Herbert Hoover

by Glen Jeansonne

  By the fall of 1894, the precocious freshmen of 1892 had become seniors and boasted their greatest team of that era. They had lured the inimitable Walter Camp, known as the father of college football, to coach the Cardinal. Camp believed that from tackle to tackle Stanford had the best line in the nation, more formidable than any of the Eastern powers. He used his vaunted defense aggressively to attack the opposing offense. Most of the games were low scoring. The players were quite small by recent standards. The largest Cardinal player, the left guard, weighed 194 pounds. The largest back, the fullback, weighed 174 pounds, and the quarterback weighed 147 pounds. Berkeley also boasted an exceptional line and an elusive back in Wolfe Ransome. After Stanford’s stunning defeat of Berkeley in 1892, the teams had tied during the following year, making 1894’s the decisive game. During the first half, a Stanford guard burst through the line, blocked a Ransome punt, scooped up the ball, and raced for a touchdown. Stanford won, 6–0. Even more compelling was a final, three-game barnstorming tour in California after Amos Alonzo Stagg, the legendary coach, challenged the strongest team in the West to face his powerful Chicago team, the dominant team in the Midwest. Chicago won the first game at Pasadena on Christmas Day, Stanford countered with a victory on December 29, and on January 1, the Cardinal defeated Chicago at the Los Angeles Athletic Club. The savvy Cardinal had reaped a small fortune, which restored the Athletic Department to solvency, but the faculty forbade such barnstorming thereafter. Hoover, who had helped inspire the scheme, considered the limitation reasonable, although the closely bunched games had helped balance the books of an athletic department chronically in debt.16

  At the beginning of the 1894 season, the Cardinal gridiron squad, having proven itself on the field, was on the verge of its most successful season. Yet Bert kept a close eye on the till because the team remained $1,500 in debt. Further, his Quaker principles impelled him to treat all individuals equally. The playing field, the same one used for baseball, remained unfenced, and the manager and assistant manager still circulated through the grandstand collecting admissions. Just before kickoff at one game, Hoover asked his crew if every patron had paid. They replied that everyone had, with the exception of President Jordan and his guest. Bert bounded over and informed Jordan and his companion that they must comply with the rules and pay for admission. Jordan promptly did, as did his guest—Andrew Carnegie.17

  During his junior and senior years Hoover packed his schedule with as many science and engineering courses as possible. He took classes in geology, mineralogy, chemistry, advanced geology, French, ethics, and hygiene. He enrolled in German, but the language proved difficult. Bert stopped attending class without formally dropping it and failed the course, the only one he flunked in college. He never became fluent in any second language, though he learned to speak French haltingly. Beyond his love for science and mining engineering, Hoover selectively took humanities classes that interested him, such as history, economics, and English literature, and passed them. His retentive memory was a formidable asset in courses dealing with history and classical literature.18

  Bert continued to splice together jobs to keep himself solvent as he scurried between classes and miscellaneous extracurricular activities. He sold his newspaper distribution business as a sophomore and began the more lucrative task of picking up student laundry for cleaning and returning it to individual rooms, employing assistants. As a senior, he added a more ambitious responsibility, importing entertainers to campus, guaranteeing them a flat fee, and retaining any remaining profits from ticket sales. Among the speakers he hired was William Jennings Bryan, who subsequently became the Populist and then the Democratic candidate for president in 1896, 1900, and 1908. Hoover was unimpressed by Bryan’s oratory, which he considered more ballyhoo than substance. The recruitment of speakers and performers was a risky venture and sometimes the impresario lost money. For example, Bert lured the world-famous Polish pianist Ignacy Jan Paderewski to campus, guaranteeing him $2,000. The concert netted only $1,600. Bert offered to give the entire sum to the pianist and an IOU for the remainder. Paderewski generously declined the full amount, gave Hoover a percentage, and canceled the remainder. Years later, Hoover fed Paderewski’s native Poland after World War I, returning the favor. When Paderewski thanked him, Hoover said there was no need to; Paderewski had once been generous to an indigent student.19

  Hoover’s most lucrative pay came from summer work. After mapping the Ozarks for Professor Branner in 1892, Bert spent the following two summers performing a similar task for Dr. Waldemar Lindgren, another famed Stanford geologist, and working chiefly in California’s High Sierras. As he had for Branner, the fledgling engineer helped construct a topographical map of the region, received college credit for his work, and was listed as a joint contributor to the project. In the fall of 1894, he returned five weeks late for the opening of the fall semester, putting him behind in his classwork for what became the most frenetic semester of his academic career at Stanford and requiring strenuous efforts to graduate on time the following spring. Nonetheless, Hoover immensely enjoyed the outdoor work and the scenic beauty of the Sierras, which whetted his appetite to graduate and become a professional mining engineer.20

  While mapping the Sierras with Lindgren in 1893, Hoover also mapped out in his mind a blueprint for untangling Stanford’s student finances, a hodgepodge of clubs and athletic organizations resembling scrambled eggs, with little cohesion and no central oversight. Many of them, mired in debt, were compelled to disband every year, default on their arrears, and reassemble the following year. When Bert returned from his summer job for his junior year, he approached the leaders of his faction with a sweeping plan to reorganize student finances and outlined his ideas for a new student constitution. There would be several officers, with all funds channeled through a centralized treasurer, who would maintain scrupulous records. The barbs decided on a ticket of the three H’s: Lester Hinsdale for president, Herbert Hicks for football manager, and Herbert Hoover for treasurer. The elections were to be held during the spring semester of 1894, the constitution ratified in a student referendum, and the newly elected students would serve for academic year 1894–95, Hoover’s senior year. Bert was particularly reluctant to assume another burden because he was already overcommitted and his grades could suffer. The treasurer would be paid because of the amount of labor involved, yet Hoover said he could not accept pay derived from a constitution he himself had written. The barbs pleaded for Bert to run. He was universally respected and could balance the books, and his faction did not believe they could win without him. Hoover ran because of the duty he felt to implement his plan.21

  The election in April set precedents. Fences were plastered with posters and sidewalks were covered with chalk. The turnout was enormous: about 85 percent of the student body voted. The barbs captured all the important offices. After a mixed result the previous year, the barbs were now the most powerful faction on campus. Hoover’s stronghold remained Encina Hall, his ward, which the barbs carried decisively, complemented by the poor students in the old construction shacks, who had been brought into the mainstream of campus life. Following the election, the entire student body assembled in the chapel to debate and vote on the constitution. After a heated argument on a torrid California afternoon, the students approved the new charter, which remained intact for more than a generation. The campaign marked the pinnacle of Hoover’s career as a campus politician, although he would not take office until the following academic year, when the constitution became effective. He had emerged as the intellectual leader of his faction, having demonstrated an ability in debate to strike to the heart of an issue like a dagger. Due to his shyness, he was not one of the most popular students, yet he became one of the most influential. His presence was crucial to the success of the ticket. The turnabout since the freshman year of an ironclad fraternity-athlete monopoly on offices and power was revolutionary.22

  The pace of Hoover’s life accelerated, crammed with
course work, labs for Branner, student politics, odd jobs, and full-time summer employment. Although he remained reserved, Bert made a multitude of friends, often forged in political combat and athletic administration. However, his group of friends was eclectic, with more than engineers, athletes, and student politicians among them. He was admired as Stanford’s most versatile student, constantly busy, able in many areas, unselfish, an individual of impeccable intellectual and fiscal integrity. Tall and thin, about five-eleven, he was usually clad in a double-breasted blue suit, which he changed frequently into yet another suit identical in style and color. He had an unlined, rotund face, and his eyes were wistful, yet snapped to attention at the sight of a friend.

  During the spring semester of his junior year his stamina was tested when he contracted typhoid—the disease that had killed his father. He recovered but lacked money for the infirmary bill, so Professor Branner paid. The geology professor seemed a teacher, mentor, employer, and guardian angel rolled into one. Hoover fell behind in his studies but recouped before departing to map the Sierras with Lindgren for the last time, in the summer of 1894. Before leaving, he failed the English 1B exam once again. This left only his coming senior year to make up the deficiency.23

  Hoover’s essential adult personality had emerged, and his basic traits would vary little thereafter. Quiet, unobtrusive, craving neither credit, nor fame, nor money, he led by action. He labored patiently and assiduously, yet he received bursts of inspiration and his intelligence was complemented by his self-discipline and an unerring intuition about people. His achievements in extracurricular activities appeared surprising, given his introverted personality, yet this success was repeated consistently. He was neither flashy nor ostentatious. Those who got to know him, however, found him to be a “people person,” adept at persuasion in small groups, a stimulating conversationalist, tolerant, meticulous about details, yet someone who also grasped the big picture. Contented and even tempered, he did not flaunt his views and could compromise, yet Bert was firm about principles nonetheless. When he walked across campus, most students knew him. Friends stuck to him like cement. A group of Stanford friends became the core of his later relief operations and his public career. “I believe one of the great elements in his success has been his ability to do any part of any job,” a classmate explained. The classmate, a fraternity man, said that Hoover had bids from many fraternities, including his own, because they believed he would add prestige to their ranks, yet the young geologist declined for financial reasons and because he considered fraternities elitist. His later success did not surprise his Stanford friends. Moreover, “It is worth mentioning that none of his old pals were ever jealous of him,” his fraternity friend added. “This is characteristic of all those who have ever been associated with him—they are ever after boosters of Herbert Hoover.”24

  Hoover enjoyed a spectacular career at Stanford. The climax occurred during act 4, his senior year, when he fell in love. As with many things about his young life, it appeared to be a fluke, yet flukes happened to Hoover with a remarkable consistency. The Iowa-born Quaker who arrived at Stanford to major in geology fell for a woman who not only was of Quaker heritage and born a few miles from his own hometown in Iowa, but also was Stanford’s first female geology major, and only the fourth in the nation. The two were equally smitten. The first love of his life, she would be the last. The beautiful, bright, athletic sorority girl with an iridescent personality had many suitors, yet she chose one of the shiest and least sophisticated with women and, superficially, among the most awkward in social situations. Meeting Lou Henry supplied the one element missing in Hoover’s busy, rewarding life, which quickly became the fullest and most joyful it had ever been.25

  Professor Branner was the maestro who orchestrated the introduction, asking Bert to help Lou ascertain the geologic era of a laboratory rock specimen. Lou already knew Bert by reputation and had been eager to meet him. He was not quite what she had expected, as he had assumed gigantic proportions in her imagination on the basis of the pump-priming Branner had done. Lou craved geology and the outdoor life as much as her paramour did. She could ride, shoot, fish, hike, camp, and bicycle and was equally adept in the wilderness or dancing in the ballroom. Despite her tomboy upbringing by a nature-loving father, she possessed all the subtle feminine graces. “She had that blush of a woman,” one of her friends observed. “If she has it, she doesn’t need anything else. If she doesn’t, nothing else matters.” Hoover recognized her qualities. “As I was Dr. Branner’s handy boy, I felt it my duty to aid the young lady in her studies, both in the laboratory and in the field,” he wryly wrote.26

  As a couple they had complementary assets. Vivacious, well-read, and an articulate conversationalist with an appreciation for humor as well as for the fine arts, Lou was a fearless, adventurous woman with radiant blue eyes and a contagious grin, consistently upbeat and gifted linguistically. Bert’s new paramour became fluent in five foreign tongues and in addition read Latin. She was a brilliant creative writer in genres as varied as fiction, biography, and lyrical descriptions of nature. Still, the ultimate arm of her intellectual arsenal was common sense. Her mind was comparable to Bert’s, quick and deep, yet she had a nurturing, feminine grace and lacked his ferocious drive. Her passion for geology, however, was comparable. She did not want to become a professor, or the president of a woman’s college, of which she was fully capable. She wanted to become a professional mining engineer like her future husband, to climb down mine shafts and judge the quality of ores, to work in the outdoors, to do what male mining engineers normally did. That was an unrealistic aspiration in her time, but she dreamed big. It was highly unlikely that a mining company would hire a woman, or that male miners, often laboring in isolated, rugged environments, among rough men whose avocation was original sin, would accept a woman as their boss. Yet during the first years of her marriage to Bert, she came as close to realizing that ambition as was possible under the circumstances, accompanying her husband almost everywhere, providing analysis and common sense, and enjoying the fulfillment of “roughing it.” In those early years before public responsibilities overwhelmed Hoover, it was an exceptionally companionate marriage.27

  Some of Lou’s sorority sisters considered Bert beneath her social status, yet social status meant little to Lou, nor was she deterred by the opinions of others. In fact, she admired Hoover more because he earned his education the hard way. Neither of them took shortcuts. Certainly she had potential suitors who were wealthy and polished, who were articulate and descended from aristocratic families. Yet Lou was not a superficial person. She could see inside Bert and she understood and appreciated him as no other woman ever did. If he was a diamond in the rough, he was a diamond nonetheless, with a noble heart. He treated her with respect but not with false flattery. She admired his mind and his tenacity. Yet Lou was also fiercely independent—like Bert, an individualist. “It isn’t so important what others think of you,” she said, “as what you feel inside yourself.” Their attraction was entirely mutual. Later, Lou told a friend that she had majored in geology at Stanford, “but I have majored in Herbert Hoover ever since.” There was not an iota of competition, no one-upmanship. From the time they met until she was buried they never argued publicly.28

  The relationship quickly progressed from the dating of rocks to the dating of couples, with hardly a rocky moment. One Friday, Bert, dressed in his best double-breasted blue suit, called on Lou at Roble Hall. With her polished social graces, Lou was more sophisticated than he was, had seen more of America, and had far more experience with men than Hoover had with women. Yet she was a freshman while Bert was a senior. Her route to Stanford and geology was circuitous. She had earned a degree in education from the California State Normal School (now San José State University), taught third grade for about a year in her hometown of Monterey, California, and then worked as an assistant cashier at her father’s bank. Inspired by a lecture by the touring Professor Branner, she took
the audacious step of enrollment at Stanford as a geology major, a decision supported by both her family and Branner.29

  With only two semesters before Bert graduated, the couple telescoped their courtship while Hoover experienced the busiest year of his young life, yet the relationship continued to gain momentum. Bert became a social butterfly, at least by his standards. By the spring of 1895, the couple was inseparable. Together they attended the junior hop, the charity ball, and the senior hop. Bert thoroughly enjoyed himself and Lou helped draw out his introverted personality. They also enjoyed outdoor activities together. The new campus provided clubs that specialized in hiking, camping, and fishing. Often groups of students traveled by buggy, horse, or mule to the mountains, or explored new beaches. Hoover and Lou stuck together on field trips sponsored by the Geology Department, which enabled the pair to combine work with pleasure. Sometimes the pair strolled together, hand in hand, on the pastoral campus. Bert and Lou felt comfortable together in silence, simply soaking in natural beauty. They could communicate intuitively; there were long, contented intervals without speaking in which each could feel the other’s presence. As he won Lou’s heart, Hoover’s horizons expanded beyond the Ozarks or the High Sierras. Before Bert’s graduation in May 1895 they had probably reached a tacit agreement to marry, though Lou included caveats. She must first earn her geology degree and Bert would need a job that could support a family. Meanwhile, they would correspond and visit when possible. Unfortunately, most of their correspondence has been lost or destroyed, and they saw each other only a few times during Lou’s sophomore and junior years. Bert had some doubts that he could hold on to such a desirable woman for three years, at a distance. Lou wondered if Bert might become so immersed in his work that she would lose him to his ambition. Yet the bonding proved permanent; commitment was irrevocable between them, and neither ever seriously considered another partner.30