MR HOOVER

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 23 June 1928, Page 13

MR HOOVER

TTERIBEfRIT Hoover who has been se- “*-*• lected Republican candidate for the 11. S. Presidency, will have in “Al” Smith, Governor of New York, a doughty Democratic opponent. Americans know strangely little about him, though four years he actuality entered the Presidential race. If Ids work in Europe had been carried on at a time when Europe had been less preoccupied, his habitual shyness would have been bioken through, but li is pre-war life remains unknown. American writers are now actively digging cut the facts. Hoover is a Quaker born, and though his wife was not a Quaker, they attend together from time to time the Quaker meeting in Washington, where some form o: religious observance is still more common among politicians than is, I imagine, among British M.P.’-s. Hoover, ail the same, is no “sissy,” as the Americans have it. He can use strong language and shovy an unQnakeilike temper on occasion, but his Quaker upbringing has bitten deeply into him, so deeply indeed in its teaching of the value of silence that he is one- of the worst public speakers in America. ! FARM AND SCHOOL DAYS. He was horn in lowa, where his father was a small farmer and the village Blacksmith with an inventive turn of mind which perhaps -later helped his son to beconle an engineer. \\ hen he' was about four years old his father | died and left him and his brother to[ the care of the mother, who became a .ay preacher in the Quaker ministry. 1 Live years later this gentle spirit! passed away and left the two small lads orphans in the kindly ioster care of: relatives. Llerbeit was taken to the| farm of an uncle and took his share li.ve e.e.'.y other boy in those rude com-! munities, in the work of* house and farm, ne met Red Indians, and played j during a visit to another uncle with I young Redskins. Becore he was fourteen he had made the journey of over a week from lowa to Oregon, where one of his father’s brothers had set up a b.arding school as a. member, of that band of pioneers which started j the modern passion of America forj education. ; From liis uncle’s school young Hoover, went with his uncle to a land develop-' ment office and continued his studies in his spare time. He sat at the first entrance examination .or the new university of Leland Stanford, built in memory of the son of a. wealthy railway magnate upon his private racecourse. Hoover actually failed, but, struck by his quality, the examining professor secured Ids entry, and he became the first student of the university which has -

<tt REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE HOW HE ROSE TO FAME

sin.e turned out a number of eminent mining engineers, the career to which, tired ' nv tne tales and specimens ot prospectors who had dropped into the land office, Hoover had decided to devote himself fe.TPDF.NT AND MINER. He worked his way through college mainly by acting as agent for the laundry of his fellow-students, and at the end of his course round himself penniless. A summer appointment on the United States geological survey allowed him to explore the Sierras, but after failing to find other employment in the autumn lie took work as an underground miner, pushing ore trucks underground. The iaet that a mining expert in whose office he was seeking work happened to be laced with problems concerning the region which Hoover had during the pievious summer led to his being given a job. His onice task was iollowed by a job in New Mexico, where he made acquaintance with snakes, human and reptilian, and, as the nn-st respectable member oc the party, was called on, much against his will, to say a prayer o.er a Mexican who had died on the hands of his friends. A call from the London mining firm of Bewick Moreing and Company for an AnierL-an expert who would tiy out the new American methods in Western Australia which had just been hit by the mining slump, decided his destiny, and led to that course of life which makes j it p ssibie .or his opponents to-day to j say, “Yah, Internationalist!” | Within two years the young man had j swept aside useless mines worth on paper millions of pounds, and had developed a new technique which had turned mines containing low-grade ores hitherto profit ess into paying propositions. He had laid the foundations of his cvvn -.ortune, and he had made a reputation by his insistence on decent conditions in his mining camps and the j banning of camp-followers. IN THE BOXER UPRISING. His firm offered him a new post as ad.iser to the Government controller of the mines of China, and lie- and his bride, for whom lie had made a dash all the way to California and hack to China again, settled down with their base at Tientsin, hut they spent several months traversing China with a train of servants, soldiers, and advisers, examining the mineral prospects of the Chinese Empire. The Boxer uprising, in whi.-li they were caught and from which they escaped a ter some degree of danger, ended that episode Hoover returned to the office of liis firm in I ondon and took up work as one of its directors. From that time on he visit-

ed eiery part of the world where precious minerals or metals lie available beneath its surface. He maintained ofii. es in San Francisco and New York, and the mining journals of both countries record his movements from one country to another, into Alaska, Burma, Australia, and Russia. He became a figure in mining finance and contributed technical articles and letter’s in defence of his position, more orthodox in America than in London, that a mining engineer should invest his own money in the mines he was dealing with, as one method by which the undoubted evils connected with mining finance could gradually be eliminated. • THE OLDEST BOOK ON MINING. His home in West Kensington became u centie for American visitors, especial y those from the Far West, and he ana Mrs. Hoover, herself a student of mining and geology, spent their spare time .or several years in translating the oldest book on mining, a Latin treatise, which at least one other American group had given up as a bad job owing to the unknown technical words used by the ancient author. When one of the partners of his firm absconded, leaving the firm in difficulties, Hoover played a characteristic part in issuing a statement without consultation with ether directors that the firm’s debts would be honoured, and then devoting several years to the fulfilment of his promise. Shortly 'before the war broke out he was administering two large groups or mines in Russia which had sunk into susli pool- oonditi.n that- a huge work of relief for the miners had to be carried out before actual mining could be ••o-started. WAR RELIEF WORK. When war broke out he was dragged into its activities by a stream ©i stranded Americans calling at his office to borrow the money for their passage home when their cheques proved useless. His activities were extended to nelyium largely on the suggestion of the Belgian engineers w r ho had worked with him in China and elsewhere. From bis war work President Wilson I called him home to become Food Administrator when America entered the war. He had exhausted the possibilitiu> o" his mining career. He had beome a man of large fortune, and the Quaker desire for service grew upon Him with such power that he decided to turn to American politics as a means I of its expression. Whether the Ameri- 1 can voter will appreciate the spirit of that determination is perhaps the biggest American question of the year. 1