THE CHILD AND BOY
The account of Mr. Hoover's sympathetic interest in the child sufferers
from the Great War, and of his active and effective work on their
behalf, makes one wonder about his own childhood. He is not so old that
his childhood days could have been darkened by the one war which did
mean suffering to many American children, especially those of the South.
He was not born in the South, nor of parents actually afflicted by
poverty, and did not spend his early days in any of the comparatively
few places in America, such as the congested great city quarters and
industrial agglomerations of poor and ignorant foreign working-people,
where real child distress is common; so he certainly did not, as a
growing child, have his ears filled with tales of child suffering, or
with the actual crying of hungry children.
There was one outstanding fact, however, in his relations as a child to
the world and to the people most closely about him, which may have had
its influence in making him especially susceptible to the sight of child
misfortune. This is the fact that he, like many of his later wards in
Europe, was orphaned at an early age. But he was by no means a neglected
orphan. So I hardly think that his own personal experience as an orphan
is a sufficient explanation of the passionate interest in the special
fate of the children, which he displayed from the beginning of the war
to its end.
Nor can the explanation lie in the coldly reasoned conclusion that the
most valuable relief to a people so stricken by catastrophe that its
very existence as a human group is threatened, is to let whatever
mortality is unavoidable fall chiefly to the old and the adult infirm
for the sake of saving the next generation on which alone the future
existence of the group depends. This actual fact Hoover always clearly
saw; but the thing that those close to him saw quite as clearly was that
this alone accounted for but a small part of his intensive attention to
the children.
It is, then, neither any sad experience in his own life, nor any
sociologic or biologic understanding of the hard facts of human
existence and racial persistence, that does much to explain his
particular devotion to the health and comfort of the millions of
suffering children in Europe. The explanation lies simply, although
mysteriously, in his own personality. I say mysteriously, for, despite
all the wonderful new knowledge of heredity that we have gained since
the beginning of the twentieth century, the way by which any of us comes
to be just the sort of man he is is still mostly mystery. Herbert Hoover
is simply a kind of man who, when brought by circumstances face to face
with the distress of a people, is especially deeply touched by the
distress of the children, and is impelled by this to use all of his
intelligence and energy to relieve this distress. What we can know of
his inheritance and early environment may indeed reveal a little
something of why he is this kind of man. But it certainly will not
reveal the whole explanation.
Herbert Hoover, or, to give him for once his full name, Herbert Clark
Hoover, was born on August 10, 1874, in a small Quaker community of
Iowa which composed, at the time of his birth, most of the village of
West Branch in that state. That is, he usually says that he was born on
August 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 of
his family when they wish to celebrate it. He does this on the basis of
the fact that when, in the midst of the general family excitement in the
middle of the night of August 10-11, one of the busy Quaker aunts
present bethought herself, for the sake of getting things straight in
the family Bible, to say: "Oh, doctor, just how long ago was it that
baby was born?" she got the following answer, "Just as near an hour ago
as I can guess it." Thereupon she looked at the clock on the wall, and
the doctor looked at his watch, and both found it exactly one o'clock of
an important new morning!
Herbert's Quaker father, Jesse Clark Hoover, died in 1880, and his
Quaker mother, Hulda Minthorn, in 1884. The father had had the simple
education of a small Quaker college and was, at the time of Herbert's
birth, the "village blacksmith," to give him the convenient title used
by the town and country people about. But really he was of that
ambitious type of blacksmith, not uncommon in the Middle West, whose
shop not only does the repairing of the farm machines and household
appliances, but manufactures various homely metal things, and does a
little selling of agricultural implements on the side. Jesse Hoover's
mind was rather full of ideas about possible "improvements" on the
machines he repaired and sold. And his two sons, Herbert and Theodore,
and Herbert's two sons, Herbert, Jr., and Allan, are all rather given to
the same "inventiveness" about the home.
Hulda Randall Minthorn Hoover, Herbert's mother, was a woman of unusual
mental gifts. After her husband's death she gave much attention to
church work, and became a recognized "preacher" at Quaker meetings. In
this capacity she revealed so much power of expression and exhortation
that she was in much demand. Her death, in 1884, came from typhoid
fever. Those who knew her speak of her "personality." They say that she
had color and attractiveness, although she was unusually shy and
reserved. One can say exactly the same things of her son Herbert.
The immediate Hoover ancestry is Quaker. The more remote is Quaker mixed
with 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 branches
runs into Canada, with the story of a migration there of a group of
refugees from the American colonies during the Revolution. These
emigrants came from prosperous farms in Pennsylvania, but while they
wanted 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 be
a little "unpleasant" about this, and as Canada was just then offering
free farms to colonists, they packed up their movables and _trekked_
north.
Another Canadian branch, French Huguenot in origin, has traditions of
hurried removals from France into Holland before St. Bartholomew's
Night, and of later escapes into the same country. But all finally
decided that Europe anywhere was impossible, and hence they determined
on a wholesale emigration to Canada. Here by chance they settled down
side by side with the little Quaker group which had come from
Pennsylvania. Close association and intermarrying resulted in the
Quakerizing of the European Huguenots--their beliefs were essentially
similar, anyway--so in time all the descendants of this double Canadian
line were Quakers.
There were two other children in Jesse and Hulda Hoover's family: one a
boy, Theodore, three and a half years older than Herbert, and the other
a girl, Mary, who was very much younger. Theodore, like his younger
brother, became a mining engineer, and after a dozen years of
professional and business experience with mines all over the world--part
of the time in connection with mining interests directed by his
brother--is now the head of the graduate department of mining
engineering in Stanford University.
After the father's and mother's death, the three Hoover orphans came
under the kindly care of various Quaker aunts and uncles, and especially
at first of Grandmother Minthorn. This good grandmother took special
charge of little Mary, and pretty soon carried her with her out to
Oregon, where she had a son and daughter living. There had been a little
property left when the father died, enough to provide a very slender
income for each child. But if the dollars were few the kind relatives
were not, and the little Hoovers never suffered from hunger.
These relatives were not limited to Iowa, and the boy Herbert soon found
himself in a new and strange environment, surrounded by a different race
of human beings, whose red-brown skin and fantastic trappings greatly
excited his boyish wonder and imagination. For he was sent to live with
his Uncle Laban Miles, U. S. Government Indian Agent for the Osage tribe
in the Indian Territory, who was one of the many Quakers who had
dedicated their lives to the cause of the Indians at that time. Here
Herbert spent a happy six or eight months, playing with some little
cousins and learning to know the original Americans. For when other
pastimes palled there were always the strange and wonderful red people
to watch and wonder about.
But his life among the original Americans was interrupted by the
solicitous aunts and uncles, who, realizing that an abundance of
barbarians and a paucity of schools might not be the best of
surroundings for a child coming to its first years of understanding,
decided on bringing him back into a more civilized and Quakerish
environment; at least one less marked by tomahawks, bows and arrows, and
other 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 in
the home of Uncle Allan Hoover. To this uncle, and to his wife, Aunt
Millie, the impressionable boy became strongly attached. And there were
some energetic young cousins always on hand to play with. The older
brother Theodore, or Tad, was living at this time with another uncle, a
prosperous Iowa farmer, also much loved by both of the boys. He lived
near enough to permit frequent playings together of the two, and on
another 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 aunts
and other relatives and playmates, all interested in making life
comfortable and happy for the little orphans.
There was also an especially attractive little black-eyed girl, Mildred
Brook, who lived on a near-by farm, who later went to the same Quaker
academy at Oskaloosa as Theodore, and is now Mrs. Theodore Hoover. In
those days she was known as "Mildred of the berry-patches," as all the
children for miles around associated her in their minds with the
luxuriant 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 incidents
and boyish farm adventure. There was the young calf, mutual property of
himself and a cousin of like age, which was fitted out with a boy-made
harness and trained to work, eventually getting out of hand in a corn
field and dragging the single-shovel cultivator wildly across and along
rows of tender growing grain. Later the calf was restored to favor when
it was triumphantly attached to a boy-made sorghum mill, which actually
worked, and pressed out the sweet juice from the sorghum cane.
Winter had its special joys of skates and sled; spring came with
maple-sugaring, and summer with its long days filled with a thousand
enterprises. There were fish in the creek which you might catch if you
could sit still long enough, without too violent wiggling of the hook
when the float gave its first faint indications of a bite. It was two
miles to school, and most of the time the children had to walk. But that
was only good for them, and there was, of course, a good deal of
churchgoing and daily family prayers, but there were always convenient
laps 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 of
Mississippi Valley farms have given to hundreds of thousands of American
little boys; the kind that gives them a good start in health and
happiness towards a sturdy and simple adolescent life. But the time had
come for young Herbert to learn new surroundings. For some reason,
apparently not clearly remembered now, it was decided by the consulting
uncles and aunts that young Herbert should go to Oregon, and join the
Hoover and Minthorn relatives there. Perhaps, even probably, it was
because of the presumably superior educational advantages of Oregon in
the existence of the Newberg Pacific Academy that led to the decision.
We may imagine that Herbert uttered no affirmative vote in the conclave
that decided on his departure from the Iowa farm, and when he once got
out to the superior place, he was less than ever in favor of the
proceeding. But the conscientious uncles and aunts were inexorable as
the Fates.
They meant to be the kindest of Fates, of course. They knew that they
knew so much better than the little boy what was best for him. And
probably they did. But this little pawn on the chessboard of life, moved
about with ever so excellent intention by firm and confident hands, must
have thought sometimes that he would have liked to have some little part
in deciding these moves. But if one starts as pawn, one must find the
way as pawn clear across the board to the king row before one can come
to 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 fun
of 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 circle
each night to repel attacking Indians, as his storybooks described all
transcontinental journeys; but in an overfull tourist-car on the
railroad. Herbert's most vivid memories of the week's journey are of the
wonderful lunch baskets and boxes filled with fried chicken, boiled
hams, roast meats, countless pies and layer-cakes, caraway-seed cookies,
and great red apples. Herbert Hoover had no food troubles in those
days!
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 of
the superior educational institution. Uncle John did not live on a farm,
but on the edge of a small town, which was a mistake, according to
Herbert's way of looking at it. And the Pacific Academy of Newberg,
Oregon, could not be compared in interest with the district village
school of West Branch, Iowa.
After two or three years of life with Dr. John, young Herbert was handed
over to the care of a Grandfather Miles, for Dr. John decided to give up
country doctoring in order to go into the land business "down in Salem,"
the capital city. Therefore, as little Herbert's schooling in the
academy 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 Grandfather
Miles on a farm just on the edge of the academy town.
Herbert's life with Grandfather Miles does not seem to have been a very
happy one, for the old gentleman did not believe in spoiling little
boys by too much kindness. There were many chores to do before and after
school, and little time for playing. And the chores just had to be done,
and not be forgotten as they sometimes were. Probably this strictness of
discipline was a good thing for the small boy. But, like other small
boys, he did not like it. So, also, like many other small boys, he
decided 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 fourteen
going off on their own. And yet perhaps they do. At any rate it is such
a 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's
son trying it. My own experience was only that of a conniver. A
schoolmate of thirteen, whose father believed in a more vigorous method
of correcting wayward sons than my father did, ran away from his house
to as far as our house. There my brother and I secreted him in a
clothes-closet for the nearly three hours of freedom that he enjoyed in
half-smothered state. Then the stern father came over, discovered him
and haled him away to proper discipline. I shall never forget the howls
of the captured fugitive, nor the triumphant and accusing remark to us,
shouted by the terrible capturer as he dragged off his victim: "Now ye
see what liars ye are!" For, of course, we had done our impotent best to
throw the hunter off the track. It was several days before I could lie
again without a violent trembling.
But Herbert Hoover ran away for keeps. He did not run away to ship
before the mast or to kill Indians. Nor did he run very far, only to
Portland and to Salem, which his geography had already taught him were
the principal city and capital, respectively, of the state of Oregon.
And he ran away with the full knowledge and even tolerance of his
relatives. But he went away to be independent, and to fit himself for
the special kind of college to which he had already decided to go. In
Salem he lived again with his Uncle John, helping in the real estate
business, but in Portland he lived entirely on his own.
That part of his reason for running away which was connected with
preparing for a college of his own choosing seems to have come about
because of a difference of opinion that had arisen between young Herbert
and his Quaker relatives with regard to the future course of his
education. They had taken it quite as a matter of course that from the
little Quaker academy in Newberg he would go to one of the reputable
Quaker colleges of the country. But Herbert had come to a different idea
about this matter of further education, and, as is characteristic of
him, this idea had led to a decision, and the decision was on the rapid
way to lead to action. In other words, Herbert had made up his mind that
he wanted to study science, and for that purpose wanted to fit himself
for 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, by
any such large mouthful of phrases; he probably said to himself, "I want
to earn my own living, and go to a university where I can learn
science."
Just what led him to the decision about the modern university and
science 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 from
the casual visit of a man whom he had never seen before and has never
seen 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 owned
somewhere in eastern Oregon, dropped off at Newberg so that he might see
the little son of his Iowa friend. He was a "mining man," and, from the
impression 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 he
could of young Herbert between school-hours and chore-times. His
conversation was apparently mostly about the difference in the work and
achievements in the world of the man who had a profession and the one
who had not. It was illustrated, because the speaker was a miner, by
examples in the field of mining. The talk also was much about
engineering in general and about just what training it was necessary for
a boy to have in order to become a good engineer, with much emphasis
put on the part in this training which was to be got from a university.
He also explained the difference between a university and a small
academy-college.
And then the man went on to his mine. He invited the fascinated boy to
go with him for a little visit, but permission for this was not
obtained. The trails of this man and Herbert Hoover have never touched
again, and yet this stray mining engineer, whose name, even, we do not
know, almost certainly was more responsible than any other external
influence in determining Hoover's later education and adopted
profession.
In Portland Herbert got a job in a real estate office as useful
boy-of-all-work, including particularly the driving of prospective
purchasers about to see various alluring corner lots in town and
inviting farmsteads in the surrounding country. For his work he received
sufficient wages to pay for all of his very modest living. He had hoped
to go to the high school to prepare himself for college, but found that
he could not do this and earn his full wages at the same time. So as
the wages were a first necessity, he gave up his high-school plans and
devoted himself to study at nights and odd hours of the day. He
discovered a little back room in the real-estate office half filled with
old boxes and bags, of which no one else seemed to be aware, and this he
fitted up with a bed, a little table and a lamp, and made of it, with a
boy's enthusiasm--especially the enthusiasm of a boy who had known
Indians--a secret cave in which he lived in a mysterious and exciting
way. He slipped out to little restaurants and cheap boarding-places for
his meals.
He remembers once standing fascinated before a sign that read: "Table
d'hote, 75 cents"; but after thinking twice of indulging in a single
great eating orgy, he decided that no human stomach, much less his own
small one, could possibly hold all the food that seventy-five cents
would pay for, and that therefore he could not get all of his money's
worth. So he went on to some fairer bargain.
There was a bank-vault just across the alley from his secret back room
in the real estate office, and many a night did young Herbert lie awake
in his cave hearing his imaginary bank-robbers mining their way into the
vault and escaping with much rich treasure. But mostly young Herbert
studied in that secret cave of his, and that he studied hard and to good
purpose is proved by the fact that in little more than two years he felt
himself ready to attempt the entrance examinations for college.