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Destination D.C. | A Journey to the Inauguration

Hoover museum tells a cautionary tale

Herbert Hoover, an orphan himself, directed famine relief to more than 2.5 million children in Europe from 1914 to 1918, as described in an exhibit at his presidential library and museum.

Rick Wood


Another fresh, hopeful leader quickly found himself mired in economic crisis

West Branch, Iowa - This is a detour to defeat and depression.

Here, in the town where he was born and where he was buried, Herbert Hoover, the 31st president of the United States, lives on in flickering black and white images.

The globe-trotting engineer who made his fortune in Australia and China, the statesman who helped feed Europe's hungry during and after World War I, the commerce secretary destined to standardize American life, bringing order and efficiency to everything from lumber to hardware to stoplights.

In short, he was a 19th-century man prepared for the nation's highest office but unprepared for the greatest economic cataclysm of the 20th century.

A visit to the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum amounts to a cautionary tale, a reminder that bad things can happen to even the most experienced and well intentioned of presidents.

"I have no fears for the future of our country," Hoover declared in his inaugural address as rain poured down in Washington on March 4, 1929. "It is bright with hope."

By October, the stock market crashed, the bright future turned dark. The market crash didn't trigger what became known as the Great Depression, it was part of a giant economic tale of agricultural woe in the American heartland, deflation, lax regulation, bank failures and joblessness.

The reading copy of Hoover's address is stored here, in a black binder. The pages are yellowed with age. There are smudge marks, reminders of that long-ago rain.

The words are all but forgotten.

In a way, so too is the man. About 50,000 people a year venture to the library, set in this small town, just off Interstate 80, 15 miles east of Iowa City.

On a cold winter day, the archivists have all the time in the world to show off the museum and discuss Hoover.

They point out some of their favorite objects.

The simple black phone that sat on Hoover's desk in the Oval Office - he was the first president to have such a communications marvel on his desk.

The 6-pound leather medicine ball that Hoover exercised with 45 minutes each day Monday through Saturday, playing a volleyball-like game with cabinet secretaries, congressmen and Supreme Court justices on the front lawn of the White House.

The weathered wooden box used when the electoral college met and officially declared Hoover the victor of the 1928 election.

"Here is this guy who did a lot of great things over a lot of years, who was widely admired yet somehow is lost because of the debacle of the Depression," says Spencer Howard, an archives technician. "This wasn't some mean guy trying to starve people. Here was this horrendous thing and no one had an idea of how to handle it."

Hoover symbolized the Depression. Shantytowns were called "Hoovervilles." He was distant, remote and as stiff as his shirt collars. He knew the technology of the great mass medium, radio, but he couldn't master performance, couldn't give the nation hope.

"Hoover couldn't wheel and deal with Congress," says Lynn Smith, audio-visual archivist. "And he was drawn to the belief that straight government-dole handouts were not good."

Franklin D. Roosevelt beat Hoover by a landslide in the 1932 presidential election, ushering in the New Deal and 20th-century government.

Hoover fled Washington and public life. Years later, Harry Truman would call on him for counsel, appointing him to several public commissions for streamlining the presidential bureaucracy and famine relief.

Of course, there are parallels to modern times. Once again, the American economy sits on a perilous edge. Over and over, the public is told the nation faces the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Presidential candidates avoid visiting this museum. But what if someone like Barack Obama showed up here one winter day, what could he learn in a place like this?

"The lesson is to be flexible, don't be dogmatic" says Matt Schaefer, an archivist. "What happened to Hoover is that everything he did early on, he was successful at. But the old model didn't work in the 1930s."

© 2015, Journal Sentinel Inc. All rights reserved.

About Bill Glauber
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