to Hoover to get busy, very busy. 

The first officials of the C. R. B. And all the men who came into itlater, agree on one thing. We relied confidently on our chairman toorganize, to drive, to make the impossible things possible. We did ourbest to carry out what it was our task to do. If we had ideas andsuggestions they were welcomed by him. If good they were adopted. Butprincipally we worked as we were told for a man who worked harder thanany of us, and who planned most of the work for himself and all of us. 

He had the vision. He saw from the first that the relief of Belgiumwould be a large job; it proved to be a gigantic one. He saw that allAmerica would have to be behind us; indeed that the whole humanitarianworld would have to back us up, not merely in funds but in moralsupport. For the military logic of the situation was only half with us;it was half against us. The British Admiralty, trying to blockadeGermany completely, saw in the feeding of ten million Belgians andFrench in German-occupied territory a relief to the occupiers who would, by the accepted rules of the game, have to feed these people from theirown food supplies. The fact that the Germans declared from the firstthat they never would do this and in every test proved that they wouldnot, was hard to drive home to the Admiralty and to many amateur Englishstrategists safely far from the sufferings of the hungering Belgians. 

On the other hand other influential governmental officials, notably thePrime Minister and the heads of the Foreign Office, saw in the Alliedhelp for these people the only means to prevent them from saving theirlives in the one other way possible to them, that is, by working for theGermans. Fathers of families, however patriotic, cannot see their wivesand children starve to death when rescue is possible. And the Germansoffered this rescue to them all the time. Never a day in all the fouryears when German placards offering food and money for their work didnot stare in the faces the five hundred thousand idle skilled Belgianworkmen and the other hundreds of thousands of unskilled ones shut up inthe country. 

Germany, also, had two opinions about Belgian relief. There were zuReventlow and his great party of jingoes who cried from beginning toend: Kick out these American spies; make an end of thissoft-heartedness. Here we have ten million Allied hostages in our hands. Let us say to England and France and the refugee Belgian cabinet at LeHavre: Your people may eat what they now have; it will last them a monthor two; then they shall not have a mouthful from Germany or anywhereelse unless you give up the blockade and open the ports of Belgium andGermany alike to incoming foods. 

On the other side were von Bissing and his German governing staff inBelgium, together with most of the men of the military General Staff atGreat Headquarters. Von Bissing tried, in his heavy, stupid way, toplacate the Belgians; that was part of his policy. So he would offerthem food--always for work--with one hand, while he gave them a slapwith the other. He wanted Belgium to be tranquil. He did not want tohave openly to machine-gun starving mobs in the cities, however manyunfortunates he allowed to be quietly carried out to the _Tir National_at gray dawn to stand for one terrible moment before the ruthless firingsquad. And the hard-headed men of the General Staff knew that starvingpeople do not lie down quietly and die. All the northern lines ofcommunication between the west front and Germany ran through thecountries of these ten million imprisoned French and Belgians. Evenwithout arms they could make much trouble for the guards of bridges andrailways in their dying struggles. At least it would require manysoldiers to kill them fast enough to prevent it. And the soldiers, allof them, were needed in the trenches. In addition the German GeneralStaff earnestly desired and hoped up to the very last that America wouldkeep out of the war. And these extraordinary Americans in Belgium seemedto have all of America behind them; that is what the great reliefpropaganda and the imposing list of diplomatic personages on the C. R. B. List were partly for. Hoover had realized from the beginning whatthis would mean. "No, " said the higher German officials, "it will not doto interfere too much with these quixotic Americans. "

But the Germans, most of them at least, never really understood us. Oneday as Hoover was finishing a conversation with the head of the GermanPass-Zentral in Brussels, trying to arrange for a less vexing anddelaying method of granting passes for the movements of our men, theGerman officer said: "Well, now tell me, Herr Hoover, as man to man, what do you get out of all this? You are not doing all this fornothing, surely. " And a little later, at a dinner at the GreatHeadquarters to which I had been invited by one of the chief officers ofthe General Staff, he said to me, as we took our seats: "Well, how'sbusiness?" I could only tell him that it was going as well as anybusiness could that made no profits for anybody in it. 

It was impressive to see Hoover in the crises. We expected a majorcrisis once a month and a minor one every week. We were rarelydisappointed in our expectations. I may describe, for illustration, sucha major crisis, a very major one, which came in August, 1916. TheCommission had been making a hard fight all summer for two imperativelyneeded concessions from the Germans. We wanted the General Staff to turnover to us for the civil population a larger proportion of the 1916native crop of Occupied France than we had had from the 1915 crop. Andwe wanted some special food for the 600, 000 French children in additionto the regular program imported from overseas. We sorely needed freshmeat, butter, milk and eggs for them and we had discovered that Hollandwould sell us certain quantities of these foods. But we had to have thespecial permission of both the Allies and Germany to bring them in. 

Hoover, working in London, obtained the Allied consent. But the Germanswere holding back. I was pressing the General Staff at GreatHeadquarters at Charleville and von Bissing's government at Brussels. Their reasons for holding back finally appeared. Germany looked onHolland as a storehouse of food which might some time, in some way, despite Allied pressure on the Dutch Government, become available toGermany. Although the French children were suffering terribly, andceasing all growth and development for lack of the tissue-buildingfoods, the Germans preferred not to let us help them with the Dutch foodbut to cling to their long chance of sometime getting it for themselves. 

Hoover came over to Brussels and, together, we started for Berlin. Wediscovered von Bissing's chief political adviser, Baron von der Lanckenand his principal assistant, Dr. Rieth, on the same train. These werethe two men who, after the armistice, proposed to Hoover by wirethrough our Rotterdam office, to arrange with him for getting food intoGermany and received by prompt return wire through the sameintermediary: "Mr. Hoover's personal compliments and request to go tohell. If Mr. Hoover has to deal with Germany for the Allies it will atleast not be with such a precious pair of scoundrels. "

When these gentlemen, who had helped greatly in making our work and lifein Belgium very difficult, saw us, they were somewhat confused butfinally told us they were called to Berlin for a great conference on therelief work. When we reached Berlin we found three important officersfrom Great Headquarters in the Hotel Adlon. Two of them we knew well;they had always been fairly friendly to us. The third was General vonSauberzweig, military governor of Brussels at the time of Miss Cavell'sexecution, and the man of final responsibility for her death. As aresult of the excitement in Berlin because of the world-wide indignationover the Cavell affair he had been removed from Brussels _by promotion_to the Quartermaster Generalship at Great Headquarters!

The Berlin conference of important representatives of all the governmentdepartments and the General Staff had been called as a result of theinfluence of zu Reventlow and the jingoes who wished to break down theBelgian relief. We were not invited; we just happened to be there. Wecould not attend the conference, but we could work on the outside. Wewent to Ambassador Gerard for advice. The Allies were pressing theCommission to get the concessions on the 1916 native crop. Our effort toget the food for the children was entirely our own affair. Mr. Gerardadvised Hoover to rely entirely on the Commission's reputation forhumanity and neutrality; to keep the position of the Allies wholly outof the discussion. But this was indeed only the confirmation by a wisediplomat of the idea of the situation that Hoover already had. 

Most of the conference members were against the relief. At the end ofthe first session Lancken and one of the Headquarters officers told usthat things were almost certainly going wrong. They advised Hoover togive up. What he did was to work harder. He forced the officials of theForeign Office and Interior to hear him. He pictured the horribleconsequences to the entire population of Belgium and Occupied France ofbreaking off the relief, and painted vividly what the effect would be onthe neutral world, America, Spain, and Holland in very sight and soundof the catastrophe. He pleaded and reasoned--and won! It was harder thanhis earlier struggle with Lloyd-George, already entirely well inclinedby feelings of humanity, but in each case he had saved the relief. Notonly did the conference not destroy the work, but by continued pressurelater at Brussels and Great Headquarters we obtained the agreements foran increase of the civilian allotment out of the 1916 French crop andfor the importation of some of the Dutch food for the 600, 000 sufferingchildren. It was a characteristic Hooverian achievement in the face ofimminent disaster. 

Hoover and the C. R. B. Were in Belgium and France for but one purpose, to feed the people, to save a whole nation from starvation. To them thepolitical aspects of the work were wholly incidental, but they couldnot be overlooked. So with the Germans disagreeing among themselves, itwas the impossibility of France's letting the two and a half millionpeople of her own shut up in the occupied territory starve under anycircumstances possible to prevent, and the humanitarian feeling of GreatBritain and America, which Hoover, by vivid propaganda, never allowed tocool, and the strength of which he never let the diplomats and army andnavy officials lose sight of, that turned the scale and enabled theCommission for Relief in Belgium to continue its work despite allassault and interference. Over and over again it looked like the end, and none of us, even the sanguine Chief, was sure that the next daywould not be the last. But the last day did not come until the last dayof need had passed, and never from beginning to end did a single communeof all the five thousand of Occupied Belgium and France fail of itsdaily bread. It was poor bread sometimes, even for war bread, and therewere many tomorrows that promised to be breadless, but no one of thosetomorrows ever came. 

CHAPTER IX

THE RELIEF OF BELGIUM; SCOPE AND METHODS

I have dropped the thread of my tale. Our narrative of the organizationof the Commission for Relief in Belgium had brought us only to the timewhen the Commission was actually ready to work, and we have leaped tothe very end of those bitter hard four years. We must make a freshstart. 

First, then, as to money. And to understand about the money it isnecessary to understand the two-phased character of the relief ofBelgium. There was the phase of _ravitaillement_, the constantprovisioning of the whole land; and the phase of _secours_, the specialcare of the destitute and the ill and the children. 

The ring of steel did not immediately make beggars of all the Belgiansenclosed within it. Many of them still had money. But, as I have alreadysaid, the Germans would not allow any of this money to go out. It couldbuy only what was in Belgium. And as Belgium could produce only abouthalf the food it needed to keep its people alive, and only one fourth ofthe particular kind of foodstuffs that were necessary for bread, and asit was arranged, by control of the mills and bakeries, that thesebread-grains should be evenly distributed among all the people, it meantthat even though banker this or baron that might have money to buy muchmore, he could really buy, with all his money, only one fourth as muchbread as he needed. There had to be, in other words, a constant bringingin of enough wheat and flour to supply three fourths of the bread-needsof the whole country, and another large fraction of the necessary fatsand milk and rice and beans and other staples. This was the_ravitaillement_. 

But even with the food thus brought in there were many persons, and asthe days and months and years passed they increased to very many, whohad no money to buy this food. They were the destitute, the families ofthe hundreds of thousands of men thrown out of work by the destructionof the factories and the cessation of all manufacturing and commerce. And there were the Government employees, the artists, the lace-makingwomen and girls, and a whole series of special kinds of wage-earners, with all wages suddenly stopped. To all these the food had to be givenwithout pay. This was the _secours_. 

To obtain the food from America and Argentina and India and whereverelse it could be found a constant supply of money in huge amounts wasnecessary. Hoover realized from the beginning that no income fromcharity alone could provide it. His first great problem was to assurethe Commission of means for the general _ravitaillement_. He solved theproblem but it took time. In the meanwhile the pressure for immediaterelief was strong. He began to buy on the credit of a philanthropicorganization which had so far no other assets than the private means ofits chairman and his friends. 

The money, as finally arranged for, came from government subventionsabout equally divided between England and France, in the form of loansto the Belgian Government, put into the hands of the Commission. Laterwhen the United States came into the war, this country made all theadvances. Altogether nearly a billion dollars were spent by the C. R. B. For supplies and their transportation, at an overhead expense of alittle more than one half of one per cent. This low overhead is a recordin the annals of large philanthropic undertaking, and is a measure ofthe voluntary service of the organization and of its able management. 

For the _secours_, fifty million dollars worth of gifts in money, foodand clothing were collected by the Commission from the charitable peopleof America and Great Britain. The Belgians themselves inside thecountry, the provinces, cities, and well-to-do individuals, added, underthe stimulus of the tragic situation and under the direction of thegreat Belgian National Committee, hundreds of millions of francs to the_secours_ funds. Also the Commission and the Belgian National Committeearranged that a small profit should be charged on all the food sold tothe Belgians who could pay for it, and this profit, which ran intomillions of dollars, was turned into the funds for benevolence. Allthis created an enormous sum for the _secours_, which was the real"relief, " as benevolence. And this enormous sum was needed, for by theend of the war nearly one-half of all the imprisoned population of overseven million Belgians and two and a half million French were receivingtheir daily bread wholly or partly on charity. Actually one half of theinhabitants of the great city of Antwerp were at one time in the dailysoup and bread lines. 

Of the money and goods for benevolence that came from outside sourcesmore than one third came from England and the British Dominions--NewZealand gave more money per capita for Belgian relief than any othercountry--while the rest came chiefly from the United States, a smallfraction coming from other countries. The relief collections in GreatBritain were made by a single great benevolent organization called the"National Committee for Relief in Belgium. " This Committee, under thechairmanship of the Lord Mayor of London and the active management ofSir William Goode as secretary and Sir Arthur Shirley Benn astreasurer, conducted an impressive continuous campaign of propaganda andsolicitation of funds with the result of obtaining about $16, 000, 000with which to purchase food and clothing for the Belgian destitute. 

But in the United States the C. R. B. Itself directly managed thecampaign for charity, using its New York office as organizing andreceiving headquarters. Part of the work was carried by definitelyorganized state committees in thirty-seven states and by scattered localcommittees in almost every county and large city in the country. Ohio, for example, had some form of local organization in eighty out of theeighty-eight counties in the state, and California had ninety localcounty and city committees all reporting to the central committee. 

The American campaign was different from the English one in that insteadof asking for money alone, the call was made, at first, chiefly foroutright gifts of food, the Commission offering to serve, in connectionwith this benevolence, as a great collecting, transporting anddistributing agency. This resulted in the accumulation of largequantities of foodstuffs of a wide variety of kinds, much of it in thenature of delicacies and luxuries and most of it put up in smallpackages. Tens of thousands of these packages were sent over to Belgium, but the cry came back from the Commission's workers there that food inthis shape was very difficult to handle in any systematic way. It wasquickly evident that what was really needed was large consignments inbulk of a few kinds of staple and concentrated foods, which could beshipped in large lots to the various principal distribution centers inBelgium and thence shipped in smaller lots to the secondary or localcenters, and there handed out on a definite ration plan. 

A number of states very early concentrated their efforts on the loadingand sending of "state food ships. " California sent the _Camino_ inDecember, 1914, and in the same month Kansas sent the _Hannah_ loadedwith flour contributed by the millers of the state. In January andMarch, 1915, two Massachusetts relief ships, the _Harpalyce_ (sunk bytorpedo or mine on a later relief voyage) and _Lynorta_, sailed. Oregonand California together sent the _Cranley_ in January, 1915, loaded withfood and clothing, and several other similar state ships were sent atlater dates. A gift from the Rockefeller Foundation of a million dollarswas used to load wholly or in part five relief ships, and the "Millers'Belgian Relief" movement organized and carried through by the editor ofthe Northwestern Millers, Mr. W. C. Edgar, resulted in the contributionof a full cargo of flour, valued at over $450, 000, which leftPhiladelphia for Rotterdam in February, 1915, in the steamer _SouthPoint_. The cargo was accompanied by the organizer of the charity, whowas able to see personally the working of the methods of the C. R. B. Inside of Belgium and the actual distribution of his own relief cargo. His Good Samaritan ship was sunk by a German submarine on her returntrip, but fortunately the philanthropist was not on her. He returned bya passenger liner, and was able to tell the people of America what wasneeded in Belgium, and what America was doing and could further do tohelp meet the need. 

Later, when it became necessary to obtain food from other primarymarkets in addition to those of America, appeal was specifically madefor gifts of money in place of goods. In response to this call variouslarge gifts from wealthy individual donors were made, among them one of$210, 000, another of $200, 000, and several of $100, 000 each, and variouslarge donations came from the efforts of special organizations, notablythe Daughters of the American Revolution, the New York Chamber ofCommerce, the Cardinal Gibbons' Fund from the Catholic children ofAmerica, the Dollar Christmas Fund organized by Mr. Henry Clews, the"Belgian Kiddies, Ltd. , " fund, organized by Hoover's brother miningengineers of the country, and, largest of all, the Literary Digest fundof more than half a million dollars collected by the efforts of Mr. R. J. Cuddihy, editor of the Digest, in sums ranging from a few pennies tothousands of dollars from children and their parents all over the land. 

By far the greater part of the money that came to the Commission throughstate committees or through special organizations, or directly fromindividuals to the New York office, was made up from small sumsrepresenting millions of individual givers. And it was a beautiful andan important thing that it was so. The giving not only helped to saveBelgium from starvation of the body, but it helped to save America fromstarvation of the soul. The incidents, pathetic, inspiring, noble, connected with the giving, gave us tears and smiles and heart thrillsand thanksgiving for the revelation of the human love of humanity inthose neutral days of a distressing pessimism. 

But finding the money and food and clothing was but the first greatproblem for the resourceful C. R. B. Chairman to solve. Next came theserious problem of transportation, both overseas and internal. Shipswere in pressing demand; they constantly grew fewer in number because ofthe submarine sinkings, and yet the Commission had constant need of moreand more. Some way Hoover and his associates of the New York and Londonoffices got what it was necessary to have, but it was only by acontinuous and wearing struggle. Altogether the C. R. B. Delivered sevenhundred and forty full ship cargoes and fifteen hundred part cargoes ofrelief food and clothing into its landing port, Rotterdam. The seventyships under constant charter as a regular C. R. B. Fleet crossed theseas under guarantees from both the Allies and Germany ofnon-molestation by sea raiders or submarines. A few accidents happened, but not more than twenty cargoes were totally or partly lost at sea. Most of the losses came from mines, but a few came from torpedoes firedby German submarines which either did not or would not see the C. R. B. Markings on the ships. The signals were plain--conspicuous fifty-footpennants flying from the mast-heads, great cloth banners stretchingalong the hull on either side, a large house flag, wide deck cloths, andtwo huge red-and-white-striped signal balls eight feet in diameter atthe top of the masts. All these flags and cloths were white, carryingthe Commission's name or initials (C. R. B. ) in great red letters. Despite all these, a few too eager or too brutal submarine commanderslet fly their torpedoes at these ships of mercy. 

Hoover's most serious time in connection with the overseastransportation, and the most critical period as regards supplies in thewhole course of the relief was just after the putting into effect by theGermans, in February, 1917, of the unrestricted submarining of all boatsfound in the so-called prohibited ocean zones. These zones covered allof the waters around the United Kingdom, including all of the EnglishChannel and North Sea. This cut us off entirely from any access toRotterdam from the West or North. But it also cut Holland off. Andbetween our pressure and that of Holland the German authorities finallyarranged for a narrow free, or "safe, " north-about route extending fromthe Dutch coast north to near the Norwegian coast, thence northwest tothe Faroe Islands, and thence west to the Atlantic beyond the barredzone. At one point this "safe" zone was only twenty miles wide betweenthe German and English mine-fields in the North Sea and any ship gettinga few rods across the line either east or west was in great danger frommines and was exposed to being torpedoed without warning. Imagine thestate of mind of a skipper who had not seen the sun for three or fourdays in a North Sea fog, trying to make out his position accuratelyenough by dead reckoning to keep his boat in that "safe" channel. 

But even this generous concession to the Commission and Holland was notarranged until March 15, and in the six weeks intervening betweenFebruary 1 and this time we did not land a single cargo in Rotterdam. Belgium suffered in body and was nearly crazed in mind as we and theBelgian relief heads scraped the very floors of our warehouses for thelast grains of wheat. 

Another almost equally serious interruption in the food deliveries hadoccurred in the preceding summer (July, 1916), when, without a whisperof warning, Governor General von Bissing's government suddenly tied upour whole canal-boat fleet by an order permitting no Belgian-owned canalboat--although chartered by us--to pass out from Belgium into Hollandwithout depositing the full value of the boat in money before crossingthe frontier. The Governor General had reason to fear, he said, thatsome of the boats that went out would not come back, and he was going tolose no Belgian property subject to German seizure without fullcompensation. As the boats were worth, roughly, about $5, 000 each, andwe were using about 500 boats it would have tied up two and a halfmillion dollars of our money to meet this demand, and tied it up inGerman hands! We simply could not do it. So we began negotiations. 

Oh, the innumerable beginnings of negotiations, and oh, the interminableenduring of negotiations, the struggling against form and "system, "against obstinate and cruel delay--for delay in food matters in Belgiumwas always cruel--and sometimes against sheer brutality! How often didwe long to say: Here, take these ten million people and feed them orstarve them as you will! We quit. We can't go on fighting your floatingmines and too eager submarines, your brutal soldiers and more brutalbureaucrats. Live up to your agreements to help us, or at least do notobstruct us; or, if you won't, then formally and officially andpublicly before the world kick us out as your arch-jingo, Reventlow, demands. 

But we could not say it; we could not risk it; it was too certain to bestarving rather than feeding. So we did not say it, but went on with thenegotiations. In this particular case of the canal boats we finallycompromised by putting up the value of five boats. If one did not comeback the Germans were to take out its value and we were to replace themoney so as to keep the pot full. Of course all the boats did come back, and now the Belgians and not the Germans have them. 

Thus, guarded by guarantees and recognition marks, there came regularly, and mostly safely, across wide oceans and through the dangerousmine-strewn Channel or around the Faroe Islands, the rice from Rangoon, corn from Argentina, beans from Manchuria, and wheat and meat and fatsfrom America at the rate of a hundred thousand tons a month through allthe fifty months of the relief. At Rotterdam these precious cargoes wereswiftly transhipped into sealed canal boats--a fleet of 500 of themwith 35 tugs for towing was in service--and hurried on through thecanals of Holland and across the guarded border, and then on to thegreat central depots in Belgium, and from there again by smaller canalboats and railway cars and horse-drawn carts under all the difficultiesof carrying things anywhere in a land where anything and everythingavailable for transport was subject to requisition at any time by anall-controlling military organization, to the local warehouses andsoup-kitchens of every one of the 5, 000 Belgian and French communes inthe occupied territory. And always and ever through all the months anddespite all difficulties on water or land the food had to come _intime_. This was the transportation undertaking of Hoover's C. R. B. 

Finally when the food was brought to the end of its journeying it had tobe protected from hungry Germans and divided fairly among hungryBelgians. Always the world asked: But don't the Germans get the food?and it still asks: Yes, didn't they? Our truthful answer then and nowis: No. And you need not take our answer alone. Ask the British andFrench foreign offices. They knew almost as much as we did of what wasgoing on inside of the steel ring around Belgium and occupied France. Their intelligence services were wonderful. Remember the guarantees ofthe German government to us and our protecting ministers andambassadors, the diplomatic representatives of neutral America and Spainand Holland. The orders of von Bissing and the General Staff wereexplicit. Official German placards forbidding seizure or interference byGerman soldiers or officials were on all the canal boats and railwaycars and horse carts and on all the warehouses used by the Commission. 

Of course there were always minor infractions but there were no greatones. The Germans after the early days of wholesale seizure during theinvasion and first few months after it, got but a trifling amount offood out of Belgium and almost none of it came from the importedsupplies. Every Belgian was a detective for us in this ceaseless watchfor German infractions and we had our own vigilant service of"Inspection and Control" by keen-eyed young Americans movingceaselessly all over the country and ever checking up consumption andstocks against records of importation. 

And this brings us to the American organization inside of Belgium. TheNew York and London and Rotterdam C. R. B. Offices had theirhard-working American staffs and all important duties but it was thoseof us inside the ring that really saw Belgian relief in its pathetic andinspiring details. We were the ones who saw Belgian suffering andbravery, and who were privileged to work side by side with the greatnative relief organization with its complex of communal and regional andprovincial committees, and at its head, the great Comité National, mostably directed by Emile Francqui, whom Hoover had known in China. Thirty-five thousand organized Belgians gave their volunteer service totheir countrymen from beginning to end of the long occupation. And manythousands more were similarly engaged in unofficial capacity. We saw thesplendid work of the women of Belgium in their great nationalorganizations, the "Little Bees, " the "Drop of Milk, " the "DiscreetAssistance, " and all the rest. My wife, who was inside with us, hastried to tell the story of the women of Belgium in another book, but asshe rightly says: "The story of Belgium will never be told. That is theword that passes oftenest between us. No one will ever by word of mouthor in writing give it to others in its entirety, or even tell what hehimself has seen and felt. "

But the Americans inside know it. Its details will be their ineffaceablememories. It is a misfortune that so few Americans could share thisexperience. For we were never more than thirty-five or forty at a time;the Germans tried to limit us to twenty-five. We were always, in theireyes, potential spies. But we did no spying. We were too busy doing whatHerbert Hoover had us there to do. Also we had promised not to spy. Butit was a hard struggle to maintain the correctly neutral behavior whichwe were under obligation to do. And when the end of this strain came, which was when America entered the War, and the inside Americans had togo out, they all, almost to a man, rushed to the trenches to make theirprotest, with gun in hand, against German Kultur as it had beenexemplified under their eyes in Belgium. 

Altogether about two hundred Americans represented the C. R. B. Atvarious times inside of Belgium. They were mostly young university men, representing forty different American colleges and universities in theirallegiance. A group of twenty Rhodes Scholars whom Hoover hurriedlyrecruited from Oxford at the beginning of the work was the pioneer lot. All of these two hundred were selected for intelligence, honor, discretion, and idealism. They had to be able, or quickly learn, tospeak French. They had to be adaptable and capable of carrying delicateand large responsibility. They were a wonderful lot and they helpedprove the fact that either the American kind of university education, orthe American inheritance of mental and moral qualities, or the twocombined, can justly be a source of American self-congratulation. 

They were patient and long-suffering under difficulties and provocation. Ted Curtis, whose grandfather was George William, did, on the occasionof his seventeenth unnecessary arrest by German guards, express hisopinion of his last captor in what he thought was such pure Americaneseas to be safely beyond German understanding. But when his captor drylyresponded in an equally pure argot: "Thanks, old man, the same toyouse, " he resolved to take all the rest in silence. And it was onlyafter the third stripping to the skin in a cold sentry post that RobertW. , a college instructor, made a mild request to the C. R. B. Directorin Brussels to ask von Bissing's staff to have their rough-handedsleuths conduct their examinations in a warmer room. 

The relation of the few Americans in Belgium to the many Belgian reliefworkers was that of advisors, inspectors and final authorities as to thecontrol and distribution of the food. The Americans were all too few tohand the food out personally to the hosts in the soup lines, at thecommunal kitchens, and in the long queues with rations cards before thedoors of the bakeries and the communal warehouses. They could notpersonally manage the children's canteens, the discreet assistance tothe "ashamed poor, " who could not bring themselves to line up for thedaily soup and bread, nor the cheap restaurants where meals were servedat prices all the way from a fourth to three fourths of their cost. TheBelgians did all this, but the Americans were a seeing, helping, advising, and when necessary, finally controlling part of it all. 

The mills and bakeries were all under the close control of theCommission and the Belgian National Committee. The sealed canal boatswere opened only under the eyes of the Americans. The records of everydistributing station were constantly checked by the Americans. They satat all the meetings of National and Provincial and Regional committees. They raced about the country in all weathers and over all kinds of roadsin their much-worn open motor-cars, specially authorized and constantlywatched and frequently examined by the Germans, each car carrying thelittle triangular white and red-lettered C. R. B. Flag, that flappedencouragement as it passed, to all the hat-doffing Belgians. 

I am constantly asked: What were Hoover's personal duties and work inthe relief days? It is a question one cannot answer in two words. Hiswas all the responsibility, his the major planning, the resourcefuldevising of ways out of difficulty, the generalship. But the detailswere his also. He kept not only in closest touch with every least aswell as greatest phase of the work, but took a personal active part inseeing everything through. Constant conferences with the Allied foreignoffices and treasuries, and personal inspection of the young men sentover from America as helpers; swift movements between England and Franceand Belgium and Germany and America, and trips in the little motorlaunch about the harbor at Rotterdam examining the warehouses and foodships and floating elevators and canal boats; these were some of hiscontrasting activities through day following day in all the months andyears of the relief. 

Hoover had to make his headquarters in London at the Commission'scentral office. Here he could keep constantly in touch by cable andpost with the offices in New York, Rotterdam, and Brussels. The Brusselsoffice was allowed to send and receive German-censored mail three timesa week by way of Holland, and we could do a limited amount of censoredtelegraphing to Rotterdam over the German and Dutch wires and thence toLondon by English-censored cable. But Hoover came regularly every fewweeks to Brussels, taking his chances with mines and carelesssubmarines. These were no slight chances. A Dutch line was allowed byEngland and Germany to run a boat, presumably unmolested, two or threetimes a week between Flushing and Thamesmouth. These jumpy little boats, which carried passengers only--the hold was filled with closed emptybarrels lashed together to act as a float when trouble came--were theonly means of bringing our young American relief workers to Belgium andof Hoover's frequent crossings. After seven of the ten boats belongingto the line had been lost or seriously damaged by mines the thriftyDutch company suspended operation. We had then to cross secretly byEnglish dispatch boats, protected by destroyers and specially hunted byGerman submarines. 

On the occasion of one of Hoover's crossings two German destroyers lyingoutside of Flushing harbor ordered the little Dutch boat to accompanythem to Zeebrugge for examination. This happened occasionally and wasalways exciting for the passengers, especially for the diplomaticcouriers, who promptly dropped overboard their letter pouches, speciallysupplied with lead weights and holes to let in the water and thus insureprompt sinking. As the boat and convoying destroyers drew near toZeebrugge, shells or bombs began to drop on the water around them. Hoover thought at first they were coming from English destroyers aimingat the Germans. But he could see no English boats. Suddenly an explosioncame from the water's surface near the boat and the man standing next tohim fell with his face smashed by a bomb fragment. Hoover seized him anddragged him around the deck-house to the other side of the boat. Anotherbomb burst on that side. He then heard the whir of an airplane andlooking up saw several English bombing planes. Their intention wasexcellent, but their aim uncertain. The anti-aircraft guns of the Germandestroyers soon drove them away, and the convoy came into Zeebruggeharbor where the Dutch boat and passengers were inspected with Germanthoroughness. On Hoover's identity being revealed by his papers, he wastreated with proper courtesy and after several of the passengers hadbeen taken off the boat it was allowed to go on its way to Tilbury. 

Hoover enjoyed an extraordinary position in relation to the passport andborder regulations of all the countries in and out of which he had topass in his movements connected with the relief. He was given a freedomin this respect enjoyed by no other man. He moved almost withouthindrance and undetained by formalities freely in and out of England, France, Holland, occupied Belgium and France, and Germany itself, withperson and traveling bags unexamined. It was a concrete expression ofconfidence in his integrity and perfect correctness of behavior, thatcan only be fully understood by those who had to make any movements atall across frontiers in the tense days of the war. 

Governor General von Bissing once said to me in Brussels, apropos ofcertain charges that had been brought to him by his intelligence staffof a questionable behavior on the part of one of our men inBelgium--charges easily proved to be unfounded: "I have entireconfidence in Mr. Hoover despite my full knowledge of his intimateacquaintance and association with the British and French Governmentofficials and my conviction that his heart is with our enemies. " As amatter of fact Hoover always went to an unnecessary extreme in the wayof ridding himself of every scrap of writing each time he approached theHolland-Belgium frontier. He preached absolute honesty, and gave acontinuous personal example of that honesty to all the C. R. B. Meninside the steel ring. 

Each time he came to Brussels all of us came in from the provinces andoccupied France and gathered about him while he told us the news of theoutside world, and how things were going in the New York and Londonoffices. And then he would talk to us as a brother in the fraternityand exhort us to forget our difficulties and our irritations and playthe game well and honestly for the sake of humanity and the honor ofAmerica. After the group talks he would listen to the personal troubles, and advise and help each man in his turn. People sometimes ask me whyHoover has such a strong personal hold on all his helpers. The men ofthe C. R. B. Know why. 

The Belgian relief and the American food administration and the laterand still continuing American relief of Eastern Europe have been called, sometimes, in an apparently critical attitude, "one man" organizations. If by that is meant that there was one man in each of them who waslooked up to with limitless admiration, relied on with absoluteconfidence, and served with entire devotion by all the other men inthem, the attribution is correct. No man in any of theseorganizations--and Hoover gathered about him the best he could get--butrecognized him as the natural leader. He was the "one man, " not byvirtue of any official or artificial rank but by sheer personalsuperiority in both constructive administrative capacity and effectivepractical action. 

Whenever Hoover came, he tried to keep his presence unknown except to usand Minister Whitlock and the heads of the Belgian organization and theGerman Government with whom he had to deal. He would not go, if he couldhelp it, to the soup lines and children's canteens. Like many anotherman of great strength, he is a man of great sensitiveness. He cannot seesuffering without suffering himself. And he dislikes thanks. TheBelgians were often puzzled, sometimes hurt, by his avoidance of theirheart-felt expression of gratitude. Mr. Whitlock was always there andhad to be always accessible. So they could thank him and thank Americathrough him. But they rarely had opportunity to thank Hoover. 

I remember, though, how their ingenuity baffled him once. He had slippedin quietly, as usual, at dusk one evening by our courier automobile fromthe Dutch border. But someone passed the word around that night. And allthe next day, and for the remaining few days of his stay there went ona silent greeting and thanking of the Commission's chief by thousandsand thousands of visiting cards and messages that drifted likesnowflakes through the door of the Director's house; engraved cards withwarm words of thanks from the nobility and wealthy of Brussels; plainer, printed ones from the middle class folk, and bits of writing paper withpen or pencil-scrawled sentences on them of gratitude and blessing fromthe "little people. " My wife would heap the day's bringing on a tablebefore him each evening and he would finger them over curiously--and tryto smile. 

When the Armistice had come the Belgian Government tried to thank him. He would accept no decorations. But once again Belgian ingenuityconquered. One day just after the cessation of the fighting he wasvisiting the King and Queen at La Panne in their simple cottage in thatlittle bit of Belgium that the Germans never reached. After luncheon themembers of the Cabinet appeared; they had come by motors from Le Havre. And before them all the King created a new order, without ribbon orbutton or medal, and made Hoover its only member. He was simply butsolemnly ordained "Citizen of the Belgian Nation, and Friend of theBelgian People. "

I have spoken only of Belgium. But of the ten million in the occupiedregions for whom Hoover waged his fight against starvation, two and ahalf million were in occupied France. Over in that territory things wereharder both for natives and Americans than in Belgium. Under therigorous control of a brutal and suspicious operating army both Frenchand Americans worked under the most difficult conditions that could beimposed and yet allow the relief to go on at all. 

The French population, too, was an especially helpless one, for all themen of military age and qualifications had gone out as the Germans camein. They had time and opportunity to do this; the Belgians had not. EachAmerican was under the special care--and eyes--of a German escortofficer. He could only move with him at his side, could only talk to theFrench committees with his gray-uniformed companion in hearing. He hadhis meals at the same table, slept in his quarters. The chiefrepresentative of the Commission in occupied France had to live at theGreat German Headquarters at Charleville on the Meuse. I spent anextraordinary four months there. It is all a dream now but it was, atthe time, a reality which no imagination could equal. The Kaiser on hisfrequent visits, the gray-headed chiefs of the terrible great Germanmilitary machine, the _schneidige_ younger officers, were all soconfident and insolent and so regardless, in those early days ofsuccess, of however much of the world might be against them. One nightmy officer said at dinner: "Portugal came in today. Will it be theUnited States tomorrow? Well, come on; it's all the same to us. " Whenthe United States did come in we Americans were no longer atHeadquarters, so what my officer said then I do not know. But I am surethat it was not all the same to him. 

And so the untellable relief of Belgium and Northeast France went onwith its myriad of heart-breaks and heart-thrills following quickly oneach other's heels, its highly elaborated system of organization, itssuccessful machinery of control and distribution, and all, allcentering and depending primarily on one man's vision and heart andgenius. He had faithful helpers, capable coadjutors. One cannot makecomparisons among them, but one of these lieutenants was so long in thework, so effective, so devoted, so regardless of personal sacrifice ofmeans and career and health, that we can mention his name withouthesitation as the one to whom, next to the Chief, the men of the C. R. B. And the people of Belgium and France turned, and never in vain, forthe inspiration that never let hope die. This is William Babcock Poland, like his chief an engineer of world-wide experience, who served first asassistant director in Belgium, then as director there, and, finally, after Hoover came to America to be its food administrator, director, with headquarters in London, for all the work in Europe. 

In April, 1917, America entered the war, and Minister Whitlock came outof Belgium with his shepherded flock of American consuls and reliefworkers, although a small group of C. R. B. Men, with the director, Prentis Gray, remained inside for several weeks longer. In the samemonth Herbert Hoover heard his next call to war service. For almostimmediately after our entrance into the war President Wilson asked himto come to Washington to consult about the food situation. Thisconsultation was the beginning of American food administration. It didnot end Belgian relief for Hoover, for the work had still to go on anddid go on through all the rest of the war and even for several months ofthe Armistice period, with the C. R. B. And its Chief still in charge, although Dutch and Spanish neutrals replaced the Americans inside theoccupied territory. But the new call was to place a new duty andresponsibility on Hoover's broad shoulders. Responding to it, he arrivedin New York on the morning of May 3, 1917, and reached Washington theevening of the same day. On the following day he talked with thePresident and began planning for the administration of American food. 

CHAPTER X

AMERICAN FOOD ADMINISTRATION: PRINCIPLES, CONSERVATION, CONTROL OFEXPORTS

Put yourself in Hoover's place when the President called him back fromthe Belgian relief work to be the Food Administrator of the UnitedStates. Here were a hundred million people unaccustomed to governmentinterference with their personal affairs, above all of their affairs ofstomach and pocketbook, their affairs of personal habit and privatebusiness. What would you think of your chance to last long as a new kindof government official, set up in defiance of all American precedent andtradition of personal liberty, to say how much and what kinds of foodthe people were to eat and how the business affairs of all millers andbakers, all commission men and wholesale grocers and all foodmanufacturers were to be run?

The stomach and private business of Americans are the seats of unusuallymany and delicate nerve-endings. To hit the American household in thestomach and the American business man in the pocketbook is to invite aprompt, violent and painful reaction. Yet this is what President Wilsonasked Hoover to do and to face. 

Hoover realized the full possibilities of the situation. He had seen therapid succession of the food dictators in each of the Europeancountries; their average duration of life--as food dictators--was alittle less than six months. "I don't want to be food dictator for theAmerican people, " he said, plaintively, a few days after the Presidenthad announced what he wanted him to do. "The man who accepts such a jobwill lie on the barbed wire of the first line of intrenchments. "

But besides trying to put yourself in Hoover's place, try also to putyourself again in your own place in those great days of America's firstentry into the war, and you will get another, and a less terrifying, view of the situation. Remember your feelings of those days as aper-fervid patriotic American, not only ready but eager to play yourpart in your country's cause. Some of you could carry arms; some couldlend sons to the khaki ranks and daughters to the Red Cross uniform. Some could go to Washington for a dollar a year. Yet many could, for onesufficient reason or another, do none of these things. But all couldhelp dig trenches at home right through the kitchen and dining-room. Youcould help save food if food was to help win the war. You could helpremodel temporarily the whole food business and food use of the countryto the great advantage of America and the Allies in their struggle forvictory. 

Well, Hoover put himself both in your place and in his own place. And hethought that the food of America could be administered--notdictated--successfully, if we would try to do it in a way consonant withthe genius of American people. Hoover had had in his Belgian relief workan experience with the heart of America. He knew he could rely on it. Healso believed he could rely on the brain of America. 

So he put the matter of food control fairly and squarely up to thepeople. He asked them to make the fundamental decisions. He showed themthe need and the way to meet it, and asked them to follow him. Hedepended on the reasoned mass consent and action of the nation, thetruly democratic decision of the country on a question put openly andclearly before it. It could choose to do or not do. The deciding wasreally with it. If it saw as he did it would act with him. 

He was to be no food dictator, as the German food-minister was, nor evena food controller as the English food-minister was officially named. Hewas to be a food administrator for the people, in response to its needsand desire for making wise food management help in winning the war. Sowhile the food controllers of the European countries relied chiefly ongovernment regulation to effect the necessary food conservation andcontrol, the American food administrator trusted chiefly to directappeal to the people and their voluntary response. 

And the response came. Even where governmental regulation seemednecessary, as it did especially in relation to trade and manufacturingpractices, he attempted to have it accepted by voluntary agreement ofthe groups most immediately concerned before announcing or enforcing it. To do this he held conference after conference in Washington with groupsof from a score to several hundreds of men representing personally, andin addition sometimes by appointment from organized food-trade orfood-producing groups, the point of view of those most affected by theproposed regulation. He explained to these men the needs of the nation, and their special opportunities and duties to serve these needs. He puttheir self-interest and the interests of their country side by side infront of them. He showed them that the decision of the war did not restalone with the men in the trenches: that there were service andsacrifice to render at home in shops and stores and counting rooms aswell as on the fighting lines. He debated methods and probable resultswith them. He laid all his cards on the table and, almost always, hewon. He won their confidence in his fairness, their admiration for hisknowledge and resourcefulness and their respect for his devotion to thenational cause. 

But he knew always that he was playing with dynamite. He could not seeor talk to everybody at once, and the news that ran swiftly over thecountry about what the Food Administration was doing or going to do wasnot always the truth, but it always got listened to. And the firstreaction to it was likely to be one of indignant opposition. This waswell expressed by the cartoon of black Matilda in the kitchen: "MistahHoover goin' to show me how to cook cawn pone? Well, I reckin not. " Sowith the business man. But the second reaction, the one that came afterlistening to Hoover and thinking about the matter overnight, wasdifferent. 

I remember a group of large buyers and sellers of grain, men who dealton the grain exchanges of the Middle West, who came to Washington, notat his request but on their own determination to have it out with thisman who was threatening to interfere seriously with their affairs;indeed, who threatened to put many of them out of business for theperiod of the war. They came with big sticks. They met in the morningfor conference with the object of their wrath. Then they went off andmet in the afternoon together. They came the next morning for anotherconference. And they met again alone to pass some resolutions. Theresolutions commended the Food Administrator for the regulations he wasabout to put into force, and recommended that they be made more drasticthan he had originally suggested!

But among the hundred million people of the United States there weresome who did not justify Hoover's belief in American patriotism andAmerican heart. Just as there were some among the seven million Belgianswho tried to cheat their benefactors and their countrymen by forgingextra ration cards. So when a measure to regulate some great food tradeor industry, as the wholesale grocery business or milling, was agreed toand honestly lived up to by eighty-five or ninety per cent of the menconcerned, and for these could have been left on a wholly voluntarybasis, there were a few for whom the regulations had to be legallyformulated and energetically enforced. They were the ones who made thereluctant gifts to the American Red Cross, which was the FoodAdministrator's favorite form of penalization, when he did not have togo to the extreme of putting persistent profiteers out of business. 

The Food Control Law, passed by Congress in August, 1917, under whichthe Food Administrator, acting for the President, derived his authority, was a perfectly real law, but it left great gaps in the control. Forexample, it exempted from its license regulations, which were the chiefmeans of direct legal control, all food producers (farmers, stock-growers, et al. ) and all retailers doing a business of less than$100, 000 a year. It did not give any authority for a direct fixing ofmaximum prices. It carried comparatively few penalty provisions. But itdid provide authority for three primary agencies of control: First, thelicensing of all food manufacturers, jobbers, and wholesalers, and ofretailers doing business of more than $100, 000 annually, with theprescription of regulations which the licensees should observe; second, the purchase and sale of foodstuffs by the Government; and, third, thelegal entering into agreements with food producers, manufacturers ordistributors, which if made only between the members of these groupsthemselves would have been violations of the anti-trust laws. All ofthese powers contributed their share to the success of what was one ofthe most important features of the food control and one to which Hooverdevoted most determined and continuous effort, namely, the radicalcutting out, or at least, down, of speculative and middleman profits. But with the limited authority of the Food Administrator it was onlythrough the voluntary coöperation of the people and food trades thatthese three kinds of powers were made really effective. 

The most conspicuous features of the voluntary coöperation which Hooverwas able to obtain from the people and the food-trades by hisconferences, his organization of the states, and his great popularpropaganda, were those connected with what was called "foodconservation, " by which was meant a general economy in food use, anelimination of waste, and an actual temporary modification of nationalfood habits by an increased use of fish and vegetable proteins and fatsand lessened use of meat and animal fats, a considerable substitution ofcorn and other grains for wheat, and the general use of a wheat flourcontaining in it much more of the total substance of the wheat grainthan is contained in the usual "patent" flour. 

It was with the great campaign for food conservation, too, that the FoodAdministration really started its work, beginning it as voluntary andunofficial war service. For although consideration of the Food ControlAct began before the House Committee on Agriculture about April 21, itwas not until August 10 that the bill became a law. On the same day, thePresident issued an Executive Order establishing a United States FoodAdministration and appointing Herbert Hoover to be United States FoodAdministrator. Hoover accepted the appointment with the proviso that heshould receive no salary and that he should be allowed to build up astaff on the same volunteer basis. 

But long before this, indeed immediately after the May consultationwith Hoover for which he had been asked to come from Europe toWashington, President Wilson had announced a tentative program ofstimulation of food production and conservation of food supply. The needwas urgent, and the country could not wait for Congressional action. There was really a war on and there was an imperative need of fighting, and fighting immediately and hard in all the various and unusual ways inwhich modern war is fought. One of these ways which the Presidentrecognized and which Hoover, by virtue of his illuminating experience inEurope, knew as no other American did, was the food way. The Presidentwanted something started. So again, just as at the beginning of theBelgian relief work in October, 1914, Hoover found himself in theposition of being asked to begin work without the necessary supportbehind him; in the Belgian case he lacked money, in the present case helacked authority. But in both cases action was needed at once and inboth cases Hoover got action. He is a devotee of action. 

Thus, before there was an official food administration there was anunofficial beginning of what became the food administration's mostcharacteristic and most widely known undertaking, its campaign for foodconservation. It was the most characteristic, for it depended forsuccess entirely on popular consent and patriotic response. It was themost widely known, for it touched every home and housewife, every manand child at the daily sitting down at table. In planning and beginningit Hoover had the special assistance of his old-time college chum andlifelong friend, President Ray Lyman Wilbur, of Stanford University, whobrought to this particular undertaking a far-reaching vision, aconvinced belief in democratic possibilities, and a constructive mind ofunusual order. 

It is well not to forget that the first appeal for food-saving was madeprimarily to the women of the land. And theirs was the first greatresponse. From the very first days, in May, of general discussion in thepress of the certain need of food-saving in America if the Allies wereto be provided with sufficient supplies to maintain their armies andcivilian populations in the health, strength, and confidence necessaryto the fullest development of their war strength, the voluntary offersof assistance from women and women's organizations, and inquiries abouthow best to give it, had been pouring into Hoover's temporary offices inWashington. And through all of the Food Administration work the women ofAmerica played a conspicuous part, both as heads of divisions in theWashington and State offices and as uncounted official and unofficialhelpers in county and town organizations and in the households of thecountry. 

The picturesque details of the great campaign for food conservation andits results on the intimate habits of the people are too fresh in thememories of us all to need repeating here. A whole-hearted coöperationby the press of the country; an avalanche of public appeal and advice byplacards, posters, motion pictures, and speakers; an active support bychurches, fraternal organizations, colleges and schools; the remodelingof the service of hotels, restaurants and dining-cars; and a pledgingof twelve out of the twenty million households of the country to followthe requests and suggestions of the Food Administration, resulting inwheatless and meatless meals, limited sugar and butter, the "cleanplate, " and strict attention to reducing all household waste offood--all these are the well-remembered happenings of yesterday. Theresults gave the answer, Yes, to Hoover's oft-repeated questions to thenation: Can we not do as a democracy what Germany is doing as anautocracy? Can we not do it better?

These results are impossible to measure by mere statistics. Figurescannot express the satisfied consciences, the education in wise andeconomical food use, and the feeling of a daily participation by all ofthe people in personally helping to win the war, which was apsychological contribution of great importance to the Government'sefforts to put the whole strength of the nation into the struggle. Norcan the results to the Allies be measured in figures. But theirsignificance can be suggested by the contents of a cablegram which LordRhondda, the English Food Controller, sent to Hoover in January, 1918. This cable, in part, was as follows:

 "Unless you are able to send the Allies at least 75, 000, 000 bushels of wheat over and above what you have exported up to January first, and in addition to the total exportable surplus from Canada, I cannot take the responsibility of assuring our people that there will be food enough to win the war. Imperative necessity compels me to cable you in this blunt way. No one knows better than I that the American people, regardless of national and individual sacrifice, have so far refused nothing that is needed for the war, but it now lies with America to decide whether or not the Allies in Europe shall have enough bread to hold out until the United States is able to throw its force into the field. .. . "

I remember very well the thrill and the shock that ran through the FoodAdministration staff when that cable came. It seemed as if no more couldbe done than was already being done. The breathless question was: CouldHoover do the impossible? I suppose his question to himself was: Couldthe American people do it? He did not hesitate either in his belief orhis action. His prompt reply was:

 "We will export every grain that the American people save from their normal consumption. We believe our people will not fail to meet the emergency. "

He then appealed to the people to intensify their conservation of wheat. The President issued a special proclamation to the same end. The wheatwas saved and sent--and the threatened breakdown of the Allied wareffort was averted. 

Hoover felt justified in July, 1918, in making an attempt to indicatethe results of food conservation during the preceding twelve months byanalyzing the statistics of food exports he had been able to make to theAllies. It was, of course, primarily for the sake of providing thisindispensable food support to the Allies that food conservation was soearnestly pushed. The control of these exports and the elimination ofspeculative profits and the stabilization of prices in connection withhome purchases were the special features in the general program of foodadministration that were pushed primarily for the sake of our ownpeople. 

In a formal report by letter to the President on July 18, 1918, Hoovershowed that the exports of meats, fats and dairy products in the pasttwelve months had been about twice as much as the average for the yearsjust preceding the war, and fifty per cent more than in the year July, 1916--June, 1917. Of cereals and cereal products our shipments to theAllies were a third more than in the year July, 1916--June, 1917. 

 "It is interesting to note, " writes the Food Administrator, "that since the urgent request of the Allied food controllers early in the year for a further shipment of 75, 000, 000 bushels from our 1917 wheat than originally planned, we shall have shipped to Europe, or have _en route_, nearly 85, 000, 000 bushels. At the time of this request our surplus was more than exhausted. The accomplishment of our people in this matter stands out even more clearly if we bear in mind that we had available in the fiscal year 1916-17 from net carry-over and as surplus over our normal consumption about 200, 000, 000 bushels of wheat which we were able to export that year without trenching on our home loaf. This last year, however, owing to the large failure of the 1917 wheat crop, we had available from net carry-over and production and imports only just about our normal consumption. Therefore our wheat shipments to allied destinations represent approximately savings from our own wheat bread. 

 "These figures, however, do not fully convey the volume of the effort and sacrifice made during the past year by the whole American people. Despite the magnificent effort of our agricultural population in planting a much increased acreage in 1917, not only was there a very large failure in wheat but also, the corn failed to mature properly and our corn is our dominant crop. We calculate that the total nutritional production of the country for the fiscal year just closed was between seven per cent and nine per cent below the average of the three previous years, our nutritional surplus for export in those years being about the same amount as the shrinkage last year. Therefore the consumption and waste of food have been greatly reduced in every direction during the war. 

 "I am sure that all the millions of our people, agricultural as well as urban, who have contributed to these results should feel a very definite satisfaction that in a year of universal food shortages in the northern hemisphere all of those people joined together against Germany have come through into sight of the coming harvest not only with health and strength fully maintained, but with only temporary periods of hardship. The European allies have been compelled to sacrifice more than our own people but we have not failed to load every steamer since the delays of the storm months last winter. Our contributions to this end could not have been accomplished without effort and sacrifice, and it is a matter for further satisfaction that it has been accomplished voluntarily and individually. It is difficult to distinguish between various sections of our people--the homes, public-eating places, food trades, urban or agricultural populations--in assessing credit for these results; but no one will deny the dominant part played by the American women. "

The conservation part of the Food Administration's work was picturesque, conspicuous and important. But it was, of course, only one among themany of the Administration's activities. On the day of his appointmentHoover outlined his conception of the functions and aims of the FoodAdministration, as follows:

 "The hopes of the Food Administration are three-fold. First, to so guide the trade in the fundamental food commodities as to eliminate vicious speculation, extortion and wasteful practices and to stabilize prices in the essential staples. Second, to guard our exports so that against the world's shortage, we retain sufficient supplies for our own people and to coöperate with the Allies to prevent inflation in prices. And, third, that we stimulate in every manner within our power the saving of our food in order that we may increase exports to our Allies to a point which will enable them to properly provision their armies and to feed their peoples during the coming winter. 

 "The Food Administration is called into being to stabilize and not to disturb conditions and to defend honest enterprise against illegitimate competition. It has been devised to correct the abnormalities and abuses that have crept into trade by reason of the world disturbance and to restore business as far as may be to a reasonable basis. 

 "The business men of this country, I am convinced, as a result of hundreds of conferences with representatives of the great forces of food supply, realize their own patriotic obligation and the solemnity of the situation, and will fairly and generously coöperate in meeting the national emergency. I do not believe that drastic force need be applied to maintain economic distribution and sane use of supplies by the great majority of American people, and I have learned a deep and abiding faith in the intelligence of the average American business man whose aid we anticipate and depend on to remedy the evils developed by the war which he admits and deplores as deeply as ourselves. But if there be those who expect to exploit this hour of sacrifice, if there are men or organizations scheming to increase the trials of this country, we shall not hesitate to apply to the full the drastic, coercive powers that Congress has conferred upon us in this instrument. "

From the beginning of the war the food necessities of the Allies andEuropean neutrals had led them to make the most violent exertions tomeet their needs, and these exertions were intensified as the war wenton. Food was war material. It existed in America and was imperativelydemanded in Europe. By any means possible, without regard to price ordangerous drainage away from us Europe meant to have it. Hoover earlysaw the danger to America in this. Things had to be balanced. We wereready to exert every effort to supply the Allies every pound of food wecould afford to let go out of the country, but there was a limit, adanger-line. Hoover could not trust to appeal to the European countriesto regard this danger; they were in a state of panic. It requiredrecourse to legal regulation. There was necessary an effective controlof exports. Without such control the tremendous pressure of demand fromthe European countries, with the sky-rocketing of prices incident to itwould have broken down the whole fabric of Hoover's measures forguarding the food needs of our own people and of stabilizing prices andpreventing an actual food panic and consequent industrial break-down inour country at a moment when we were calling on our industries and ourpeople as a whole for their greatest efforts. 

The Food Law alone was not sufficient to give Hoover the strength heneeded for this control. But casting about for assistance he formed aclose working alliance between the Food Administration and the War Tradeand Shipping Boards to effect the needed regulation. The combination hadthe power to establish an absolutely effective control of exports andimports. Not a pound of food could be sent out of the country withoutthe consent of the Food Administration. 

Growing out of this export control and really including it, was thewider function of the centralization and coördination of purchases notonly for the Allies and Neutrals but in connection with the buyingagencies of our Army, Navy, Red Cross, and other large philanthropicorganizations. Under the pressure of the need for food control, theforeign governments had taken over almost completely, early in the war, the purchases of outside foodstuffs for their peoples, and the Allieshad so closely associated themselves in this undertaking that they hadit in their power, if they cared to use it, to dominate prices to theAmerican farmer. Hoover very early saw the advisability of an Americancentralization of the purchases for foreign export as an offset to thisdanger. He further recognized in such a coördinating centralization thepossibilities of much good in the stimulation of production andstabilization of home prices. A Division of Coördination of Purchase wastherefore formally set up about November 1, 1917, under the efficientdirection of F. S. Snyder. 

In a memorandum dated November 19, the Food Administrator stated that heconsidered it vital to the general welfare that all large purchases ofcertain commodities should be made by plans of allocation among foodsuppliers at fair and just prices, "the efforts of the Federal TradeCommission to be directed to see that costs are not inflated. " Thememorandum further stated that all allotment plans between Alliedcountries and the food industries should be entered into with the AlliedProvisions Export Commission through the Division of Coördination ofPurchase; and that all estimated and specific requirements of foodproducts of all characters for the Allied countries should be furnishedthe Division of Coördination of Purchase by the Allied Provisions ExportCommission and that such requirements shall bear the approval of theAllied Provisions Export Commission. Also, that on the question ofissuing licenses for the exporting of the purchases, the approval toexport will be arranged by the Food Administration's Division ofCoördination of Purchase, and the War Trade Board; and the final actiontaken on each requirement shall have the approval of the head of theDivision of Coördination of Purchase. 

The general plan outlined in this memorandum was the one followed. TheAllied Provisions Export Commission acted as the buying agency for theAllies and informed the Division of Coördination of Purchase of the FoodAdministration of the requirements of the Allies; the Food PurchaseBoard acted as the recommending buying agency for the Army and Navy andgave the Food Administration the necessary information as to therequirements of these agencies. Grains and grain products were notincluded in this scheme of buying for the Allies, as this buying wasdone through the Food Administration Grain Corporation. 

The Allied purchasing was therefore completely controlled. The licenseto export was not issued by the War Trade Board until the applicationfor the same had been approved by the Food Administration, and thisapproval would not be given if the rules of its Division of Coördinationof Purchase had not been followed. It should be noted that the FoodAdministration did not actually complete the transaction of purchase andsale for any of the commodities. Its function was completed when buyerand seller had been brought together and the terms of sale agreed uponand approved by it. The total volume of purchases of all supplies madeunder the coördination of the various agencies set up by the FoodAdministration aggregated over seven and a quarter billion dollarsduring the course of its existence. 

CHAPTER XI

AMERICAN FOOD ADMINISTRATION; GENERAL REGULATION, CONTROL OF WHEAT ANDPORK; ORGANIZATION IN THE STATES

In attacking the problem of food control by enforced regulation Hooverfrankly repeatedly described his position as that of one who waschoosing the lesser of two evils; the other and greater one was that ofhaving no regulation at all. Political economists and others called hisattention constantly to the fact that the old reliable law of supply anddemand would take care of his troubles if he would but let it. If, because of the great demand, high food prices prevailed, theirprevalence would automatically solve the problem of food shortage. Theywould stimulate production and curtail consumption; our people would buyless and there would be more of a surplus to send to the Allies. 

Hoover's answer was that unrestricted sky-rocketing of prices wouldcertainly curtail consumption, but it would be the consumption by thepoor, the hosts of wage-earners and the small-salaried. It would not cutdown consumption by the rich, and it would promptly lead to sharp classfeeling, widespread popular dissatisfaction and resentment, even revolt. War time was no time to force any such situation as this. 

The remedy offered by supply and demand was one which would only bringon another and worse illness. But Hoover realized and declared over andover again that even a necessary interference with the law of supply anddemand was at best an evil. But it was less of an evil, under thecircumstances, than not to interfere with it to some degree. These werenot normal but abnormal times, and regulation by supply and demand isprimarily a process for normal times. And it is a process that requirestime to do its remedial work, and there was no time. 

But Hoover did not and does not believe in price-fixing or immediategovernment control of commerce where they can be avoided. In hisstatement before the Senate Committee on Agriculture in June, 1917, hesaid:

 "The food administrations of Europe and the powers that they possess are of the nature of dictatorship, but happily ours is not their plight. .. . The tendency there has been for the government to take over the functions of the middleman, first with one commodity and then with another, until in the extreme case of Germany practically all food commodities are taken directly by the government from the producers and allotted by an iron-clad system of ticket distribution to the consumer. The whole of the great distributing agencies, and the financial system which revolved around them, have been suspended for the war or destroyed for good. That is the system which is dictatorship, and which, so far as I can see, this country need never approach. 

 "In distinction from this, our conception of the problem in the United States is that we should assemble the voluntary effort of the people, of the men who represent the great trades; that we should, in effect, undertake with their coöperation the regulation of the distributing machinery of the country in such a manner that we may restore its function as nearly as may be to a pre-war basis, and thus eliminate, so far as may be, the evils and failures which have sprung up. And, at the same time, we propose to mobilize the spirit of self-denial and self-sacrifice in this country in order that we may reduce our national waste and our national expenditure. "

The primary basis of the commodity control, that is the control of themanufacture, wholesale selling, storage, and distribution of foodstuffslay in the licensing provisions of the Food Control law. Any handler offoods, not an immediate producer or a retailer whose gross sales did notexceed $100, 000 a year, could be forced to carry on his business underlicense, and authority was provided to issue regulations prescribingjust, reasonable, non-discriminatory and fair storage charges, commissions, profits, and practices. This license control was the FoodAdministration's principal means of enforcing provisions against allwasteful, unjust, and unreasonable charges and procedures. 

But it was far from easy to determine all at once either what trades andcommodities should be taken under control or what kind and degree ofcontrol should be exercised. As Hoover said to the Senate Committee onAgriculture, using a metaphor springing from his engineering experience:

 "It is impossible, in constructing routes and bridges through the forest of speculation and difficulty to describe in advance the route and detail of these roads and bridges which we must push forward from day to day into the unknown. "

And, referring again to the same matter in an address before the UnitedStates Chamber of Commerce in September, 1917, he said:

 "We shall find as we go on with the war and its increasing economic disruption, that first one commodity then another will need to be taken under control. We shall, however, profit by experience if we lay down no hard and fast rules, but if we deal with each situation on its merits. So long as demand and supply have free play in a commodity we had best leave it alone. Our attention to the break in normal economic control in other commodities must be designed to repair the break, not to set up new economic systems or theories. "

Hoover believed in making haste slowly. But he had to move. The crisisof the situation was upon us, the dike was already leaking and measureswere demanded which would stop the leak before it became a flood. In theexigency there was no time for the Food Administrator to devise andcarefully test plans suggested by even the most favored theories ofeconomists, if these plans offered remedies which would only beavailable in an indeterminate future. The scope of the war haddisorganized the life and practices of the whole world, had overthrownall precedents, shattered all fundamental relations. And on nothing wasits disturbing influence upon the normal more potent than in relation tofood supply. 

The means of control by license regulations adopted by the FoodAdministration were many and various. From the beginning the stocks ofmanufacturers and dealers were limited, so that a continuous and evendistribution might prevent shortage and high prices; contracts forfuture delivery were limited again to secure an equal distribution andlessen the possibility of speculative profits from the rising market. Wasteful and expensive practices were forbidden. All these means werecapable of rather definite application. But a greater difficulty came inthe equally important and necessary work of limiting profits andsecuring a more direct distribution from manufacturer and large foodhandler to consumer. 

The many regulations and the varying activities necessary to achievethese needs were mostly looked after by a Division of Distribution andcertain allied divisions, devoting their attention to special groups ofcommodities. The principal division was under the immediate direction ofTheodore Whitmarsh, one of the most vigorous and able of Hoover'svolunteer helpers. Under Hoover's direction Whitmarsh and his associatesat the head of the special commodity divisions worked out the manifolddetails of a regulatory system which was gradually extended to a mostvaried assortment of foodstuffs, trades and manufactures. 

At the end of 1918 over 250, 000 food-handling corporations, firms, andindividuals were under Food Administration licenses. Meat, fish, poultry, eggs, butter, milk, potatoes, fresh and dried vegetables, andfruits, canned goods, the coarse grains and rice, vegetable oils, coffee, and such various commodities accessory to food-handling, as ice, ammonia (for ice-making), arsenic (for insecticides), jute bags, sisal, etc. , were under direct control to greater or less extent, except whenin the hands of the actual producers and the ultimate retailers. And bythe indirect means of a wide publicity of "fair prices, " and by aninfluence exerted through the wholesalers, even the retailers werebrought into some degree of agreement or control in connection with theFood Administration effort to eliminate unfair dealing and foodprofiteering. 

But more important than the control of any one of these many foods, orperhaps than of all of them together, and more discussed both in FoodAdministration days and since, was the control of wheat, and, as a partof it, of flour and bread. Some of the methods and results of foodconservation as especially applied to wheat have already been referredto, but here we are especially concerned with the methods ofgovernmental control as applied to this grain. 

Hoover had learned in Belgium, and by his observation of the situationin England and Europe, that the poetic expression that bread is thestaff of life becomes endowed with an intense practical significance tothe food controllers and the peoples in bread-eating countries sufferingfrom food-shortage. The loudest call of hungry people, their primaryanxiety and the first care of the food-controlling authorities allconverge on wheat. The dietetic régime for a semi-starving people isstrong or weak, appeasing or dangerous, in proportion to the bread itcontains. If the bread ration is normal or sufficient much repressioncan be used in the case of other foods. With bread there is life. Thecall of the Allies on America was for wheat above all else. More thanone half of the normal dietary of France is composed of wheat bread. England normally uses less bread and more meat, but in the war time shefound she could lessen meat supply more safely than bread supply. It wasfor the possible lack of 75, 000, 000 bushels of wheat that Lord Rhonddasaw the defeat of the Allies staring him in the face. 

The government control of the American wheat as contrasted with itsvoluntary conservation, took many forms, touching it as grain, as flour, and as bread, as object of special stimulation for production, as priorcommodity for transportation, and as export product. But curiously, thatfeature of its control for which the Food Administration has been mostsubject to ill-considered criticism is one for which the FoodAdministration has the least responsibility; this is thegovernment-established "fair price" to the grower. 

The Food Control Law as passed by Congress in August, 1917, contained aprovision, guaranteeing a price of two dollars a bushel for the 1918wheat crop. It was put in to stimulate production to insure the neededsupply for the war period. And it was intended to benefit the farmer. Onthe basis of this the Government would presumably be able, by properregulation of the food handlers and commercial practices intermediatebetween the producer and consumer, both to assure the farmers of a goodprice and the consumer of not being driven to panic and revolt by animpossible cost of his daily bread. That such a regulation wasabsolutely and immediately necessary was obvious from the fact that atthe very time the Food Administration was being organized unofficiallyalong the lines of conservation propaganda in May, 1917, wheat wasselling in Chicago at $3. 25 a bushel and the consumer was paying for hisbread on that basis, although the official estimate of the Department ofAgriculture of the average price actually received by the farmer for hiscrop was but $1. 44 a bushel. 

Congress had provided a government guarantee only for the 1918 crop. Atthe time of the organization of the Food Administration the 1917 cropwas on the point of coming to market. It seemed highly desirable for thesake of the farmers to insure their receipt of a fair price for thiscrop, also. Therefore the President appointed a committee composed ofrepresentatives of leading farmers' and consumers' organizationstogether with a number of agricultural experts from the agriculturalcolleges of the country under the chairmanship of President H. H. Garfield of Williams College, later U. S. Fuel Administrator, to fix ona "fair price" for the 1917 crop. The Food Administrator, as publiclyannounced by President Wilson at the time, took "no part in thedeliberations of the committee" nor "in any way intimated an opinionregarding that price. "

The Committee in view of the fact that the price for 1918 wheat wasalready guaranteed at $2. 00--it was later increased by the President to$2. 26--and that any smaller price would undoubtedly lead to aconsiderable holding over of 1917 wheat for sale at the 1918 price andthat a higher price would have been dangerously unfair to the consumers, especially the great body of working men, recommended a "fair price" of$2. 20 a bushel for 1917 wheat. It was a price a little higher than thatguaranteed by England to its farmers, about the same as that adopted byGermany, and a little less than that guaranteed by France, so desperatethat she was ready to pay anything for production, and was alreadyforestalling the complaint of consumers by subsidizing the bread. ThePresident adopted the price as recommended to him by the Committee, butthere was no Congressional guarantee to back it up. So, with the fairprice thus determined by an independent commission, the FoodAdministrator proceeded with plans for holding the price of wheat atthis level and reflecting it to the farmer. The principal steps taken toeffect this were:

First, the creation of a government corporation (the U. S. GrainCorporation) which, acting under the provision of the Food Control Lawauthorizing the government to buy and sell foodstuffs, could deal inwheat and exert its influence in the maintenance of the fair price byacting as a dominant commercial agency for the buying, selling, anddistribution of wheat. 

Second, the licensing of all store handlers and millers of wheat andcontrolling them both through voluntary agreements and licenseregulations. 

Third, the prohibition of trading in futures. 

As an illustration of the results quickly obtained by these measures wemay note that while the farmer was getting in the year just before thewar about 27 per cent of the cost of each loaf of bread for the wheat init, to which the miller added about 6-1/2 per cent and the middlemen andbakers the remaining 66-1/2 per cent, and in 1915, after the war began, the respective proportions were 30 per cent, 11 per cent, and 59 percent, in 1918, after the Food Administrator's control was in force, thefarmer got 40 per cent, the miller 3 per cent, and the others 57 percent. Or, as another illustration, while in 1917, when there was no foodcontrol the difference between the price of the farmers' wheat and theflour made from it was $11. 00 per barrel this margin during FoodAdministration days was about $3. 50. 

An enumeration of the many and ingenious measures adopted by Hoover andJulius Barnes, the self-sacrificing and highly efficient head of theGrain Corporation, to acquit themselves and the Government with fairnessto all interests of the tremendous responsibility and undertaking thusimposed on them would carry us beyond the limits of our space. Thesecontrollers of the American wheat had in their hands the fate ofnations. The Allies had to be supplied; and the American farmers had tobe stimulated to top effort; and the American consumers, which means thewhole people, had to be kept uninjured in working efficiency andundismayed by possibility of food panic which would result fromprohibitive prices, or actual shortage. If the war was to be won theresimply had to be wheat enough for all, America and Allies alike, and ithad to be available both as regards distribution and price. 

The results of the American wheat control can be summed up in one word:success. The unwearying labors and undiminished devotion necessary toachieve this success in face of great difficulties and much criticismcannot be so readily summed up. But without them the history of the warwould have been a different history. We should never forget this. In therecords of the methods and results of the control lies the matter, allready for the competent pen, for an epic of the wheat, the fit thirdpart of the trilogy that Frank Norris began with "The Octopus" and "ThePit" and had, at the call of death, to leave unwritten. 

Another phase of Hoover's food regulatory activity, concerning whichthere was, and still continues to be, much discussion, is that of hisattempt to insure a stimulated production of hogs by a stabilized pricewhich should well reward the grower and yet not lead to such anexorbitant cost to the consumer as would have been a dangerous hardshipto our own people and an unfair hold-up of our associates in the war. Next to wheat, pork products were the American food supplies mostnecessary to the Allies. 

Hogs are a corn product. The cost of production of hogs depends rathermore upon the price of corn than upon any other factor. Investigationshowed that owing to the violent fluctuations in demand for corn andhogs during the war, there had been five periods between the beginningof the war and September, 1917, in which it had been more profitable tosell corn than to feed it to swine at the price of hogs thenprevailing, while there were only three periods when the reverse wastrue. In the preceding eight years there had been only two periods inwhich the direct sale of corn was more profitable than feeding it toswine. 

The results of these periods of unprofitable feeding was to retard hogproduction, as the grower was discouraged from breeding during thoseperiods. Hoover therefore decided that the maintenance of a properrelation between the price of corn and the price of hogs was the bestmethod of assuring an increased production of pork. Furthermore, theviolent fluctuations in the price of hogs tended to lift the price ofthe pork products to the consumer unduly, for at every new rise thestocks already in the warehouses over the whole country were marked upand the spread between the consumer and the producer thereby increased. A stabilization of the price of hogs was therefore as necessary for theprotection of the consumer for the sake of a reduction of this spread asit was in the case of other foodstuffs. 

In order that the swine growers should have an opportunity toparticipate in the determination of what method would be most fair andeffective in establishing this stabilization and stimulating production, a committee of leading producers was asked to investigate the wholematter. This committee made a report late in October, 1917, which, aftersetting out the situation in detail and calling attention to theimperative need of a stimulation of production, declared that althoughhog production for the ten years ending 1916 had been maintained on aratio of 11. 66 bushels of corn to 100 pounds of hog, there had been butlittle profit to the grower on this basis and that it would be desirablefor the sake of stimulation to pay at least the equivalent of 13. 33bushels of corn per hundred pounds of average hog and, if possible, asmuch as 14. 33 pounds. On this latter ratio the committee believed thatproduction could be increased fifteen per cent above the normal. TheCommittee added an expression of its belief that "the best emergencymethod of immediately stabilizing the market and preventing thepremature marketing of light unfinished pigs and breeding stock would beto establish a minimum emergency price for good to select hogs ofsixteen dollars a hundred pounds on the Chicago market. "

As the Food Administrator had no power to fix prices by law, nor toguarantee a price for the producer backed by money in the U. S. Treasuryas in the case of the wheat guarantee, the only means available to himto assure a stable minimum price for hogs was to come to an agreementwith the principal buyers both of hogs and the prepared pork productsthat they would pay a price which would make this minimum possible. Thiswas accomplished by Hoover, with the approval of the President, in thefollowing way: The Allies agreed with the United States that theirpurchases of food supplies would be made through the Food Administration(as already explained earlier in this book). They then agreed with theFood Administrator that their orders for pork and pork products might beplaced with the packers at prices which would enable the packers to buythe hogs offered them at not less than the minimum price agreed tobetween the Food Administrator and the producers. The orders for ourArmy and Navy, and for other large buyers, such as the Belgian Reliefand Red Cross, were also placed through the Food Administration upon thesame price basis. The packers then agreed with the Food Administrationthat if these orders were placed with them at the stated prices theywould pay to the producer the minimum price announced by the FoodAdministration. The combined orders of these principal buyers called forfrom thirty to forty per cent of the pork and pork products produced inthe United States, and the price paid by them would obviously determinethe price for the whole amount. 

With this power, derived solely by agreement, and not, as many of theproducers seemed to understand, or rather, misunderstand, bygovernmental authority exercised, as in the case of wheat, to establisha government-backed guarantee, the Food Administrator announced onNovember 3, 1917, that:

 "The prices (of hogs) so far as we can effect them will not go below a minimum of about $15. 50 per hundredweight for the average of the packers' droves on the Chicago market until further notice. .. . We have had and shall have the advice of a board composed of practical hog-growers and experts. That board advises us that the best yardstick to measure the cost of production of hogs is the cost of corn. The board further advises that the ratio of corn price to hog price on the average over a series of years has been about twelve to one (or a little less). In the past when the ratio has gone lower than twelve to one, the stock of hogs in the country has decreased. When it was higher than twelve the hogs have increased. The board has given its judgment that to bring the stock of hogs back to normal under the present conditions the ratio should be about thirteen. Therefore, as to the hogs farrowed next spring, we will try to stabilize the price so that the farmer can count on getting for each one hundred pounds of hog ready for market, thirteen times the average cost per bushel of the corn fed to the hogs. .. . But let there be no misunderstanding of this statement. It is not a guarantee backed by money. It is not a promise by the packers. It is a statement of the intention and policy of the Food Administration which means to do justice to the farmer. "

The effect of Hoover's action to accomplish the imperatively neededstimulated production of hogs began to appear by the next July and fromthat time on was very marked, the production reaching an increase overnormal of thirty percent. The price assured to the farmers by the FoodAdministration was maintained uniformly from November, 1917, to August, 1918. In October, however, a critical situation arose because, by reasonof the growing peace talk, a sharp decline in the price of corn occurredand this decline spread fear among the growers that a similar reductionwould take place in the price of hogs because of the fixed thirteen toone corn and hog ratio. A rapid marketing of hogs ensued which broke theprice. 

With the Armistice there was an immediate change of attitude on the partof the Allies who had been trying to build up reserves of pork productsto use in times of possible increased difficulty of transportation. Theynow moved promptly toward a reduction of purchases. This made seriousdifficulties in maintaining the price to the producers during the monthsof December, January, and February. But Hoover's original assurance tothe growers covered these months. It required most vigorous pressure onhis part to compel the Allies to live up to their purchasing agreements. But he was finally successful in disposing of the material offered bythe growers and thus was able to keep faith with them. 

Some criticism of the Food Administration because of this maintenance ofprices was voiced by consumers. But two important things must beremembered in this connection. In the first place the stabilized pricewas established primarily for the sake of stimulating an imperativelyneeded increased production. In the second place the assurance of theFood Administration given to the growers in November, 1917, that itwould do what it could to maintain the price for hogs farrowed in thespring of 1918 covered sales extending to the spring of 1919. No oneknew that an armistice would come in November, 1918. The only safe planwas to try to insure a food supply for a reasonably long time inadvance. To have broken the agreement with the producers when thearmistice came would have caused many of them great, even ruinouslosses. Besides it would have been a plain breach of faith. Hooverwould not do it. 

In March, 1919, the War Trade Board was no longer willing to continueits export restrictions. It was only by virtue of these that the FoodAdministration had any control of the situation. They were canceled andfrom that time on the market was uncontrolled. But by then, the majorhog run was disposed of, and the Food Administration had acquitteditself of its obligation to the producers. 

This is a long and dry story of pigs and corn and difficulty. But Ithink it well to tell it, even though it may be dull, because it seemsto be so little known. Hoover's situation vis à vis pigs and producersand packers in those strenuous days of threatened collapse of anall-important food supply seems to be too little understood. And thislittle understanding has resulted in too much unfair criticism. Now letus turn to another story with more humans than hogs in it. 

Hoover had said, in May, 1917, within a few days after the President hadtold him that he wanted him to administer the food of America, as a warmeasure: "I conceive that the essence of all special war administrationfalls into two phases: first, centralized and single responsibility;second, delegation of this responsibility to decentralizedadministration. "

Then let us recall how soon after that we were all assuming some sharein this "decentralized administration. " If we had not all become FederalFood Administrators of states, or county, or city, or rural sub-foodadministrators, or even members of food conservation committees ormembers of honor ration leagues, we were all at least, household foodadministrators. We were all administering, in a new light and with a newaim, the food we bought or cooked or ate. Hoover, the centralized andresponsible head, had decentralized food administration right down toeach one of us. 

This decentralization began with an organization of all the states. Thegeneral responsibility for this work was vested in a particular divisionof the Food Administration, directed by John W. Hallowell, a youngengineer and business man who revealed a conspicuous capacity in thisimportant position. As early as June, inquiry was made of Governors ofthe states and of other public officials and prominent men concerningdesirable men who would be willing to volunteer their services indirecting the work of the Food Administration within their state, astheir part in the war work of the nation. Early in July as many as hadbeen so far selected came to Washington for a first conference withHoover, at which plans were made for proceeding with the work within thestates immediately upon the passage of the Food Control Act. By August10 when the Food Administration was formally established, Federal FoodAdministrators were already selected for about half the states. The restwere soon chosen. Frequent meetings were held in Washington. 

At each successive conference with Hoover of these state administrators, who were able men, experienced in business administration or publicservice, their enthusiasm, their confidence in his leadership, theirresponse to his national ideals, their personal devotion to him, grew. Hoover's relation to them recalled to me, with leapings of the heart, those earlier days in Brussels when the eager young men of the C. R. B. Used to come rushing in from the provinces to group themselves aroundhim and derive fresh inspiration and determination from their contactwith him to see the job through and to see it through cleanly andfearlessly. 

These Federal Food Administrators listened to Hoover in Washington as welistened to him in Belgium. He stirred their hearts and satisfied theirminds. And they went back to their difficult tasks, with freshconviction and renewed strength. And their tasks were truly difficult, their voluntarily assumed share of the decentralized administration wasa serious one. But they, too, decentralized parts of the administration;they set up the district and county and city administrations. And theyand their many helpers were the ones who carried food administrationinto every market and grocery store and bakery and home. The wholecountry, all the people, became a part of the United States FoodAdministration. 

And that was what Hoover wanted and intended. For he knew that only thepeople, all of them working voluntarily together, could reallyadminister the food of America, as it had to be administered in thegreat war emergency that had come to the country. 

On the day after the armistice Hoover addressed the Federal FoodAdministrators, gathered in Washington, for the last time. In thisaddress he outlined his attitude toward the future work of the FoodAdministration and, even more importantly, toward governmental foodcontrol as a policy, in the following words:

 "Our work under the Food Control Act has revolved largely around the curtailment of speculation and profiteering. This act will expire at the signing of the peace with Germany, and as it represents a type of legislation only justified under war conditions, I do not expect to see its renewal. It has proved of vital importance under the economic currents and psychology of war. I do not consider it as of such usefulness in the economic currents and psychology of peace. Furthermore, it is my belief that the tendency of all such legislation, except in war, is to an over-degree to strike at the roots of individual initiative. We have secured its execution during the war as to the willing coöperation of ninety-five per cent of the trades of the country, but under peace conditions it would degenerate into an harassing blue law. 

 "The law has well justified itself under war conditions. The investigations of our economic division clearly demonstrate that during the first year of the Food Administration farm prices steadily increased by fifteen per cent to twenty per cent on various computations, while wholesale prices decreased from three per cent to ten per cent, according to the basis of calculation. Thus middlemen's cost and profits were greatly reduced. This was due to the large suppression of profiteering and speculation and to the more orderly trade practices introduced under the law. 

 "It is my desire that we should all recognize that we have passed a great milestone in the signing of the armistice; that we must get upon the path of peace; that therefore we should begin at once to relax the regulation and control measures of the Food Administration at every point where they do not open a possibility of profiteering and speculation. This we cannot and will not permit so far as our abilities extend until the last day that we have authority under the law. When we entered upon this work eighteen months ago our trades were rampant with speculation and profiteering. This grew mainly from the utterly insensate raids of Europe on our commodities. I look now for a turn of American food trades towards conservative and safe business because in this period that confronts us, with the decreased buying power of our own people, of uncertainty as to the progress of the world's politics, with the Government in control of exports and imports, he would be a foolish man indeed who today started a speculation in food. This is a complete reversal of the commercial atmosphere that existed when war began eighteen months ago, and therefore the major necessity for law in repression of speculative activities is, to my mind, rapidly passing. It is our duty, however, to exert ourselves in every direction so to handle our food during reconstruction as to protect our producers and our consumers and to assure our trade from chaos and panic. "

On the same day that this address was made Hoover began the canceling ofthe Food Administration regulations, and this cancellation continuedrapidly through November and December. It had to be done with care toprevent dangerous disorganization, and some continued control wasnecessary during the winter and spring in order to carry out theagreements of price stabilization entered into between the FoodAdministration and the producers and handlers of certain commodities, ashogs, sugar, rice, and cotton seed and its products. The wheat priceguarantee and control especially provided for by Congress and laterPresidential proclamation remained vested in the United States GrainCorporation. It will expire on June 30, 1920. 

But Hoover could not remain in America to see this demobilization of theFood Administration through personally. Only ten days after thearmistice he left for Europe, at the request of the President, to directthe participation of the United States in the imperatively needed reliefof the war-ravaged countries of Eastern Europe. Edgar Rickard, who hadbeen Hoover's chief personal assistant through all of the FoodAdministration work, was appointed by the President as Acting FoodAdministrator in Hoover's absence. 

CHAPTER XII

AMERICAN RELIEF ADMINISTRATION

With the coming of the armistice victorious America and the Allies foundthemselves face to face with a terrible situation in Eastern Europe. Theliberated peoples of the Baltic states, Poland, Czecho-Slovakia, Jugo-Slavia, and the Near East, were in a dreadful state of starvationand economic wreckage. A great, responsibility and pressing dutydevolved on America, Great Britain, France, and Italy to act promptlyfor the relief of these peoples who had become temporarily, by thehazards of war, their wards. But the Allies themselves were in noenviable position to relieve others. Their own troubles were many. Itwas on America that the major part of this relief work would fall. 

No man knew this situation, as far as it could be known before the veilof blockade and military control was lifted from it, better thanHoover. And no man realized more clearly than he the direfulconsequences that it threatened not only to the peoples of the sufferingcountries themselves but to the peace and stability of the world, torestore which every effort had now to be exerted. Hoover was not onlythe man logically indicated to the President of the United States toundertake this saving relief on the part of America, but he was the manwhom all of Europe recognized as the source of hope in this criticalmoment. He came to the gigantic endeavor as the man of the hour. 

Hoover naturally made Paris his headquarters, for the Peace Conferencewas sitting here, and here also were the representatives of the Allieswith whom he was to associate himself in the combined effort to save thepeoples of Eastern Europe from starvation and help them make a beginningof self-government and economic rehabilitation. 

His first steps were directed toward: First, securing coördination withthe Allied Governments by setting up a council of the associatedgovernments; second, finding the necessary financial support from theUnited States for making the American contribution to this relief;third, setting up a special organization for the administration of theAmerican food and funds; and, fourth, urging the provision of funds andshipping by the Allied Governments. 

The special American organization for assisting in this general Europeanrelief was quickly organized under the name of the American ReliefAdministration, of which Hoover was formally named by the PresidentDirector-General, and Congress on the recommendation of the Presidentappropriated, on February 24, 1919, $100, 000, 000 as a working fund forthe new organization. In addition to this the United States Treasury wasalready making monthly loans of several million dollars each toRoumania, Serbia, and Czecho-Slovakia. But while waiting for theCongressional appropriation the work had to be got going, and for thisthe President contributed $5, 000, 000 from his special funds availablefor extraordinary expenses. 

Before actual relief work could be intelligently begun, however, it wasnecessary to find out by personal inspection just what the actual foodsituation in each of the Eastern European countries was, and for thatpurpose investigating missions were sent out in December, 1918, andJanuary, 1919, to all of the suffering countries. 

Hoover had quickly gathered about him, as nucleus of a staff, a numberof men already experienced in relief work and food matters who hadworked with him in the Belgian relief and the American FoodAdministration. Others were rapidly added, both civilians of business ortechnical experience and army officers, detached at his request, especially from the Quartermaster and Service of Supplies corps. Fromthese men he was able to select small groups eager to begin with him theactual work. His own impatience and readiness to make a real start waslike that of a race-horse at the starting gate or a runner with his toeson the line awaiting the pistol shot. 

The atmosphere of Paris was an irritating one. The men in control werealways saying "wait. " There were a thousand considerations of old-timediplomacy, of present and future political and commercial considerationsin their minds. They were conferring with each other and referring backto their governments for instructions and then conferring again. Commonsense and necessity were being restrained by political sensitiveness andinertia. In Hoover's mind one thing was perfectly clear. Time was of theessence of his contract. Every day of delay meant more difficulty. TheEastern countries, struggling to find themselves in the chaos ofdisorganization, waiting for an official determination of their newborders, were already becoming entangled in frontier brawls andquarreling over the control of local sources of food and fuel. Theirpeople were suffering terribly and were clamoring for help. Hoover wasthere to help; he wanted to begin helping. So he began. 

Hoover had already taken the position that the day of hate was passed. With the end of mutual slaughter and destruction came immediately thetime for help. It was like that pitiful period after the battle when thebloody field is taken over by the stretcher-bearers, the Red Crossnurses, and the tireless surgeons. So Hoover had already clearly in mindthat the hand of charity was going to be extended to the sufferers inHungary and Austria and Germany as well as to the people who weresuffering because of the ravages of the armies of these nations. Dr. Alonzo Taylor and I, whom he had sent early in December to Switzerlandto get into close touch with the situation in Eastern and CentralEurope, listened, for him, in Berne to the pitiful pleas of therepresentatives of starving Vienna. By January Hoover's missions wereinstalled and at work in Trieste, Belgrade, Vienna, Prague, Buda-Pest, and Warsaw. In February Dr. Taylor and I were reporting the Germansituation from Berlin. 

The attitude of the people in these countries was one of patheticdependence on American aid and confidence that it would be forthcoming. The name of Hoover was already known all over Europe because of hisBelgian work, and the swiftly-spread news that he was in charge of thenew relief work acted like magic in restoring hope to these despairingmillions. 

When the first food mission to Poland, making its way in the first weekof January, 1919, with difficulty and discomfort because of thedemoralized transportation conditions, had reached that part of itsjourney north of Vienna towards Cracow which brought it intoCzecho-Slovakia, our train halted at a station gaily decorated withflags and bunting among which the American colors were conspicuous. Aband was playing vigorously something that sounded like theStar-Spangled Banner, and a group of top-hatted and frock-coatedgentlemen were the front figures in a great crowd that covered thestation platform. I was somewhat dismayed by these evident preparationsfor a reception, for we were not coming to try to help Czecho-Slovakia, but Poland, between which two countries sharp feeling was alreadydeveloping in connection with the dispute over the Teschen coal fields. I told my interpreter, therefore, to hurry off the train and explain thesituation. 

He returned with one of the gentlemen of high hat and long coat whosaid, in broken French: "Well, anyway, you are the food mission, aren'tyou?" I replied, "Yes, but we are going to Warsaw; we are only passingthrough your country; we can't do anything for you. "

"But, " he persisted, "you are the Americans, aren't you?"

"Yes, we are the Americans. "

"Well, then, it's all right. " And he waved an encouraging hand to theband, which responded with increased endeavor, while the crowd cheeredand waved the home-made American flags. And we were received andaddressed, and given curious things to drink and a little food--we gavethem in return some Red Cross prisoner packages we carried along for ourown maintenance--and then we were sent on with more cheers and heartyGodspeeds. 

Delay so plainly meant sharper suffering and more deaths that evenbefore the necessary financial and other arrangements were completed oreven well under way, Hoover had made arrangements with the Secretary ofWar by which vessels carrying 135, 000 tons of American food werediverted from French to Mediterranean ports, and with the GrainCorporation, under authority of the Treasury, by which 145, 000 tonswere started for northern European ports. Thus by the time arrangementshad been made for financing the shipments and for internaltransportation and safe control and fair distribution, the food cargoeswere already arriving at the nearest available ports. Within a few weeksfrom the time the first mission arrived in Warsaw and had reported backto Hoover the terrible situation of the Polish people, the relief foodwas flowing into Poland through Dantzig, the German port for the use ofwhich for this purpose a special article in the terms of the armisticehad provided, but which was only most reluctantly and by dint of strongpressure made available to us. 

Similarly from Trieste the food trains began moving north while therestill remained countless details of arrangement to settle. I was inVienna when the first train of American relief food came in from theSouth. The Italians were also attempting to send in some supplies, butso far all the trains which had started north had been blocked at someborder point. The American train was in charge of two snappy doughboys, a corporal and a private. When it reached the point of blockade thecorporal was told that he could go no farther. He asked why, but onlygot for answer a curt statement that trains were not moving just now. "But this one is, " he replied, and called to his private: "Let me havemy gun. " With revolver in hand he instructed the engineer to pull out. And the train went on. When I asked him in Vienna if he had worried anyat the border about the customs and military regulations of thegovernments concerned which he was disregarding, he answered with acheerful smile: "Not a worry; Mr. Hoover's representative at Triestetold me to take the train through and it was up to me to take her, wasn't it? These wop kings and generals don't count with me. I'm workingfor Hoover. "

But the whole situation in these southeastern countries because of theirutter disorganization and their hopeless embroilment in conflict witheach other, was too impossible. Whatever degree of peace the capitals ofthese countries recognized as the diplomatic status of the moment, thefrontiers had no illusions. There were trenches out there andmachine-guns and bayonets. Men were shooting at each other across thelines. Either the trains or cars of one country would be stopped at theborder, or if they got across they did not get back. Some countries hadenough cars and locomotives; some did not. If one country had some coalto spare but was starving for lack of the wheat which could be spared byits neighbor, which was freezing, there was no way of making the neededexchange. The money of each country became valueless in the others--andof less and less value in its own land. Everything was going to pieces, including the relief. It simply could not go on this way. 

Finally, as a result of Hoover's insistence at Paris on the terribledanger of delay both to the lives of the people and the buddingdemocracy of Europe, the Supreme Economic Council took the drasticmeasure of temporarily taking over the control of the wholetransportation system of Southeastern Europe which was put into Hoover'shands, leaving him to arrange by agreement, as best he could, accordingto his own ideas and opportunities, the other matters of finance, coal, the interchange of native commodities between adjacent countries and thedistribution of imported food. 

Hoover became, in a word, general economic and life-saving manager forthe Eastern European countries. It is from my personal knowledge of hisachievements in this extraordinary position during the first eightmonths after the Armistice that I have declared my belief earlier inthis account that it was owing more to Hoover and his work than to anyother single influence that utter anarchy and chaos and completeBolshevik domination in Eastern Europe (west of Russia) were averted. Inother words, Hoover not only saved lives, but nations and civilizationsby his superhuman efforts. The political results of his work were butincidental to his life-saving activities, but from an historical andinternational point of view they were even more important. 

Before, however, referring to them more specifically, something of thescope and special character of the general European relief and supplywork should be briefly explained. 

Altogether, twenty countries received supplies of food and clothingunder Hoover's control acting as Director-General of Relief for theSupreme Economic Council. The total amount of these supplies deliveredfrom December 1, 1918, to June 1, 1919, was about three and a quartermillion tons, comprising over six hundred shiploads, of a totalapproximate value of eight hundred million dollars. There were, inaddition, on June 1, port stocks of over 100, 000 tons ready for internaldelivery, and other supplies came later. 

The twenty countries sharing in the supplies included Belgium andNorthern France (through the C. R. B. ), the Baltic states of Finland, Esthonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, a small part of Russia, Poland, Czecho-Slovakia, Germany, German Austria, Hungary, Roumania, Bulgaria, Greater Servia, Turkey, Armenia, Italy, and the neutrals, Denmark andHolland. By the terms of the Congressional Act appropriating the hundredmillion dollars for the relief of Eastern Europe, no part of the moneycould be used for the relief of Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, orTurkey. But Vienna needed help more quickly and imperatively than anyother eastern capital. Hoover arranged that money should be advanced byEngland and France for food purchases in America for Austria andHungary. This food was put into Hoover's hands, and to him was left theproblem of getting it into the suffering countries. Germany was suppliedunder the approval of the Allies in accordance with the armisticeagreement. 

The "relief" of Eastern and Central Europe was, of course, not allcharity in the usually accepted meaning of the term. The Americanhundred million dollars and the British sixty million dollars could notbuy the needed eight hundred millions' worth of food and clothing. Infact, of that American hundred million all but about fifteen are nowagain in the U. S. Treasury in the form of promises to pay signed byvarious Eastern European Governments. About ten millions of it weregiven by Hoover outright, in the form of special food for childnutrition, to the under-nourished children from the Baltic to the BlackSea. By additions made to this charity by the Eastern EuropeanGovernments themselves and by the nationals of these countries residentin America, and from other sources, two and a half million weak childrenare today still being given (May, 1920) a daily supplementary meal ofspecial food. 

Hoover's experience in Belgium and Northern France had taught him hownecessary was the special care of the children. All the war-ravagedcountries have lost a material part of their present generation. In someof them the drainage of human life and strength approaches that ofGermany after the Thirty Years War and of France after the Napoleonicwars. If they are not to suffer a racial deterioration the cominggeneration must be nursed to strength. The children, then, who are theimmediately coming generation and the producers of the ones to follow, must be particularly cared for. That is what Hoover gave specialattention to from the beginning of his relief work and it is what he isnow still giving most of his time and energy to. 

For the general re-provisioning of the peoples of Eastern and CentralEurope all of the various countries supplied were called on to pay forthe food at cost, plus transportation, to the extent of theirpossibilities. Gold, if they had it--all of Germany's supply was paidfor in gold--paper money at current exchange, government promissorynotes, and commodities which could be sold to other countries, made upthe payments. The charity was in making loans, providing the food, getting ships and barges and trains and coal for its transportation, selling it at cost, and giving the service of several hundred active, intelligent, and sympathetic Americans, mostly young and khaki-clothed, and a lesser group of Allied officers, all devoted to getting the foodwhere it was needed and seeing that it was fairly distributed. 

It is impossible to depict the utter bewilderment and helplessness ofthe governments of the liberated nations of Eastern Europe at thebeginning of the armistice period. Nor is it possible to explainadequately the enormous difficulties they faced in any attempt atorganizing, controlling, and caring for their peoples. With uncertainboundaries--for the demarcation of these they were waiting on a hardlyless bewildered group of eminent gentlemen in Paris; with a financialand economic situation presenting such appalling features ofdemoralization that they could only be realized one at a time; withtheir people clamoring for the immediately necessary food, fuel andclothing, and demanding a swift realization of all the benefits thattheir new freedom was to bring them; and with an ever more menacingwhistling wind of terror blowing over them from the East--with all this, how the responsible men of the governments which rapidly succeeded eachother in these countries retained any persistent vestiges of sanity isbeyond the comprehension of those of us who viewed the scene at closerange. 

For a single but sufficient illustration let us take the situation inthe split apart fragments of the former great Austro-Hungarian Empire, which now constitute all or parts of German Austria, Hungary, Czecho-Slovakia, Jugo-Slavia and Roumania. For all these regions (exceptRoumania) Vienna had for years been the center of political authorityand chief economic control. In Vienna were many of the land-owners, mostof the heads of the great industries, and the directors of thetransportation system. It was the financial and market center, the hubof a vast, intricate, and delicate orb-web of economic organization. Butthe people and the goods of the various separated regions, except GermanAustria, the smallest, weakest, and most afflicted one of them all, werecut off from it and all were cut off from each other. The finalpolitical boundaries were not yet fixed, to be sure, but actual militaryfrontiers were already established with all their limitations oninter-communication and their disregard of personal needs. Shut upwithin their frontiers these regions found themselves varyingly with orwithout money--if they had any it was of ever-decreasing purchasingpower--with or without food, fuel, and raw materials for industry; andwith lesser or larger numbers of locomotives and railway cars, mostlylesser. But of everything the distribution bore no calculated relationto the needs of the industry and commerce or even to the actualnecessities of the people for the preservation of health and life. 

Vienna, itself, "_die lustige schöne Stadt Wien_" was, as it still istoday and for long will be, the saddest great capital in Europe. Reducedfrom its position of being the governing, spending, and singing anddancing capital of an empire of fifty-five million people--it never wasa producing capital--to be the capital of a small, helpless nation ofscant seven million people concentrated in a region unable to meet eventheir needs of food and coal--Vienna represents the pathetic extreme ofthe cataclysmic results of War. 

But if the situation was most complex and hopeless in the south, it wasfar from simple or hopeful in the north. Poland, the smaller Balticstates and Finland were all in desperate plight and their newgovernments were all aghast at the magnitude of the problem before them. To add to the difficulties of general disorganization of peoples, lackof the necessities of life, and helplessness of governments, there wasever continuing war. Armistice meant something real on the West andAustro-Italian fronts, but it meant little to Eastern Europe. There wasa score of very lively little wars going on at once over there: Polandalone was fighting with four different adversaries, one at each cornerof her land. 

But the climax of the situation was reached in the realization by allimmediately concerned that something saving had to be done at once, orthe whole thing would become literal anarchy, with red and howling deathrampant over all. Bolshevik Russia, just over the Eastern borders, wasnot only a vivid reality to these countries, but it was constantlythreatening to come across the borders and engulf them. 

Its agents were working continuously among their peoples; there wereeverywhere the sinister signs of the possibility of a swift removal ofthe frontiers of Bolshevism from their Eastern to their Western borders. In Paris the eminent statesmen and famous generals of the PeaceConference and the Supreme Council sat and debated. They sent outoccasional ultimata ordering the cessation of fighting, the retirementfrom a far advanced frontier, and what not else. Inter-Allied Economicand Military Missions came and looked on and conferred and returned. But nobody stopped fighting, and the conferences settled nothing. TheAllies were not in a position--this need be no secret now--to sendadequate forces to enforce their ultimata. An Inter-Allied MilitaryMission of four generals of America, Great Britain, France and Italystarted by special train from Cracow to Lemberg to convey personally anultimatum to the Ruthenians and Poles ordering them to stop fighting. The train was shelled by the Ruthenians east of Przemsyl, and thegenerals came back. Eastern Europe expected the great powers to dosomething about this, but nothing happened, and the discount on ultimatabecame still more marked. 

Somebody had to do something that counted. So Hoover did it. It was notonly lives that had to be saved; it was nations. It was not onlystarvation that had to be fought; it was approaching anarchy, it wasBolshevism. 

As already stated, Hoover's food ships had left America for Southern andNorthern European ports before Hoover's men had even got into thecountries to be fed. As a consequence, food deliveries closely followedfood investigations. That counted with the people. One of Hoover's ruleswas that food could only go into regions where it could be safeguardedand controlled. That counted against Bolshevism. Shrewd Bela Kun wasable to play a winning game in Hungary against the Peace Conference andSupreme Councils at Paris, but he was out-played by soft-voiced, square-jawed Captain "Tommy" Gregory, Hoover's general director forSoutheast Europe, and it was this same California lawyer in khaki, turned food man, who, when the communist Kun had passed and the pendulumhad swung as dangerously far in the other direction, allowing theaudacious Hapsburg, Archduke Joseph, to slip into power, had done mostto unseat him. 

Gregory had been able to commandeer all the former military wires in theAustro-Hungarian countries for use in the relief work. So he was able tokeep Hoover advised of all the news, not only promptly, but in goodAmericanese. His laconic but fully descriptive message to Parisannouncing the Archduke's passing read: "August 24th, Archie wentthrough the hoop at 8 P. M. Today. "

Relief in Eastern Europe was spelled by Hoover with a capital _R_ andseveral additional letters. It really spelled Rehabilitation. It meant, in addition to sending in food, straightening out transportation, getting coal mines going, and the starting up of direct exchange ofcommodities among the unevenly supplied countries. There was somesurplus wheat in the Banat, some surplus coal in Czecho-Slovakia, someextra locomotives in Vienna. So under the arbitrage of himself and hislieutenants there was set up a wholesale international bartering, acurious reversion to the primitive ways of early human society. 

This exchange of needed goods by barter solved in some degree theimpossible financial situation, gave the people an incentive to work, and helped reduce political inflammation. It was practical statesmanshipmeeting things as they were and not as they might more desirably be, butwere not. I say again, and many men in the governments of EasternEurope, and even in the councils in Paris[1] have said, that Hooversaved Eastern Europe from anarchy, and held active Bolshevism to itsoriginal frontiers. That meant saving Western Europe, too. 

Then Hoover came back to America to be an American private citizenagain. That is what he is today. He is still carrying on two greatcharities in Eastern Europe: the daily feeding of millions ofunder-nourished children, and the making possible, through his AmericanRelief Warehouses, for anyone in America to help any relatives orfriends anywhere in Eastern Europe by direct food gifts. But he is doingit as private citizen. The story of Hoover--as far as I can write ittoday--is that of an American who saw a particular kind of service hecould render his country and Europe and humanity in a great crisis. Herendered it, and thus most truly helped make the world safe forDemocracy and human ideals. It would only be fair to add to his Belgiancitation the larger one of American Citizen of the World and Friend ofAll the People. But he would only be embarrassed if anyone attempted todo it now. We can safely leave the matter to History. 

[Footnote 1: The official representative of the Treasury of one of theAllied powers, who had no reason to be too friendly to the Americandirector of relief, for Hoover had often to oppose the policies of thispower in the Paris councils, has recently written of him: "Mr. Hooverwas the only man who emerged from the ordeal of Paris with an enhancedreputation. This complex personality, with his habitual air of wearyTitan (or, as others might put it, of exhausted prizefighter), his eyessteadily fixed on the true and essential facts of the Europeansituation, imported into the Councils of Paris, when he took part inthem, precisely that atmosphere of reality, knowledge, magnanimity, anddisinterestedness, which, if they had been found in other quarters also, would have given us the Good Peace. "]

APPENDICES

APPENDIX I

STATEMENT GIVEN TO THE PRESS BY U. S. FOOD ADMINISTRATOR HOOVER ONNOVEMBER 12, 1918 (THE DAY AFTER THE ARMISTICE BEGAN), CONCERNING THERESULTS OF FIFTEEN MONTHS OF FOOD ADMINISTRATION

With the war effectually over we enter a new economic era, and itsimmediate effect on prices is difficult to anticipate. The maintenanceof the embargo will prevent depletion of our stocks by hungry Europe toany point below our necessities, and anyone who contemplates speculationin food against the needs of these people can well be warned of theprompt action of the government. The prices of some food commodities mayincrease, but others will decrease, because with liberated shippingaccumulated stocks in the Southern hemisphere and the Far East will beavailable. The demands upon the United States will change in characterbut not in volume. 

The course of food prices in the United States during the last fifteenmonths is of interest. In general, for the first twelve months of theFood Administration the prices to the farmer increased, but decreased tothe consumer by the elimination of profiteering and speculation. Due toincreases in wages, transportation, etc. , the prices have beenincreasing during the last four months. 

The currents which affect food prices in the United States are much lesscontrolled than in the other countries at war. The powers of the FoodAdministration in these matters extend:

First, to the control of profits by manufacturers, wholesalers anddealers, and the control of speculation in foodstuffs. They do notextend to the control of the great majority of retailers, to publiceating places, or the farmer, except so far as this can be accomplishedon a voluntary basis. 

Second, the controlled buying for the Allied civil populations andarmies, the neutrals and the American army and navy, dominates themarket in certain commodities at all times, and in other commoditiespart of the time. In these cases it is possible to effect, incoöperation with producers and manufacturers, a certain amount ofstability in price. I have never favored attempts to fix maximum pricesby law; the universal history of these devices in Europe has been thatthey worked against the true interests of both producer and consumer. 

The course of prices during the first year of the Food Administration, that is, practically the period ending July 1, 1918, is clearly shown bythe price indexes of the Department of Agriculture and the Department ofLabor. Taking 1913 prices as the basis, the average prices of farmproduce for the three months ending July 1, 1917, were, according to theDepartment of Agriculture's price index, 115 per cent more than theaverage of 1913 prices, and according to the Department of Labor index, it was 91 per cent over 1913 prices. The two departments use somewhatdifferent bases of calculation. The average of farmers' prices one yearlater--that is, the three months ending July 1, 1918, was, according tothe Department of Agriculture indexes, 127 per cent over the 1913 basisand, according to the Department of Labor index, was 114 per cent overthe 1913 average. Thus farm prices increased 12 per cent on theDepartment of Agriculture calculations and 23 per cent upon theDepartment of Labor basis. 

An examination of wholesale prices, that is, of prepared foods, shows adifferent story:

The Department of Agriculture does not maintain an index of wholesaleprices, but the Department of Labor does, and this index shows adecrease in wholesale prices from 87 per cent over 1913 basis to 79 percent over the 1913 basis for the three months ending July 1, 1917, andJuly 1, 1918, respectively. The Food Administration price index ofwholesale prices calculated upon still another basis shows a decrease offrom 84 per cent to 80 per cent between these periods one year apart. 

Thus all indexes show an increase in farmers' prices and a decrease inwholesale prices of food during the year ending July 1, 1918. In otherwords, a great reduction took place in middlemen's charges, amounting tobetween 15 per cent and 30 per cent depending upon the basis ofcalculation adopted. These decreases have come out of the elimination ofspeculation and profiteering. 

The course of retail prices corroborates these results also. SinceOctober, 1917, the Food Administration has had the services of 2, 500weekly, voluntary retail price reporters throughout the United States. These combined reports show that the combined prices per unit of 24 mostimportant foodstuffs were $6. 62 in October, 1917. The same quantitiesand commodities could be bought for $6. 55 average for the springquarter, 1918--that is, a small drop had taken place. During this sameperiod of quarters ending July 1, 1917, to July 1, 1918, the prices ofclothing rose from 74 per cent to 136 per cent over 1913, or a rise ofabout 62 per cent, according to the Department of Labor indexes. 

Since the spring quarter, ending July 1, 1918, there has been a rise inprices, the Department of Agriculture index for September showing thatfarm price averages were 138 per cent over the 1913 basis, and theDepartment of Labor index showing 136 per cent, or a rise from theaverage of the spring quarter this year of 11 per cent and 22 per centrespectively to the farmer. The wholesale price index of the Departmentof Labor shows a rise from 79 per cent average of the spring quarter, 1918, to 99 per cent for September, or a rise of 20 per cent. The FoodAdministration wholesale index shows an increase from 80 per cent to 100per cent, or 20 per cent for the same period. 

In October, 1918, the Food Administration retail price reports show thatthe retail cost of the same quantity of the 24 principal foodstuffs was$7. 58 against an average of $6. 55 for the spring quarter 1918, or a riseof about 18 per cent. 

It is obvious enough that prices have risen during the last threemonths both to the farmer and to the wholesaler and retailer. On theother hand, these rising prices have only kept pace with the farmers'prices. 

Since the first of July this year, many economic forces have caused asituation adverse to the consumer. There has been a steady increase inwages, a steady increase in cost of the materials which go into foodproduction and manufacture, and in containers and supplies of all kinds. There has been an increase of 25 per cent in freight rates. The rents ofthe country are increasing and therefore costs of manufacturing, distribution and transportation are steadily increasing and shouldinevitably affect prices. The public should distinguish between a risein prices and profiteering, for with increasing prices to thefarmer--who is himself paying higher wages and cost--and with higherwages and transport, prices simply must rise. An example of what thismay come to can be shown in the matter of flour. The increased cost oftransportation from the wheat-producing regions to New York City amountsto about forty cents per barrel. The increased cost of cotton bagsduring the last fourteen months amounts to thirty cents per barrel offlour. The increase in wholesalers' costs of drayage, rents, etc. , amounts to ten cents, or a total of eighty cents without including theincreased costs of the miller or retailer. 

Such changes do not come under the category of profiteering. They arethe necessary changes involved by the economic differences in thesituation. We cannot "have our cake and eat it. " In other words, wecannot raise wages, railway rates, expand our credits and currency, andhope to maintain the same level of prices of foods. All that the FoodAdministration can do is to see as far as is humanly possible that thesealterations take place without speculation or profiteering, and thatsuch readjustments are conducted in an orderly manner. Even though itwere in the power of the Food Administration to repress prices, theeffect of maintaining the same price level in the face of such increasesin costs of manufacture, transportation and distribution, would beultimately to curtail production itself. We are in a period of inflationand we cannot avoid the results. 

We have had a large measure of voluntary coöperation both fromproducers, manufacturers and wholesalers, in suppression of profiteeringand speculation. There are cases that have required stern measures, andsome millions of dollars have been refunded in one way or another tothe public. The number of firms penalized is proportionately not largeto the total firms engaged. 

In the matter of voluntary control of retailers we have had moredifficulty, but in the publication from week to week in every town inthe country of "fair prices" based upon wholesale costs and type ofservice, there has been a considerable check made upon overcharges. TheFood Administration continues through the armistice until legal peaceand there will be no relaxation of efforts to keep down profiteering andspeculation to the last moment. 

APPENDIX II

ADDRESS OF MR. HOOVER AT HIS INAUGURATION AS PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICANINSTITUTE OF MINING ENGINEERS (NEW YORK CITY, FEBRUARY 17, 1920)

I have been greatly honored as your unanimous choice for President ofthis Institute with which I have been associated during my entireprofessional life. It is customary for your new President, on theseoccasions, to make some observation on matters of general interest fromthe engineer's standpoint. 

The profession of engineering in the United States comprises not alonescientific advisers on industry, but is in great majority composed ofmen in administrative positions. In such positions they stand midwaybetween capital and labor. The character of your training and experienceleads you to exact and quantitative thought. This basis of training in agreat group of Americans furnished a wonderful recruiting ground forservice in these last years of tribulation. Many thousands of engineerswere called into the army, the navy, and civilian service for theGovernment. Thousands of high offices were discharged by them withcredit to the profession and the nation. 

We have in this country probably one hundred thousand professionalengineers. The events of the past few years have greatly stirred theirinterest in national problems. This has taken practical form in themaintenance of joint committees for discussion of these problems andsupport to a free advisory bureau in Washington. The engineers wantnothing for themselves from Congress. They want efficiency ingovernment, and you contribute to the maintenance of this bureau out ofsheer idealism. This organization for consideration of national problemshas had many subjects before it and I propose to touch on some of themthis evening. 

Even more than ever before is there necessity for your continuedinterest in this vast complex of problems that must be met by ourGovernment. We are faced with a new orientation of our country to worldproblems. We face a Europe still at war; still amid social revolutions;some of its peoples still slacking on production; millions starving; andtherefore the safety of its civilization is still hanging by a slenderthread. Every wind that blows carries to our shores an infection ofsocial diseases from this great ferment; every convulsion there has aneconomic reaction upon our own people. If we needed further proof of theinterdependence of the world, we have it today in the practical blockadeof our export market. The world is asking us to ratify long delayedpeace in the hope that such confidence will be restored as will enableher to reconstruct her economic life. We are today contemplatingmaintenance of an enlarged army and navy in preparedness for furtherupheavals in the world, and failing to provide even some insuranceagainst war by a league to promote peace. 

Out of the strain of war, weaknesses have become ever more evident inour administrative organization, in our legislative machinery. Ourfederal government is still overcentralized, for we have upon the handsof our government enormous industrial activities which have yet to bedemobilized. We are swamped with debt and burdened with taxation. Creditis woefully inflated; speculation and waste are rampant. Our ownproductivity is decreasing. Our industrial population is crying forremedies for the increasing cost of living and aspiring to betterconditions of life and labor. But beyond all this, great hopes andaspirations are abroad; great moral and social forces have beenstimulated by the war and will not be quieted by the ratification ofpeace. These are but some of the problems with which we must deal. Ihave no fear that our people will not find solutions. But progress issometimes like the old-fashioned rail fence--some rails are perhapsmisshapen and all look to point the wrong way; but in the end, the fenceprogresses. 

Your committees, jointly with those of other engineering societies, havehad before them and expressed their views on many matters concerning thehandling of the railways, shipping, the reorganization of the governmentengineering work, the national budget, and other practical items. 

The war nationalization of railways and shipping are our two greatestproblems in governmental control awaiting demobilization. There are manyfundamental objections to continuation of these experiments in socialismnecessitated by the war. They lie chiefly in their destruction ofinitiative in our people and the dangers of political domination thatcan grow from governmental operation. Beyond this, the engineers willhold that the successful conduct of great industries is to atranscendant degree dependent upon the personal abilities and characterof their employees and staff. No scheme of political appointment hasever yet been devised that will replace competition in its selection ofability and character. Both shipping and railways have today theadvantage of many skilled persons sifted out in the hard school ofcompetition, and even then the government operation of these enterprisesis not proving satisfactory. Therefore, the ultimate inefficiency thatwould arise from the deadening paralysis of bureaucracy has not yet hadfull opportunity for development. Already we can show that no governmentunder pressure of ever-present political or sectional interests canproperly conduct the risks of extension and improvement, or can be freefrom local pressure to conduct unwarranted services in industrialenterprise. On the other hand, our people have long since recognizedthat we cannot turn monopoly over to unrestrained operation for profitnor that the human rights of employees can ever be dominated bydividends. 

Our business is handicapped on every side by the failure of ourtransportation facilities to grow with the country. It is useless totalk about increased production to meet an increased standard of livingin an increasing population without a greatly increased transportequipment. Moreover, there are very great social problems underlyingour transport system; today their contraction is forcing a congestion ofour population around the great cities with all that these overswollensettlements import. Even such great disturbances as the coal strike havea minor root in our inadequate transportation facilities and theirresponsibility for intermittent operation of the mines. 

We are all hoping that Congress will find a solution to this problemthat will be an advanced step toward the combined stimulation of theinitiative of the owners, the efficiency of operation, the enlistment ofthe good will of the employees, and the protection of the public. Theproblem is easy to state. Its solution is almost overwhelming incomplexity. It must develop with experience, step by step, toward a realworking partnership of its three elements. 

The return of the railways to the owners places predominant privateoperation upon its final trial. If instant energy, courage and largevision in the owners should prove lacking in meeting the immediatesituation we shall be faced with a reaction that will drive the countryto some other form of control. Energetic enlargement of equipment, better service, coöperation with employees, and the least possibleadvance in rates, together with freedom from political interest, will bethe scales upon which the public will weigh these results. 

Important phases of our shipping problem that have come before youshould receive wider discussion by the country. As the result of warpressure, we shall spend over $2, 800, 000, 000 in the completion of afleet of nineteen hundred ships of a total of 111, 000, 000 tons--nearlyone quarter of the world's cargo shipping. We are proud of this greatexpansion of our marine, and we wish to retain it under the Americanflag. Our shipping problem has one large point of departure from therailway problem, for there is no element of natural monopoly. Anyonewith a water-tight vehicle can enter upon the seas today, and ourgovernment is now engaged upon the conduct of a nationalized industry incompetition with our own people and all the world besides. While in therailways government inefficiency could be passed on to the consumer, onthe seas we will sooner or later find it translated to the nationalTreasury. 

Until the present time, there has been a shortage in the world'sshipping, but this is being rapidly overtaken and we shall soon be metwith fierce competition of private industry. If the government continuesin the shipping business, we shall be disappointed from the point ofview of profits. For we shall be faced with the ability of privateenterprise to make profits from the margins of higher cost of governmentoperation alone. Aside from those losses inherent in bureaucracy andpolitical pressure, there are others special to this case. The largestsuccessfully managed cargo fleet in the world comprises about onehundred and twenty ships and yet we are attempting to manage nineteenhundred ships at the hands of a government bureau. In normal times thequestion of profit or loss in a ship is measured by a few hundred tonsof coal wasted, by a little extravagance in repairs, or by four or fivedays on a round trip. Beyond this, private shipping has a free hand toset up such give-and-take relationships with merchants all over theworld as will provide sufficient cargo for all legs of a voyage, andthese arrangements of coöperation cannot be created by governmentemployees without charge or danger of favoritism. Lest fault be found, our government officials are unable to enter upon the detailed higglingin fixing rates required by every cargo and charter. Therefore they musttake refuge in rigid regulations and in fixed rates. In result, theircompetitors underbid by the smallest margins necessary to get thecargoes. The effect of our large fleet in the world's markets is thusto hold up rates, for so long as this great fleet in one hand holds afixed rate others will only barely underbid. If we hold up rates anincreasing number of our ships will be idle as the private fleet grows. On the other hand, if we reduce rates we shall be underbid until thegovernment margin of larger operation cost causes us to lose money. 

We shall yet be faced with the question of demobilizing a considerablepart of this fleet into private hands, or frankly acknowledging that weoperate it for other reasons than interest on our investment. In thiswhole problem there are the most difficult considerations requiring thebest business thought in the country. In the first instance, ournational progress requires that we retain a large fleet under our flagto protect our national commercial expansion overseas. Secondly, we mayfind it desirable to hold a considerable government fleet to build uptrade routes in expansion of our trade, even at some loss in operation. Thirdly, in order to create this fleet, we have built up an enormousship-building industry. Fifty per cent of the capacity of our ship yardswill more than provide any necessary construction for American account. Therefore there is a need of obtaining foreign orders, or the reductionof capacity, or both. I believe, with most engineers, that, with ourskill in repetition manufacture, we can compete with any ship buildersin the world and maintain our American wage standards; but thisrepetition manufacture implies a constant flow of orders. It would seemhighly desirable, in order to maintain the most efficient yards untilthey can establish themselves firmly in the world's industrial fabric, that the Government should continue to let some ship constructioncontracts to the lowest bidders, these contracts to supplement privatebuilding in such a way as to maintain the continuous operation of themost economical yards and the steady employment of our large number ofskilled workers engaged therein. 

When we consider giving orders for new ships, we must at the same timeconsider the sale of ships, as we cannot go on increasing this fleet. When we consider sale, we are confronted with the fact that our presentships were built under expensive conditions of war, costing from threeto four times per ton the pre-war amount, and that already any merchant, subject to the long time of delivery, can build a ship for seventy-fiveper cent of their cost. It would at least seem good national policy tosell ships today for the price we can contract for delivery a year ortwo hence, thus making the government a reservoir for continuousconstruction. 

We could thus stabilize building industry to some degree and also bringthe American-owned fleet into better balance, if each time that thegovernment sold three or four emergency constructed cargo vessels itgave an order for one ship of a better and faster type. This would makereduction in our ship-building steadier and would give the country thetype of ships we need. 

Our joint engineering committees have examined with a great deal of careinto the organization of and our expenditure on public works andtechnical services. These committees have consistently and stronglyurged the appalling inefficiency in the government organization of thesematters. They report to you that the annual expenditure on such worksand services now amounts to over $250, 000, 000 per annum, and that theyare carried out today in nine different governmental departments. Theyreport that there is a great waste by lack of national policy ofcoördination, in overlapping with different departments, in competitionwith each other in the purchase of supplies and materials, and in thesupport of many engineering staffs. 

They recommend the solution that almost every civilized government haslong since adopted, that is, the coördination of these measures into onedepartment under which all such undertakings should be conducted andcontrolled. As a measure practical to our government, they haveadvocated that all such bureaus should be transferred to the InteriorDepartment, and all the bureaus not relating to those matters should betransferred from the Interior to other departments. The Committeeconcludes that no properly organized and directed saving in public workscan be made until such a re-grouping and consolidation is carried out, and that all of the cheeseparing that normally goes on in the honesteffort of Congressional committees to control departmental expenditureis but a tithe of that which could be effected if there were someconcentration of administration along the lines long since demonstratedas necessary to the success of private business. 

Another matter of government organization to which our engineers havegiven adhesion is in the matter of the national budget. To minds chargedwith the primary necessity of advance planning, coördination, provisionof synchronizing parts in organization, the whole notion of ourhit-or-miss system is repugnant. A budget system is not the remedy forall administrative ills, but it provides a basis of organization that atleast does not paralyze administrative efficiency as our system doestoday. Through it, the coördination of expenditure in governmentdepartment, the prevention of waste and overlapping in governmentbureaus, the exposure of the "pork barrel, " and the balancing of therelative importance of different national activities in the allocationof our national income can all be greatly promoted. Legislation wouldalso be expedited. No budget that does not cover all governmentexpenditure is worth enactment. Furthermore, without such reorganizationas the grouping of construction departments, the proper formulation of abudget would be hopeless. The budget system in some form is so nearlyuniversal in civilized governments and in completely conducted businessenterprise, and has been adopted in thirty of our States, that itsabsence in our federal government is most extraordinary. It is, however, but a further testimony that it is always a far cry of our citizens fromthe efficiency in their business to interest in the efficiency of theirgovernment. 

Another great national problem to which every engineer in the UnitedStates is giving earnest thought, and with which he comes in dailycontact, is that of the relationship of employer and employee inindustry. In this, as in many other national problems today, we arefaced with a realization that the science of economics has altered froma science of wealth to a science of human relationships to wealth. Wehave gone on for many years throwing the greatest of our ingenuity andability into the improvement of processes and tools of production. Wehave until recently greatly neglected the human factor that is so largean element in our very productivity. The development of vast repetitionin the process of industry has deadened the sense of craftsmanship, andthe great extension of industry has divorced the employer and hisemployee from that contact that carried responsibility for the humanproblem. This neglect of the human factor has accumulated much of thediscontent and unrest throughout our great industrial population and hasreacted in a decrease of production. Yet our very standards of livingare dependent on a maximum productivity up to the total necessities ofour population. 

Another economic result is, or will be yet, a repercussion upon thefundamental industry of the United States, that is, agriculture. For thefarmer will be unable to maintain his production in the face of aconstant increase in the cost of his supplies and labor throughshrinkage in production in other industries. The penalty of thisdisparity of effort comes mainly out of the farmer's own earnings. 

I am daily impressed with the fact that there is but one way out, andthat is again to reestablish through organized representation thatpersonal coöperation between employer and employee in production thatwas a binding force when our industries were smaller of unit and of lessspecialization. Through this, the sense of craftsmanship and theinterest in production can be re-created and the proper establishment ofconditions of labor and its participation in a more skilledadministration can be worked out. The attitude of refusal to participatein collective bargaining with representatives of the employees' ownchoosing is the negation of this bridge to better relationship. On theother hand, a complete sense of obligation to bargains entered upon isfundamental to the process itself. The interests of employee andemployer are not necessarily antagonistic; they have a great commonground of mutuality and if we could secure emphasis upon these commoninterests we would greatly mitigate conflict. Our government canstimulate these forces, but the new relationship of employer andemployee must be a matter of deliberate organization within industryitself. I am convinced that the vast majority of American laborfundamentally wishes to coöperate in production, and that this basis ofgoodwill can be organized and the vitality of production re-created. 

Many of the questions of this industrial relationship involve largeengineering problems, as an instance of which I know of no betterexample than the issue you plan for discussion tomorrow in connectionwith the soft coal industry. Broadly, here is an industry functioningbadly from an engineering and consequently from an economic and humanstandpoint. Owing to the intermittency of production, seasonal andlocal, this industry has been equipped to a peak load of twenty-five orthirty per cent over the average load. It has been provided with atwenty-five or thirty per cent larger labor complement than it wouldrequire if continuous operation could be brought about. I hope yourdiscussion will throw some light on the possibilities of remedy. Therelies in this intermittency not only a long train of human misery throughintermittent employment, but the economic loss to the community of overa hundred thousand workers who could be applied to other production, andthe cost of coal could be decreased to the consumer. This intermittencylies at the root of the last strike in the attempt of the employees tosecure an equal division among themselves of this partial employment ata wage that could meet their view of a living return on full employment. 

These are but a few of the problems that confront us. But in theformulating of measures of solution, we need a constant adherence tonational ideal and our own social philosophy. 

In the discussion of these ideals and this social philosophy, we hearmuch of radicalism and of reaction. They are, in fact, not an academicstate of mind but realize into real groups and real forces influencingthe solution of economic problems in this community. In theirpresent-day practical aspects, they represent, on one hand, roughly, various degrees of exponents of socialism, who would directly orindirectly undermine the principle of private property and personalinitiative, and, on the other hand, those exponents who in varyingdegrees desire to dominate the community for profit and privilege. Theyboth represent attempts to introduce or preserve class privilege, eithera moneyed or a bureaucratic aristocracy. We have, however, in Americandemocracy an ideal and a social philosophy that sympathizes neither withradicalism nor reaction as they are manifested today. 

For generations the American people have been steadily developing asocial philosophy as part of their own democracy, and in these ideals, it differs from all other democracies. This philosophy has stood thisperiod of test in the fire of common sense; it is, in substance, thatthere should be an equality of opportunity, an equal chance, to everycitizen. This view that every individual should, within his lifetime, not be handicapped in securing that particular niche in the community towhich his abilities and character entitle him, is itself the negation ofclass. Human beings are not equal in these qualities. But a society thatis based upon a constant flux of individuals in the community, upon thebasis of ability and character, is a moving virile mass; it is not astratification of classes. Its inspiration is individual initiative. Itsstimulus is competition. Its safeguard is education. Its greatest mentoris free speech and voluntary organization for public good. Itsexpression in legislation is the common sense and common will of themajority. It is the essence of this democracy that progress of the massmust arise from progress of the individual. It does not permit thepresence in the community of those who would not give full meed of theirservice. 

Its conception of the State is one that, representative of all thecitizens, will in the region of economic activities apply itself mainlyto the stimulation of knowledge, the undertaking only of works beyondthe initiative of the individual or group, the prevention of economicdomination of the few over the many, and the least entrance intocommerce that government functions necessitate. 

The method and measures by which we solve this accumulation of greatproblems will depend upon which of these three conceptions will reachthe ascendancy amongst our people. 

If we cling to our national ideals it will mean the final isolation andthe political abandonment of the minor groups who hope for domination ofthe government, either by "interests" or by radical social theoriesthrough the control of our political machinery. I sometimes feel thatlawful radicalism in politics is less dangerous than reaction, forradicalism is blatant and displays itself in the open. Unlawfulradicalism can be handled by the police. Reaction too often fools thepeople through subtle channels of obstruction and progressiveplatitudes. There is little danger of radicalism's ever controlling acountry with so large a farmer population, except in one contingency. That contingency is from a reflex of continued attempt to control thiscountry by the "interests" and other forms of our domesticreactionaries. 

The mighty upheaval following the world war has created turmoil andconfusion in our own country no less than in all other lands. If Americais to contribute to the advance of civilization, it must first solve itsown problems, must first secure and maintain its own strength. The kindof problems that present themselves are more predominantlyeconomic--national as well as international--than at any period in ourhistory. They require quantitative and prospective thinking and a senseof organization. This is the sort of problems that your profession dealswith as its daily toil. You have an obligation to continue the fineservice you have initiated and to give it your united skill. 

APPENDIX III

ADDRESS OF MR. HOOVER BEFORE THE BOSTON CHAMBER OF COMMERCE (MARCH 24, 1920)

As you are aware, a report has recently been issued by the IndustrialConference, of which I have been a member together with Governor McCalland Mr. Hooker of your State. The conference embraced among its membersrepresentatives from all shades of life including as great a tradeunionist as Secretary Wilson. I propose to discuss a part of the problemconsidered by that commission. There is no more difficult or more urgentquestion confronting us than constructive solution of the employmentrelationship. It is not sufficient to dismiss the subject with generousand theoretic phrases, "justice to capital and labor, " "the goldenrule, " "the paramount interest of the people, " or a score of others, forthere underlies this question the whole problem of the successfuldevelopment of our democracy. 

During last year there was a great deal of industrial unrest throughoutthe entire world. This has somewhat moderated during the last fewmonths, but the underlying causes are only slumbering. Because thecountry is not today involved in any great industrial conflicts, weshould not congratulate ourselves that the problem of industrialrelations has been solved. Furthermore, the time for properconsideration of great problems does not lie in the midst of greatpublic conflict but in sober consideration during times of tranquillity. There is little to be gained by discussion of the causes of industrialunrest. Every observer is aware of the category of disturbing factorsand every one will place a different emphasis on the different factorsinvolved. 

There is, however, one outstanding matter that differentiates ourpresent occasion from those that have gone before. It cannot be deniedthat unrest in our industrial community is characterized more than everbefore by the purposes and desires that go beyond the demand for higherwages and shorter hours. The aspirations inherent in this form ofrestlessness are to a great extent psychological and intangible. Theyare not, for this reason, any less significant. There is perhaps in somelocal cases an infection of European patent medicines, and the desireto use labor for political purposes. Aside from this, however, they doreveal a desire on the part of the workers to exert a larger and moreorganic influence in the processes of industrial life. They want betterassurance that they will receive a just proportion of their share ofproduction. I do not believe those desires are to be discouraged. Theyshould be turned into helpful and coöperative channels. There is nosurer road to radicalism than repression. 

One can only lead up to consideration of these problems by tracing somefeatures of our industrial development even though they may be trite tomost of you. One underlying cause of these discontents is that with thegrowth of large plants there has been a loss of personal contact betweenemployers and employees. With the high specialization and intenserepetition in labor in industrial processes, there has been a loss ofcreative interest. It is, however, the increased production that we havegained by this enlargement of industry that has enabled the standard ofliving to be steadily advanced. The old daily personal contact ofemployer and employee working together in small units carried with it agreat mutuality of responsibility. There was a far greater understandingof the responsibilities toward employees and there was a betterunderstanding by employees of the economic limitations imposed upon theemployer. Nor can the direct personal contact in the old manner berestored. 

With the growth of capital into larger units, there was an inequality ofthe bargaining power of the individual. Labor has therefore graduallydeveloped its defense against the aggregation of capital bycounter-organization. The organized uses of strike and lockout on eitherside and the entrance of their organization into the political arenahave become the weapons for enforcement of demands. The largedevelopment of industrial units with possible cessation of productionand service, through strikes and lockouts, penalizes the public. Thepublic is not content to see these conflicts go on, for they do notalone represent loss in production, and thus lowering of the standard ofliving, but also they may, by suspension of public service, jeopardizethe life of the community. 

But the solution of the industrial problem is not solely the preventionof conflict and its losses by finding methods of just determination ofwages and hours. Not only must solution of those things be found outbut, if we are to secure increased production and increased standard ofliving, we must reawaken interest in creation, in craftsmanship andcontribution of his intelligence to management. We must surroundemployment with assurance of just division of production. We must enlistthe interest and confidence of the employees in the business and inbusiness processes. 

We have devoted ourselves for many years to the intense improvement ofthe machinery and processes of production. We have neglected the broaderhuman development and satisfactions of life of the employee that leadsto greater ability, creative interest, and coöperation in production. Itis in stimulation of these values that we can lift our industry to itshighest state of productivity, that we can place the human factor uponthe plane of perfection reached by our mechanical processes. To do thesethings requires the coöperation of labor itself and to obtaincoöperation we must have an intimate organized relationship betweenemployer and the employee and that cannot be obtained by benevolence;that can only be obtained by calling the employee to a reciprocalservice. 

Therefore it has been the guiding thought of the conference that ifthese objects are to be obtained a definite and continuous organizedrelationship must be created between the employer and the employee andthat by the organization of this relationship conflict in industry canbe greatly mitigated, misunderstanding can be eliminated, and thatspirit of coöperation can be established that will advance theconditions of labor and secure increased productivity. 

It is idle to argue that there are at times no conflict of interestbetween the employee and the employer. But there are wide areas ofactivity in which their interests should coincide, and it is the part ofstatesmanship on both sides to organize this identity of interest inorder to limit the area of conflict. If we are to go on with the presentdisintegrating forces, these conflicts become year by year more criticalto the existence of the State. If we cannot secure a reduction in theirdestructive results by organization of mutual action in industry, then Ifear that public resentment will generate a steadily larger interventionof the Government into these questions. 

In consideration of a broad, comprehensive, national policy, theConference had before it four possible alternative lines of action. First, the attempt to hew out a national policy in the development ofthe progressive forces at work for better understanding in industryunder such conditions as would maintain self-government in industryitself; or, secondly, to adopt some of the current plans of industrialcourts, involving summary decision with jail for refusal to accept, suchas that initiated in the State of Kansas; or, thirdly, thenationalization at least of the services upon which the very life of thecommunity depends; fourthly, to do nothing. 

In a survey of the forces making for self-government in industry, theConference considered that definite encouragement must be given to theprinciples of collective bargaining, of conciliation, of arbitration, but that such forces could not develop in an atmosphere of legalrepression. There is but little conflict of view as to the principle ofcollective bargaining and its vital corollary, fidelity to the bargainmade. There has been conflict over the methods of representation on bothsides. The Conference, therefore, has proposed that the Governmentshould intervene to assist in determination of the credentials of therepresentatives of both sides in case of disagreement, and that suchpressure should be brought to bear as would induce voluntary entry intocollective bargain. Furthermore, it was considered that the largedevelopment of conciliation and arbitration already current inconnection with such bargaining should be encouraged and organized undera broad national plan that would give full liberty of action to allexisting arrangements of this character and stimulate their furtherdevelopment. 

The Conference has therefore proposed to set up a small amount ofgovernmental machinery comprising Chairmen covering various regions inthe United States, with a Central Board in Washington, as a definiteorganization for the promotion of these agencies. It has believed thatthis is a step consonant with the normal development of our institutionsand the progressive forces already in motion, and that in such steps liethe greatest hope of success. No one is compelled to submit to themachinery established but where the employer and employee refuse toenter into, or fail in, bargaining, then through the use of thismachinery the public stimulates them to come together under conditionsof just determination of the credentials of their representatives. Theplan is, therefore, a development of the principle of collectivebargaining. It is not founded on the principle of arbitration orcompulsion. It is designed to prevent the losses through cessation ofproduction due to conflict but, beyond this, to build up suchrelationship between employer and employees as will not only mitigatesuch disaster but will ultimately extend further into the development ofthe great mutual ground of interest of increased production and underconditions of satisfaction to both sides. It is a part of the conceptionof the Conference that only in bargaining and mutual agreement can therebe given that free play of economic forces necessary to adjust thecomplex conditions under which our industries must function. 

Reduction of conflict in industry is the phase that not only looms largein the public mind, but conflict is the public exhibit of the greatestmark of failure in industrial relations. The imminence of conflict isevidence of failure to have discussion or to arrival at mutualagreement. Therefore, under the plan of the Conference that mutualagreement is the best basis for prevention of conflict, the second stepin the Conference proposals is that there should be a penalty forfailure to submit to such processes. That penalty is a public inquiryinto the causes of the dispute and the proper ventilation to publicopinion as to its rights and wrongs. The strength of the penalty isbased upon the conviction that neither side can afford to lose publicgood will. Pressure to rectitude by government investigation isdistinctly an American institution. It is not an intervention of publicinterest that is usually welcomed. In the plan of this Conference, thisgeneral repugnance to investigation is depended upon as a persuasiveinfluence to the parties of the conflict to get together and settletheir own quarrels. They are given the alternative of investigation orcollective bargain under persuasive circumstances. In order to increasethe moral pressures surrounding the investigation, either one of theparties to the conflict may become a member of the board ofinvestigation, provided he will have entered on an _a priori_undertaking that he is prepared to submit his case to orderly and simpleprocesses of adjustment. Thus his opponent will be put at more thanusual disadvantage in the investigation. If both sides should agree tosubmit to normal processes of settlement, the board of investigationbecomes at once the stage of a collective bargain and the investigationceases. 

I will not trouble you with the elaborate details of the plan, for theyinvolved a great deal of consideration as to many difficult questions ofselection of representatives, provision for action by umpires, forappeal to a board in certain contingencies, the character of questionsto be considered, methods of enforcement, standards of labor, and so on. The point that I wish to make clear is that the Conference plan isfundamentally the promotion of collective bargaining under fairconditions of representation by both sides and the definiteorganization of public opinion only as a pressure on the parties atconflict to secure it. It is therefore basically not a plan ofarbitration, nor is it an industrial court. It is stimulation toself-government in industry. The plan contains no essence of oppositionto organized labor or organized employers. It involves no dispute of theright to strike or lock out, nor of the closed or open shop. It simplyproposes a sequence of steps that should lead to collective bargainwithout imposing compulsions, courts, injunctions, fines, or jail. It isat least a new step and worth careful consideration before employees andemployers subject themselves to the growth of public demands for theother alternatives of wider governmental interference. 

The Conference has set out the critical necessity of the developmentwithin industry itself of a better basis of understanding as having thegreat values that all prevention has over cures. There have been hopefuldevelopments in American industry during the past two or three years inthis direction. The first unit of employment relationship is eachindustrial establishment, and if we would battle with misunderstandingand secure mutual action it must be at this stage. It takes its visibleform in the organization in many establishments under various plans ofshop councils, shop committees, shop conference, all of which are basedon the democratic selection of representatives of employees who shallremain in continuous open and frank relation and conference with theemployer in the interests of both. Where this development has hadsuccess it has had one essential foundation; that is, that it must beconceived in a spirit of coöperation for mutual benefit and it hasinvariably lost out where it has been conceived solely to bargain forwages and conditions of labor. It does not necessarily involveprofit-sharing, but it does involve a human approach to the problems onboth sides and a mutual effort at betterment. 

It is the organization of such contact between employer and employeeswhich distinguishes this advance from the previous drift in largeindustry. This type of organization has met with success not only innon-union shops but in unionized shops, and in the latter case it hasimported the spirit of mutuality in addition to sheer negotiation ofgrievance as to conditions of labor. It cannot, in our view, succeed ifit is to be conceived in a spirit of antagonism either to employer or tounion organization. 

The trade unions of the United States have conferred such essentialservices upon their membership and upon the community that their realvalues are not to be overlooked or destroyed. They can fairly claimgreat credit for the abolition of sweat shops, for recognition of fairerhours in industry, reduction of overstrain, employment under morehealthful conditions, and many other reforms. These gains have been madethrough hard-fought collective bargains and part of the difficulties ofthe labor situation today is the bitterness with which these gains wereaccomplished. In my own experience in industry I have always found thata frank and friendly acceptance of the unions' agreements, while stillmaintaining the open shop, has led to constructive relationship andmutual interest. 

In the early days trade unionism was dominated mainly by the economictheories of Adam Smith, and union labor at that time adopted as one ofits tenets that a decrease of productive effort by workers below theirphysical necessities would result in more employment and better wage. During the past twenty-five or thirty years, this economic error hasbeen steadily diminishing in American trade unions and while it may beadhered to by some isolated cases today it is not the economicconception of large parts of that body. The great majority have longsince realized that an increased standard of living of the whole nationmust depend upon a maximum production within the limits of properconservation of the human machine. We find, during the past few years, many of the unions embracing the further principle of actual coöperationwith the employer to increase production. I believe the development ofthis latter theme opens avenues for the usefulness and growth of tradeunionism of greater promise than any hitherto tried. I am aware of thecurrent criticism in some union quarters of the development of the shopcouncil idea for this purpose, and there are perhaps isolated cases thatgive merit to this opposition. The strongest argument of union laboragainst the shop council system should lie in the fact that nation-wideorganization of labor is essential in order to cope with the unfairemployers, but I believe that if they embrace encouragement to shopcouncil organization they open for themselves not only this preventionof unfairness but the whole new field of constructive coöperation andthe further reduction of industrial conflict. 

Attempts by governments to stop industrial war are not new. The publicinterest in continuous production and operation is so great thatpractically every civilized government has time and again ventured uponan attempt at its reduction. There is a great background of experiencein this matter, for the world is strewn with failure of laborconferences, conciliation boards, arbitration boards, and industrialcourts. This Conference, of course, had in front of it and in theexperience of its members this background of the past score of years. Iunderstand that recently you have had ably presented to you theindustrial solution that has been enacted into legislation by the Stateof Kansas. I think some short discussion of this legislation may be ofinterest in illuminating the difference in point of view between theindustrial conference and that legislation. The Kansas plan is, Ibelieve, the first large attempt at judicial settlement of labordisputes in the United States. With the exception of one particular, itis practically identical with the industrial acts of Australasia offifteen to twenty years ago. It comprises the erection of an industrialcourt, the legal repression of the right to strike and lockout underdrastic penalties, the determination of minimum wage, and involves aconsideration of a fair profit to the employer. The Kansas machinerygoes one step further than any hitherto provided in this particular ofplacing more emphasis on fair profits and it also provides for the rightof the State to take over and conduct the industry in last resort. Under the enumerated industries in the Kansas law, probably two thirdsof Massachusetts industry would be involved. No man can say that thislegislation may not succeed in Kansas or under American conditions. Theexperiment is valuable, and if it should prove a success to bothemployees and employers Kansas will have again taken the initiative inservice to her sister states. 

I will not be taken as a carping critic if I point out the difficultiesin its progress on the basis of Australasian experience. It may, as didthe Australasian acts, have a period of apparent success, and theworkers benefit by an initial service in planing out the worstinjustices. So far as I can see today, there is no reason why it willnot run the same course as in Australia, where the amount of strikes anddislocation was ultimately as great under these laws as in countrieswithout them. In periods of industrial prosperity, the advancing wageusually adjudicated by the industrial courts prevents strikes, but intimes of industrial depression decisions against the work people giverise to the old form of resistance. 

No one denies the right of the individual to cease work. The questioninvolved in this form of legislation is the right to combination incommon action by strike. Whatever the right may be, it is a certaintythat the working community of the civilized world adheres to this rightas an absolute fundamental to their protection. They believe that theaggregation of capital into large units under single control places themat an entire disadvantage if they cannot threaten to use their ultimateweapon of combined cessation of labor. While it may be argued that theState may intervene in such a manner as to substitute the protection ofjustice for the right of strike and lockout, the belief in the right tostrike has become imbedded in the minds of the laboring community of theworld to an extent that it will not receive with confidence anyalternative in driving its own bargains. 

There are other difficulties in compulsory adjudication of disputes. Theworkings of such law necessarily result in ultimate determination ofminimum wage for all crafts and industries. Every different industrialunit will claim a different minimum based upon its local economicsurroundings. Otherwise the competitive basis upon which industry isestablished will be undermined. No court has ever yet adequately solvedthese differentials and some dislocation of industry results. I wouldexpect to see develop out of this type of minimum wage the samephenomenon that existed in some parts of Australia, where certificatesof inability to earn the minimum, and therefore permission to undertakeemployment at less than this wage had to be issued in order thatemployment might be found for the aged and disabled. The employers willnaturally in face of a minimum wage retain in employment that quality ofworker that can give the maximum effort. Another difficulty is thetendency for wages of all workers, regardless of their ability, to fallto the minimum, for the employer naturally reduces the good to averagewith the poor worker. I would not want to be understood to necessarilyoppose the possibilities of a minimum wage for women over large areas, as distinguished from craft minimums for men, because certain socialquestions enter that problem to an important degree. 

There is another feature of the Kansas Act that should be given a greatdeal of consideration, and that is its essential provision that in thedetermination of wage disputes it shall be based on a fair profit to theemployer. This must ultimately lead to a determination as to what a fairprofit consists of, just as minimum wage will need be found for everycraft and every establishment. I do not assume that any employer willcontend for an unfair profit, but the termination of what may be a fairor unfair profit in respect to the hazards involved in the institutionof a business, in its conduct over a long term of years, its necessaryprovisions for its replacement and future disasters, is a matter thathas not yet been satisfactorily determined by either theoreticeconomics, legislation, or courts. In competitive industry the processesof business determine this matter every day, and owners will only claimsuch determination by the State when the competitive tide is againstthem. We have long since recognized the rights of the State to determinemaximum profits in case of a monopoly, but the determination of minimumprofits (for fair profit is a minimum as well as maximum) may deliverlarge burdens to the people. Moreover, I doubt whether labor willultimately welcome such determination, for an unsuccessful plant, instead of abandoning its production to its competitors, will claim wagereductions from the courts, and the general level of wages can thus bedriven down and the State, at least morally, becomes a guarantor ofprofits in overdeveloped industry. This plan in the long run substitutesgovernment control of industry for competition. 

As to whether such acts will not tend to crush out initiative, credit, and curtail the proper development of industry, can only be determinedwith time. Generally, it should be clearly understood that compulsorysettlement of employment at best only assures continuity of productionthrough just wages, hours and profits. It does not approach the problemfrom the point of view of upbuilding a relation in industry that will, if successful, not only eliminate strikes and lockouts, but makeconstructively for greater production and cheaper costs. 

The economic repercussions from such regulation do not all lie in favorof either capital or labor. To curtail the activities in one is notnecessarily a favor to the other. 

I am sure you would, upon consideration, view the entry of theGovernment on a nation-wide scale into the determination of fair wageand fair profit in industry, even if it could be accomplished withoutforce, with great apprehension. There are some things worse in thedevelopment of democracy than strikes and lockouts, and whether bylegislative repression we do not set up economic and socialrepercussions of worse character is by no means determined. They havealso the deficiency in that they undermine the real development ofself-government in industry and that, to me, is part of the growth ofdemocracy itself. Courts and litigation are necessary to thepreservation of life and property, but they are less stimulus toimproved relations among men than are discussion and disposal of theirown differences. 

The whole world is groping for solution to this problem. If we cannotsolve it progressively, our civilization will go back to chaos. Wecannot stand still with the economic and social forces that surround us. There has never been a complete panacea to all human relationships sofar in this world. The best we can do is to take short steps forward, toalign each step to the tried ideals that have carried us thus far. TheConference has endeavored to find a plan for systematic organization ofthe forces that are making for better relationships, to encourage thegrowing acceptance of collective bargaining by providing a method thatshould enable it to meet the objections of its critics and to aggregatearound this the forces of conciliation and arbitration now in such wideuse. It has sought to do this without legal repression but with theorganized pressure of public opinion. 

To me there is no question that we should try the experiment of theperhaps longer road proposed by the Industrial Conference for thedevelopment of mutuality of relationship between employer and employee, rather than to enter upon summary action of court decision that may bothstifle the delicate adjustment of industrial processes and causeserious conflict over human rights. We must all agree that thosedeficiencies in our social, economic and political structure which findsolution through education and voluntary action of our people themselvesare the solutions that endure. To me, the upbuilding of the sense ofresponsibility and of intelligence in each individual unit in the UnitedStates with the intervention of government only to promote thedevelopment of these relations, the suppression of domination by any onegroup over another, is the basis upon which democracy must progress. 

Upon the solution of industrial peace and good will does the graduallift of the standard of life of our whole people rest by increase in thematerial and intellectual output and its proper distribution among allof us. To me the philosophic background of solution lies in rigorousapplication to economic life of our tried national ideal--the equalityof opportunity and the preservation of industrial initiative; that is, the stimulation of every individual by his own effort to take thatposition in the community to which his abilities and character entitlehim and the protection to him to attain that end. In the earlier days ofour democracy, with its simpler economic life, we were concerned morewith the application of this ideal in its social and political phases. It has been so long and firmly established there that it is no longer amatter of discussion. With the growth of greater complexity in oureconomic life, its practical application to the sharing in the materialand intellectual output in proportion to effort, ability, and character, becomes more difficult. It must, nevertheless, be adhered to if theideal of our democracy is not to be abandoned. 

I do not believe we can attain this equality of opportunity or maintaininitiative through crystallization of economic classes or groupsarraigned against each other, exerting their interest by economic andpolitical conflicts, nor can we attain it by transferring togovernmental bureaucracies the distribution of material and intellectualproducts. I do believe that we can attain it by systematic prevention ofdomination of the few over the many and stimulation of individual effortin the whole mass. 

It is well enough to hold a philosophic view, but the problems of day today that arise under it are very practical problems that requireconcrete solution, and the employment relation is one of them. 

APPENDIX IV

SOME NOTES ON AGRICULTURAL READJUSTMENT AND THE HIGH COST OF LIVING[2]

BY HERBERT HOOVER

The high cost of living is a temporary economic problem, surrounded byhigh emotions. The agricultural industry is a permanent economicproblem, surrounded by many dangers. We are now entering into ourregular four-year period of large promises to sufferers of all kinds. Except to demagogues and to the fellows who farm the farmer, there areno easy formulas; nevertheless, there are constructive forces that canbe put in motion--and these are good times to get them talked about. 

As bearing upon some suggestion of constructive solution, I wish toestablish and analyze certain propositions. Amongst other things theyinvolve a clear understanding of the bearings of different segments ofthe total price of food between the different links in the chain ofproduction and distribution. These propositions are:

First: That the high cost of living is due largely to inflation andshortage in world production; speculation is an incident of theseforces, not the cause. 

Second: That the farmer's prices are fixed by the impact of worldwholesale prices; that such prices bear only a remote relation to hiscosts of production. 

Third: That any increase or decrease in the cost of placing the farmer'sproducts into the hands of the wholesaler is a deduction from oraddition to the farmer's prices; that is, an expansion or contraction ofthe margin between the farm and wholesale prices makes an increase ordecrease in the farmer's return. 

Fourth: That increase or decrease in the cost of distributing food fromthe wholesaler to the door of the ultimate consumer is a deduction oraddition predominantly to the consumer's cost; that is, the marginbetween the wholesaler and consumer in its increases or decreases islargely an addition or subtraction from the consumer's price. 

Fifth: That these two margins in most of our commodities except grainwere, before the war, the largest in the world; that they have grownabnormally during the war, except during the year of food control. 

Sixth: That analysis of the character of the margin between the farmerand wholesaler will show that decreases in price find immediatereflection on the farmer, while immediate increases in price areabsorbed by the trades between and the farmer gets but a laggingincrease. 

Seventh: That an analysis of these margins will show that they can beconstructively diminished but that, regrettable as it is, theprosecution of profiteers will not do it. 

Eighth: That the problem must be solved, if our agriculture is to bemaintained and if the balance between agriculture and general industryis to be preserved so as to prevent our becoming dependent upon importsfor food, with a train of industrial and national dangers. 

PRESENT PRICES DUE TO INFLATION AND SHORTAGE IN WORLD PRODUCTION

Our war inflation does not lie so much in our increased gold andcurrency. Our currency per capita has increased by perhaps 25 or 30 percent, but, compared to European practice of currency inflations of 200to 800 per cent, our conduct has been provident indeed. This is not, however, the real area of inflation. It lies in the expansion of ourbank credits. If we exclude the savings bank as not being creditinstitutions in the ordinary sense, and if we compile the commercialbank deposits, we still no doubt gather in some real savings, butnevertheless the figures show a considerable color of inflationsomewhere. No one need think we have gotten so suddenly rich as themoney complexion of these figures might indicate. At the outset itshould be emphasized that all figures of this kind are subject todispute and interpretation; but, after all such deductions, theindication of tendencies remains. 

-------------------------------------- | | Per Cent | Bank Deposits | Change Year | Total | from 1913-------------------------------------- 1913 | 11, 390, 918, 596 | 100. 0 1914 | 11, 974, 760, 593 | 105. 1 1915 | 12, 282, 097, 638 | 107. 8 1916 | 15, 398, 090, 701 | 135. 2 1917 | 18, 444, 103, 496 | 161. 9 1918 | 20, 425, 067, 839 | 179. 3 1919 | 24, 971, 784, 000 | 219. 2--------------------------------------

It will be accepted at once that the volume of bank deposits must growwith increased commodity production and therefore we may roughly examineinto this as well. If we combine the tonnage productivity ofagriculture, metals, coal, salt, cement, lumber and the quarries, weshall cover the great bulk of our products. These figures also must betaken as merely indicating the tendencies of the times. 

------------------------------------- | | Per Cent | Production | Change Year | in Tons | from 1913------------------------------------- 1913 | 1, 081, 293, 417 | 100. 0 1914 | 1, 019, 018, 207 | 94. 2 1915 | 1, 073, 472, 988 | 99. 3 1916 | 1, 162, 489, 530 | 107. 5 1917 | 1, 241, 173, 806 | 114. 8 1918 | 1, 247, 787, 883 | 115. 4 1919 | 1, 117, 181, 233 | 103. 3-------------------------------------

If we attach the index of prices during these periods and compare themwith the per cent variation in commodity production and bank deposits, we have the following interesting parallels:

------------------------------------------------------ | | | Department | Per Cent | Per Cent | of Labor | Change in | Change in | Wholesale | Production | Bank Deposits | Index Year | from 1913 | from 1913 | of All | | | Commodities------------------------------------------------------ 1913 | 100. 0 | 100. 0 | 100. 0 1914 | 94. 2 | 105. 1 | 99. 3 1915 | 99. 3 | 107. 8 | 100. 5 1916 | 107. 5 | 135. 2 | 120. 5 1917 | 114. 8 | 161. 9 | 175. 9 1918 | 115. 4 | 179. 3 | 196. 6 1919 | 103. 3 | 219. 2 | 214. 5------------------------------------------------------

Two different extreme schools of economics will interpret these tablesdifferently. One will hold that the increase in credit and money mustinfluence prices in exact ratio. The other will hold the rise of pricesas due to shortage in production, either at home or abroad, and thatrise in price necessitates an increase in credits and money to carry oncommerce. Both are probably right, for short production and inflationprobably alternatively serve as cause and effect. The first school hassome claims upon the large volume of gold we imported the first threeyears of the war and multiplied into credits--as the cause prior to ourcoming into the war. They can also point out that our Treasury and banksdeliberately inflated bank credits in order to place war loans and thatif this form of credits was removed our expansion would be nothing likeits present volume. As necessary as it may have been to use this methodin securing quick money at a low rate during the war, there are thestrongest objections to it since the armistice was signed. If ourpost-war finance at least had been secured from savings by offeringsufficiently attractive terms, the inflation would be less although themarket price of Liberty Bonds might be lower. 

That short world production has been one of the causes of rising pricescannot be denied. The warring powers of Europe took 60, 000, 000 men fromproduction (nearly one third their productive man power) and put it todestruction. They have lived to a great degree by gain of commoditiesfrom the United States, and thus brought their shortage to our shores. They have not yet altogether recovered from the holidays of victory, thegloom of defeat, the persuasive "isms" that would find productionwithout work, the destruction of their economic unity, transportation, credits, and other fundamentals necessary to maintain production. Itwill be some time before they do recover. In the meantime, they areperforce reducing their consumption--their standard of living--becausethey have largely exhausted their securities, commodities or credit tocontinue the borrowing of our commodities for their own shortproduction, as during the war. The exchange barometer is today witnessof the end of this procedure of living on borrowed money. In passing, itmay be mentioned that exchange is no more a cause of their inability tobuy from us than is the barometer the cause of blizzards. The storm isthat they have mostly exhausted their credits and they have notrecovered production so as to offer commodities to us in exchange forours. 

Our own industrial production, as distinguished from agriculturalproduction, has fallen rapidly since the armistice. Some of the fall isdue to war weariness, some to "isms" that have infected us from Europe, some to the natural abandonment of high cost production brought intoplay during the war, some to strikes and a host of other wastes. Ourconsumption has greatly increased since the restraints of war. Decreasehad not penetrated our agricultural community up to 1919 harvest, norwill such decrease arise from these causes, but as I will set out later, forces are entering that will decrease our agricultural production. Ourproduction in nearly all important food commodities except sugar is insurplus of our own need. It only becomes a shortage affecting pricesunder the drain of exports. Therefore, it is the world shortage that isaffecting our price levels, and not, so far, a deficiency for our needs. 

So far as relief from price influence by shortage in production isconcerned, it may arise in two ways. First, slowly through gradualrecuperation in world production. Second, by compulsory reduction ofconsumption in Europe through their inability to pay us by commodities, gold or credits. This latter has been very evident through the drop inexchange and engagements for export during the past few weeks. 

THE THREE DIVISIONS OF THE PRICE

The cost of food to the consumer is divided among the farmers on onehand and storage, manufacture, jobbers, wholesalers, retailers andtransportation on the other. I believe these charges between the farmerand consumer fall into two distinct groups--the charges comprising themargin between the farmer and wholesaler which mainly concern thefarmer, and charges between the wholesaler and consumer, which mainlyconcern the consumer. To establish this division, it is necessary toanalyze shortly the datum point by which price is determined. 

The diet of the American people from a nutritional (not financial)standpoint comprises the following articles and proportion:

Wheat and Rye 29. 5% Pork Products 15. 7% Dairy Products 15. 3% BeefProducts 5. 3% Corn Products 7. 0% Sugar Products 13. 2% Vegetable Oils3. 6% 89. 6% All other, including potatoes 10. 4%------ 100. 0%

The wholesale price of about 90 per cent of our food in normal times isonly remotely determined by the cost of production, but mostly by worldconditions. We export a surplus of most commodities among the 90 percent and the prices of exports are determined by competition with otherworld supplies in the European wholesale markets. Those items in this 90per cent that we do not export are influenced by the same forces, because in normal times we import them on any considerable variation inprice and the wholesaler naturally buys in the cheapest market. Evenmilk is to a considerable degree controlled by butter imports in normaltimes. When we import butter it releases more milk in competition. Thiscannot be said to such extent of most of the odd 10 per cent, becausethey are largely perishables that do not stand overseas transport andconsequently rise and fall more nearly directly upon local supply anddemand. Some economists will at once argue that if prices areunprofitable to the farmer the situation will correct itself bydiminished production and, consequently, a general rise in the worldlevel of prices. In the abstract, this is true, but as a matter of factthe surplus which our farmers contribute for export is only a smallportion of their total production or of the world pool, yet the total ofthe world pool operating through this minor segment makes the prices fora large part of the farmers' commodities. Therefore, the effect innormal times of restriction in production in any one country does notaffect price so much as theoretic argument would believe. The farmermust plant if he would live, and he must plant long in advance of hisknowledge of prices or world production. He can make no contracts inadvance of his planting, nor can he cease operations on the day pricesfall too low. He is driven on, year after year, in hope and necessity, and will continue over long periods with a standard of return belowrightful living because he has no other course--and always has hopes. Hewill vary fairly rapidly from one commodity to another--from wheat toother grains, for instance--but he mostly raises his maximum ofsomething. In the long run of decreasing prices he would undoubtedlyreach so low a standard as to cease production. Then comes acomparatively short period of higher prices in some commodity;production is again stimulated and followed by long intervals of lowstandards. As shown by the following table, on the whole, the farmer hasnot been underpaid during the war, but the currents again are turningagainst him. 

It will be seen that the farmer enjoyed prices equivalent to or higherthan the general level up to the last six months. He is now, however, falling behind in some important products. Unlike the industrialworkers, he is unable to demand an adjustment of his income to thechanged index of living. 

------------------------------------------------------- | Index of Prices at the | Farm in Principal | Produce States ----------------------------- | A P | | | | | l r | | | W | C Department of Labor | l o | H | C | h | o Wholesale Index of | d | o | o | e | t All Commodities | F u | g | r | a | t | a c | s | n | t | o | r e | | | | n | m | | | |------------------------------------------------------- Pre-war | 100 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 100 First Quarter 1918 | 187 | 200 | 213 | 224 | 254 | 246 Last Quarter 1918 | 206 | 204 | 223 | 220 | 258 | 246 First Quarter 1919 | 200 | 202 | 225 | 228 | 264 | 215 Last Quarter 1919 | 230 | 206 | 178 | 216 | 277 | 268-------------------------------------------------------

For the moment, what I wish to establish is only that the farmer'sprices are not based upon any conception of the cost of production, butupon forces in which he has no voice. He can never organize to put hisindustry in a "cost plus" basis as industrial producers do, and remedymust be found elsewhere. 

THE TWO MARGINS

As stated, the margin between the farmer and consumer falls into twodivisions--one of which predominantly affects the farmer and the otherthe consumer. It is really the wholesale prices that govern the farmer, rather than retail prices, for it is in wholesale prices that the farmercompetes with the world. As the prices paid by the wholesaler are mostlyfixed by overseas trade at the datum point on the Atlantic seaboard orin Europe, then if the margins between the wholesaler and the farmer areunduly large, or increase, it is mostly to the farmer's detriment. Forinstance, as the price of the farmer's wheat in normal times is made inLiverpool, any increase in handling comes out of the farmer's price. Likewise, as the wholesale price of butter is made by the import ofDanish butter into New York, any increase in the numbers or chargesbetween our farmer and the wholesale buyer comes, to a considerabledegree, out of the farmer. 

As the datum point of determining prices is at the wholesaler, theaccretion by the charges for distribution from that point forward to theconsumer's door will not affect the farmer, but will affect theconsumer. When competition decreases through shortage the consumer paysthe added profits of these trades. 

Studies of the cost of our distribution system, made by the FoodAdministration during the war, established two prime conditions. Thefirst is that the margins between our farmers and the wholesaler incommodities other than grain in some instances, are, even in normaltimes, the highest in any civilized state--fully 25 per cent higher thanin most European countries. The expensiveness of our chain ofdistribution in most commodities in normal times, as compared toContinental countries, is due partly to the wide distances of theproducing areas from the dominating consuming areas, but there are othercontributing causes that can be remedied. In Europe, the great publicmarkets in the cities bring farmer and consumer closely together in manycommodities, but in the United States the bulk of products are too farafield for this. The farmer must market through a long chain ofmanufacturers, brokers, jobbers and wholesalers with or without theirown distribution system, who must establish a clientele of directretailers; and thus public markets, except in special locations and incomparatively few commodities, have not been successful. Another majorfactor in our cost of distribution is the increasing demand forexpensive service by our consumers. There are many other factors thatbear on the problem and the economic results of our system which arediscussed, together with some suggestion of remedy, later on. 

The second result of these studies was to show the great widening ofthis margin during the war. During the year of the Food Administration'sactive restraint on this margin, there was an advance of six points inthe wholesale index while the farmer's index moved up 25 points. Bothbefore and after that period the two indexes moved up together. The samecan be said of the margins between the wholesaler and the consumer. Taking the period of the war as a whole, the margin between the farmerand consumer has widened to an extravagant degree. 

A good instance of a movement in margins is shown in flour in 1917. Thefarmer's average return for wheat of the 1916 harvest, as shown by theDepartment of Agriculture, was about $1. 42. As about four and one-halfbushels of wheat are required to make a barrel of flour, the farmer'sshare of the receipts from this harvest was about $6. 40 per barrel. In1917, before the Food Administration came into being, flour rose to$17. 50 per barrel to the consumer, or, at that time, a margin of $11. 00per barrel. During the Administration, the farmer received an average ofabout $2. 00 for wheat at the farm, or about $9. 00 out of a barrel offlour. The consumer paid $12. 50, the margin being about $3. 50 perbarrel. 

This increase in margins shows vividly in the higher priced foods, forinstance, pork products. If we take hogs at the railway station over thegreat hog states contiguous to Chicago as a basis, we find:

------------------------------------------------------ | Price of Hogs | Price of | Margin Six | in Principal | Cured Products | Between Months | States | to Consumer | Farmer and | Per 100 Lbs. | 100 Lbs. Hogs | Consumer------------------------------------------------------ 1914 | $7. 45 | $18. 97 | $11. 52 1919 | 16. 27 | 37. 33 | 21. 06 1920 | 15. 37 | 37. 71 | 22. 34------------------------------------------------------

Thus, while the farmer has gained about $7. 92 in his price, the marginhas increased by $10. 82 to the consumer and, incidentally, during thelast year since food control restraints were removed, the consumer haspaid $. 30 more while the farmer got $. 90 less. These instances could begreatly multiplied. 

It is unfortunate that our national statistics do not permit a completeanalysis of the distribution of margin between all the various groups inthe chain between the farmer and consumer in different commodities. Itwould be helpful if we could take the farmers, railways, manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers, and determine what proportion each receives. 

These margins between farmer and consumer are made up of a necessarychain of charges for transport, storage, manufacture and distribution. The great majority of citizens who are engaged in the processes that goto make up this portion of food costs are employed in an obviouslyessential economic function, and they do not approach it in a spirit ofcriminality, but as a very necessary, proper, and honorable function. They have, since the European War began, rather over-enjoyed the resultof economic forces that were not of their own creation. That aconsiderable margin is necessary to cover the legitimate costs of, andprofits on, distribution is obvious. The only direction of inquiry ishow they can be legitimately minimized. These margins, starting from theunduly high expense of a faulty system, have increased not onlylegitimately, due to increased transportation, labor, rent, taxes, andincreased interest upon the large capital required, but they have, except during the period of control, increased unduly beyond thesenecessities. There are two general characteristics of this margin thatare of some interest. In the first instance, all of the transport, storage, manufacture and handling is conducted upon a basis of cost pluseither fixed returns or, as is more usually the case, a percentage ofprofit upon the whole cost of operation. Any distributing agency ceasesto operate when it does not secure costs and a profit. Consequently, allthose links put up a resistance to a curtailment of the margin which thefarmer is unable, except by absolute exhaustion, to put againstreduction of his price levels. If rapid falls in food prices occur, thefarmer, at least in the first instance, has to stand most of the fallbecause he cannot quit. The farmer's costs of production relate to aperiod long prior to the fall. Thus, if wages are due to fall as aresult of a fall in food prices, the farmer is always selling on the oldbasis of his costs. The farmer has but one turn-over in the year. Themiddleman has several and can thus adjust himself quickly. 

Second, the custom of many of these businesses is to operate upon apercentage of profit on the value of the commodities handled, even afterdeducting all their increased costs, interest or other charges. When wehave rising prices, therefore, a doubling of prices, for instance, tendsto double profits on the same volume of commodities handled. In a risingmarket, competitive pressures are much diminished and the dealer canassess his own profits to greater degree than usual. While the packersmake a profit of, say, two cents on the dollar value of commodities, itrepresents double the profit per pound over pre-war, even afterallowing such items as interest on the larger capital involved. 

REDUCTIONS OF THE MARGINS

Aside from the necessary rise in the margin that has grown out of therise in cost of labor, rent, etc. , from inflation and world shortage, there are some causes which have accumulated to increase the marginsbetween the farmer and the wholesaler and the wholesaler and consumerthat could be greatly mitigated. 

BETTER TAX DISTRIBUTION

During the war, in order to restrain wild greed and profiteering in thethen existing unlimited demand, margins between purchase and sale in thedifferent manufacturing and handling trades were fixed in all the greatcommodities--iron, steel, cement, lumber, coal and foodstuffs. The firsttask of the war was to secure production, and the margins were thereforefixed at such breadth as would allow the smaller high cost manufacturerand the smaller dealer to live. Otherwise, the smaller competitors wouldhave been extinguished, production would have been lost, and, worse yet, the larger low-cost operator would have been left with much inflatedmonopoly. The excess profits tax was levied as a sequent corrective tothis necessary first step, so as to take the undue profits of the largeproducer back to the public. It was a wise war measure, but the momentrestraints on profits were taken off and there was a free and risingmarket ahead, then the tax was added to prices by all the participantsand passed on to the consumer, or deducted from the farmer when worldlevels crowded his prices down. It should have been repealed at the timethe controls were abandoned, but our legislatures have been busy withother things and, in the meanwhile, in food it not only increases themargin between the farmer and the consumer but tends, as stated above, to come out of the farmer to a large degree. It has other viciousresults in that it also stimulates dealers and manufacturers tospeculate their profits away in unsound business, rather than to pay itto the government. It does sound well to tax the great manufacturers, but to make them the agency to collect taxes from the population is notaltogether sound government. 

It is a very important tax to the Government, bringing as it does over abillion a year, and a place to put this load is not to be found easily. The income tax does not have so malign an effect, for it comes to agreat extent from the individual and not from business. The presentmethod of income tax, however, has some weaknesses. The same levy ismade upon earned incomes as upon those that are unearned. The tax onearned incomes tends in certain cases to be passed on to the consumer ordeducted from the farmer, and, besides, it is not just that a familyliving by giving productive service to the community should pay the sameas a family that contributes nothing by way of effort. A stiff tax onthese latter families might send them to work, and certainly wouldinduce economy. Moreover, the earner of income must provide for old ageand dependents while the unearned income taxpayer has this provisionalready. Altogether, it would seem the part of wisdom at least toincrease the income tax on the larger unearned income and decrease it onthe earners. It is argued that this drives great incomes to evasion byinvestment in tax-free securities, which is probably true. We need morecomparative figures than the Treasury statistics yet show to answer thispoint. In any event, relief to the earner would free his savings toinvest in taxable securities and we need above all things to stimulatethe initiative of the saver. Income taxes, except when too high onearned incomes, do not destroy initiative, and every other governmenthas, in taxing, recognized the essential difference between earned andunearned income. This distinction would generally relieve the range ofsmaller incomes, for they are mostly earned. 

The inheritance tax has not been fully exploited as yet. It cannot bededucted from either farmer or consumer, it does not affect the cost ofliving, it does not destroy initiative in the individual if it leaveslarge and proper residues for dependents. It does redistributeoverswollen fortunes. It does make for equality of opportunity byfreeing the dead hand from control of our tools of production. Itreduces extravagance in the next generation, and sends them toconstructive service. It has a theoretic economic objection of being adispersal of capital into income in the hands of the government, but solong as the government spends an equal amount on redemption of the debtor productive works, even this argument no longer stands. 

We may need to come to some sort of increased consumption taxes in orderto lift that part of excess profits and tax on earned incomes thatcannot be very properly placed elsewhere. When it comes, it should lieon other commodities than food, except perhaps sugar, one half of whichis a luxury consumption. The ideal would be for it to be levied whollyon non-essentials in order that it should be a burden on luxury and noton necessity. There is no doubt difficulty in classifying. Jewelry andfurs are easy to class, but where necessity leaves off and luxury beginsin trousers is more difficult to determine. 

It requires no lengthy economic or moral argument as a platform fordenunciation of all waste and useless expenditure. Some sane medium isneeded between comfort and luxury. Failing definition, and objection toblue laws, the theme must be taken into the area of moral virtues andbecome a proper subject for the spiritual stimulations of the church. There is a psychology in luxury wherein we all buy high-priced thingsbecause they are high-priced, not because they add comfort--and this hascontributed also to our high cost of living, for those who do it driveup prices on those who try to avoid it. From an economic point of view, the only recipes are taxation as a device to make it expensive. 

More constructive than increasing taxes is to take a holiday ongovernmental expenditures and relieve the taxpayer generally. If wecould stave off a lot of expensive suggestions for a few years andsecure more efficiency in what we must spend, then our people could getahead with the process of earning something to be taxed. This would atleast be comforting to the great farming and business community. 

BETTER TRANSPORTATION FACILITIES

There is a great weakness in our present railway situation bearing uponthe farmer and consumer. Everyone knows of the annual shortage of carsduring the crop-moving season. Few people, however, appreciate that thisshortage of cars often amounts to a stricture in the free flow ofcommodities from the farmer to the consumer. The result is that thefarmer, in order to sell his produce, often unknown to himself makes asacrifice in price to local glut. The consumer is compelled at the otherend to pay an increased price for foodstuffs due to the shortage inmovement. The constant fluctuations in our grain exchanges locally orgenerally from this cause are matters of public record almost monthly. On one occasion a study was made under my administration into the effectof car shortage in the transportation of potatoes, and we coulddemonstrate by chart and figures that the margin between the farmer andthe consumer broadened 100 per cent in periods of car shortage. Nor didthe middleman make this whole margin of profit, because he was subjectedto unusual losses and destruction, and took unusual risks in awaiting amarket. The same phenomenon was proved in a large way at time of acuteshortage of movement in corn and other grains. 

The usual remedy for this situation is insistence that the railwaysshall provide ample rolling stock, trackage and terminals to take careof the annual peakload. We have fallen far behind in the provision ofeven normal railway equipment during the war and an additional 500, 000cars and locomotives are no doubt needed. Above a certain point, however, this imposes upon the railways a great investment in equipmentfor use during a comparatively short period of the year when manycommodities synchronize to make the peak movement. The railwaysnaturally wish to spread the movement over a longer period. The burdenof equipment for short time use will probably prevent their ever beingable to take entire care of the annual delays in transport and stricturein market, although it can be greatly minimized. 

There is possible help in handling the peak load by improving thewaterways from the Great Lakes to the Atlantic seaboard by way of theSt. Lawrence River, so as to pass full seagoing cargoes. It has alreadybeen determined that the project is entirely feasible and ofcomparatively moderate cost. The result would be to place every port onthe Great Lakes on the seas. Fifteen states contiguous to the Lakescould find an outlet for a portion of their annual surplus quickly andmore cheaply to the overseas markets than through the congested easterntrunk rail lines. It would contribute materially to reduce thiseffectual stricture in the free flow of the farmer's commodities to theconsumers. Of far greater importance, however, is the fact that thecosts of transportation from the Lake ports to Europe would be greatlydiminished and this diminished cost would go directly into the farmer'spockets. It is my belief that there is a possible saving here of five orsix cents a bushel in the transportation of grain. Although acomparatively small proportion of our total grain production flows toEurope, I believe that the economic lift on this minor portion wouldraise the price of the whole grain production by the amount saved intransportation of this portion of it. The price of export wheat, rye, and barley--sometimes corn--usually hogs--in Chicago at normal times isthe Liverpool price, less transportation and other charges, and if wedecrease the transport in a free market the farmer should get thedifference. Not only should there be great benefits to the agriculturalpopulation, but it should be a real benefit to our railways in gettingthem a better average load without the cost of maintaining the surplusequipment and personnel necessary to manage the peakload during the fallmonths. It has been computed that the capital saving in rolling stockalone would pay for the entire cost of this waterway improvement over acomparatively few years. The matter also becomes of national importancein finding employment for the great national mercantile fleet that wehave created during these years of war. 

Another factor in transportation bearing upon the problem of marketingis the control by food manufacturing and marketing concerns ofrefrigeration and other special types of cars. This special control hasgrown up largely because, owing to seasonal changes in regionaloccupation for these cars over different parts of the country, no onerailway wished to provide sufficient special cars and service for usethat may come its way only part of the year. The result has been toforce the building up of a domination by certain concerns who controlmany of the cars and stifle free competition. Much the same results havebeen attained by special groups in control of stock yards and, in somecases, of elevators. Where such formal or informal monopolies grow up, they are public utilities, and if the farmer is to have a free marketthey must be replaced by constructive public service. 

A FREE MARKET

Every impediment to free marketing in produce either gives specialprivileges or increases the risks which the farmer must pay for indiminished returns. We have some commodities where manufacture has growninto such units that these units exert such an influence that theyconsciously or unconsciously affect the price levels of the farmer'sproduce. When a few concerns have the duty of manufacturing and storingthe seasonal reserves in a single commodity they naturally reduce pricesduring the heavy production season and increase them in the short seasonas a method of diminishing their risk and increasing profits. Moreover, their tendency is often to sell the minor portion of their product thatgoes for export at lower than the domestic price in order to dispose ofit without depressing local prices. They do not need to conspire, forthere can be perfectly coincident action to meet the same economiccurrents. Such coincidence has much greater possibilities of generalinfluence with a few concerns in the field than if there were many. 

The experience gained in the Food Administration on these problemsduring the war led to the feeling expressed at that time, that suchbusiness should be confined to one line of activity, just as we have hadto confine our railways, banks and insurance companies. This is usefulto prevent reliance being placed upon the profits of alternativeproducts when engaged in stifling of competition, through selling belowcost on some other item. Even this restriction may not prove to besufficient protection to free market by free competition. I am not abeliever in nationalization as the solution to this form of domination, but I am a believer in regulation, if it should prove necessary. Ifexperience proves we have to go to regulation, it is my belief that itshould be confined to overswollen units and that the point of departureshould not be the amount of capital employed but the proportion of agiven commodity that is controlled. The point of departure must dependupon the special commodity and its ratio to the whole. When such aconcern obtains such dimensions that it can influence prices ordominate public affairs, either with deliberation or innocence, then itmust be placed under regulation and restraint. Our people have longsince realized the advantage of large business operation in improvingand cheapening the costs of manufacture and distribution, but when theseoperations have become so enlarged that they are able to dominate thecommunity, it becomes of social necessity that they shall be maderesponsible to the community. The test that should apply, therefore, isnot the size of the institution or the volume of capital that itemploys, but the proportion of the commodity that it controls in itsoperations. It is my belief that if this were made the datum point forregulation, and if regulation were made of a rigorous order, thispressure would result in such business keeping below the limit ofregulation. Thus the automatic result would be the building up of aproper competition, because men in manufacturing would rather conduct asmaller business free of governmental regulation than enjoy largeoperations subject to governmental control. There are probably only avery few concerns in the United States that would fall into thiscategory, and they should be glad of regulation in order to securefreedom from criticism. 

SPECULATION AND PROFITEERING

There are three kinds of speculation and profiteering in the foodtrades. The first is of the inherent speculative character of foodstuffsdue to their seasonal nature. The farmer, more by habit than necessity, usually markets the bulk of his grain in the fall. By necessity he mustmarket his animals at certain seasons for they must be bred at certainseasonal periods, they must be fed at certain seasons, and thus theycome to market in waves of production larger than the immediate demand. In perishables he must market fairly promptly as he cannot himselfmaintain necessary special types of storage. Thus, the dealer mustspeculate on carrying the commodities for distribution during the periodof short production while the farmer markets in time of surplusproduction. While full competitive conditions might reduce the chargesfor this hazard, there is a possibility of reducing the hazard by betterorganization and, consequently, the charge for the hazard that is nowdebited to the farmer. It is worth an exhaustive national investigationto determine whether an extension of a system of central markets wouldnot afford great help. I do not mean the extension of our so-calledexchanges dealing in local produce, but the creation of great centralexchange markets with responsibilities for service to the entire people. This help would arise in two ways. The first is the hourly determinationof price at great centers that all may know, and thus the farmerprotects himself against local variations and manipulation. The secondis a system of forward contracts through such a market between farmerand consumer on standardized commodities. Such contracts in effectremove the necessity of a speculative middleman. This system exists ingrain and in cotton and in its processes eliminates large part of thehazard and carries the commodity at the lower rate of interest. Thepresent trouble with the system of future contracts is that it lendsitself to manipulation, but I believe this could be eliminated. 

Take the case of potatoes; here is an unstandardized, seasonalcommodity, with no national market and therefore no established dailyprice as a datum point. A grower in Florida, Maine, or Wisconsin, through a local agent, or through local sale, consigns potatoes toPittsburgh because a larger price is reported there than in Chicago. Thegrower can usually make no actual sale to an actual retailer orwholesaler at destination because the buyer has no assurance of quality. Coincident shipment from many points to a hopeful market almost dailyproduces a local glut at receiving points somewhere in the country. Often enough the shipper gets no return but a bill for freight and theperishables sometimes rot in the yards. If potatoes were standardizedand sold on contract in national market, protected from manipulation, three things should result. First, there would be a daily national priceknown to growers. Second, by the sale of a contract for delivery thegrower would be assured of this price. Third, the contract anddirections for shipment would flow naturally to the distributor wherethe potatoes were needed, and thus the present fearfully wasteful systemwould be mitigated. Potatoes would be a most difficult case to handle;dried beans, peas, even butter and cheese would be easier. I am notadvocating widespread dealing in futures, but short contracts givingtime for delivery would probably greatly decrease the margin betweenfarmer and local distributor by saving great wastes in transport, inspoilage and in manipulation. 

The second class of speculation is one largely of the war as a period ofrising prices growing out of inflation, and so forth. It lies in themarking up of goods on the shelf to the level of the rising dailymarket. This marking up has been one of the large factors in increasingthe margin during the war. No better example exists than the rise offlour during the 1916-1917 harvest year, referred to elsewhere. We shallhave a remedy for this the moment the tide of inflation turns. Thefarmer and consumer cannot, however, expect that they will get evenduring such a reverse period for their losses on the rise, because thetrades have too great an individual power of resistance against sellinggoods at a loss. Anyway, the marking up of goods will cease when pricescease to rise--and there is a limit. 

The third class of speculation is wholly vicious. That is the purchaseof foodstuffs, in times of rising economic levels, sheerly for the risein price or the deliberate manipulation of markets during normal times. These operations are against the common welfare; they can find no moralor economic justification. They are not to be reached by prosecution;they must be reached by prevention. Our great boards of trade in finepatriotic spirit proved their ability during the war to controldeliberate manipulation of grain and other futures. 

The two latter types of speculation are an impediment to free marketsand they become an unnecessary charge on the margin. 

CO-OPERATIVE MARKETING BY THE FARMER

There can be no question of the improvement in position of both farmerand consumer in cases where coöperative marketing can be organized. Thehigh development of coöperative citrus fruit marketing has resulted inlower average prices to consumer, better quality, and better return tothe grower. Here is a case of scientific distribution lamentably absentin many other commodities. There are other specialized products to whichit could be well extended. To reach its best development it should haveparallel coöperative development among consumers as have we discussedelsewhere. 

SUNDRY ITEMS

There are many ways of assisting the agricultural industry not pertinentto this discussion on the cost of distribution. They do demand inquiry, and public illumination; most of them do not demand legislation so muchas public education and consideration when legislating on othersubjects. Our agricultural interests also need a foreign policy. Forinstance, during the last month there has been a consolidation ofcontrol of buying in world markets by the European Governments. How farit may be extended in its policies is not clear. Nevertheless, acombination of importers in all Europe under government control coulddetermine the prices on every farm in the United States. 

THE MARGIN BETWEEN THE WHOLESALER AND CONSUMER

As the datum point of price determination is the wholesaler's market, the accretions of charge for distribution from that point forward, theeconomy of extravagance in these costs, is of primary interest to theconsumer. The same phenomena of marking up goods on the shelf, calculating profits not on commodities but on dollars handled, a minoramount of vicious speculation, and the passing on of excess profits tax, are present in those trades during the past years. A much more pertinentphenomenon in unduly increasing their margins is the increasing demandsof the consumer as to service. Several deliveries daily, purchases oncredit, the abandonment of the market basket in favor of the telephone, mean many costs. One of them much overlooked is that customers mustalways have "first" quality when they buy over the telephone, and theseconds and thirds of equal food value in many commodities go to wasteand are added to the price of the firsts. That there are some people inthe United States who want to buy sanely is evidenced by the 400 percent increase in "cash and carry" shops. There are also too many peoplein the final stages of distribution. One city in the United States hasone meat retailer for every 400 inhabitants; it would be equally wellserved with one dealer for every 1200. The result is high margin to theretailers and no out-of-the-way income to any of them. There is no veryimmediate remedy for this. One possibility is an extension ofcoöperative buying by consumers. It has proved a great success abroad. It is not socialism, for it arises from voluntary action and initiativeamong the people themselves. 

ILL BALANCE OF AGRICULTURE AND GENERAL INDUSTRY

There is now a tendency to ill balance between the agricultural andgeneral industry. For many years we were large exporters of food andimporters of manufactured goods. We gradually imported mouths, manufactured our own goods and just as rapidly diminished our foodexports. Up to the point where we consumed our own food andmanufactured our own goods it has been a great national development. Ourannual exports of food decreased during the past twenty-five years fromsome 15, 000, 000 tons to about 6, 000, 000 just before the European War. Inthe meantime we increased the import of such commodities as sugar, rice, vegetable oils, until our net exports were about 5, 000, 000 tons. Of thekinds of food exported this probably represents a decreased export offrom twenty-five or thirty per cent of our production down to five percent of it. 

During the war we gave special stimulus to food production and producedgreater economies in consumption so that these later years somewhatbefog the real current, for our agricultural surplus in normal years isreally very small. During the war and since, we have given greatstimulus to our manufacturing industries. If we shall continue to buildup our manufacturing industries and our export trade withoutcorresponding encouragement to agriculture, we will soon have moremouths in our country than we can feed on our own produce. We shall, like the European States which have devoted themselves to industrialdevelopment, ultimately become dependent upon overseas food supplies. Ifwe examine their situation we find the very life of their people isthus dependent upon maintaining open free access to overseas markets. From this necessity have grown the great naval armaments of the world, and the burden they imply on all sections of the population. Suchnations, of necessity, have engaged in fierce competition for marketsfor their industrial products. Thus they built up the background ofworld conflicts. The titanic struggles that have resulted haveendangered the very lives of their people by starvation. Their wartactics have, in large degree, been directed to strangle food supplies. One other result of this development is the terrible congestion ofpopulations in manufacturing areas with all the social and humandifficulties that this implies. 

There is a jeopardy in industrial over-development which has receivedtoo little attention because the world has only experienced it duringthe past eighteen months. In times of industrial depression, or greatincrease in the cost of living, whether brought about by war or by theebb and flow of world prosperity, these populations, oppressed withmisery, turn to political remedies for matters that are beyond humancontrol. They naturally resent the lowering of their standards ofliving, and they inevitably resort to industrial strife, to strikes anddisorder. Theirs is the breeding ground of radicalism--for all suchphenomena belong to the towns and not to the country. 

By and large, our industries are now in a high state of prosperity. Morefavorable hours, more favorable wages, are today offered in industrythan in agriculture. The industries are drawing the workers from ourfarms. If this balance in relative returns is to continue, we face agradual decrease in our agricultural productivity. If we should developour industrial side during the next five years as rapidly as we haveduring the past five years, we shall by that time be faced with thenecessity to import foodstuffs to supplement our own food supplies. Someeconomists will argue, of course, that if we can manufacture goodscheaper than the rest of the world and exchange them for foodstuffsabroad, we should do so. But such arguments again ignore certainfundamental social and broad political questions. These dangers havebecome more emphasized by experience of the war. From dependence onoverseas supplies for food, we will, by the very concern that will growin public mind as to the safety of these supplies, soon find ourselvesdiscussing the question of dominating the seas. Our internationalrelations will have become infinitely more complex and more difficult. Unless the League of Nations serves its ideal, we will need to burdenourselves with more taxation, to maintain great naval and militaryforces. But of far more importance than this is that social stability ofour country, the development of our national life, rests in the spiritof our farms and surrounds our villages. These are the sources that havealways supplied our country with its true Americanism, its new and freshminds, its physical and its moral strength. Industry's real market iswith the farmer by the constant increase of his standard of living. Wewant our exports to grow in exchange for commodities we need fromabroad, but we want them to grow in tune with our social and politicalinterests, and to do so they must grow in step with our agriculture. 

_In conclusion_ we are in a period of high inflation and shortage ofworld production, and consequent abnormal prices. The tide is likely toturn almost any time. Some of the outrageous margin between the farmerand consumer will be remedied by the turn in the tide itself, for itwill eliminate the marking up of goods and the opportunity of viciousspeculation. The dangers of the turn are twofold. First, unless weconstructively remedy the unnecessary margin between the farmer and thewholesaler the farmer will receive the brunt of the fall long beforethe supplies he must buy and the labor he must employ will have fallenin step. It will bring to him the greatest suffering in the community. 

The farmer's position can be remedied by better distribution of the taxload, by improvement in our transportation system, by getting ourmarkets free of impediments to free flow of competition, and byconstructive improvement in our whole distribution system. The consumerwill get relief from deflation, improvement in world production, and byeliminating the same wastes and unnecessary costs in our distributionsystem. 

The second danger is that deflation itself will take place withoutconstructive consideration. Great wisdom will be required on the part ofour government in its great control of credit that it shall take placeprogressively and with care, in order that there shall be no suddenbreaks, with their resulting demoralization, unemployment and misery. 

We require a careful balance of general industry to agriculture. Wecannot afford to build this nation into an industrial state dependentupon other lands for its food supply. We want our industries to grow, but we want agriculture to grow in pace with them. Many of our farmersmade great sacrifices in the war; they do not want to be coddled inpeace; but they must have an equality of opportunity with all the otherelements in the country. 

[Footnote 2: _Saturday Evening Post_, Issue April 10, 1920. ]

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