Herbert Hoover The Man and His Work   By: Vernon L. (Vernon Lyman) Kellogg (1867-1937)

BY VERNON KELLOGG AUTHOR OF "HEADQUARTERS NIGHTS," ETC.

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY NEW YORK LONDON 1920

COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

DEDICATED TO MY COMPANIONS OF THE C. R. B.

PREFACE

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

Many questions are being asked about the life and experiences of this man before he entered upon his outstanding public service and about the details of his personal participation in the work of the great wartime private 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 work up 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 for their parents, too, and for all the people and for the Polish Government. But it was especially the great day of the children. The man whose name they all knew as well as their own, but whose face they had never 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 thing for the government and military and city officials whose business it is to arrange all the grand receptions and the brilliant parades for visiting guests to whom the Government and all the people wish to do honor. And there was no man in the world to whom the Poles could wish to do more honor than to this uncrowned simple American citizen whose name was for them the synonym of savior.