Herbert Hoover: “Rugged Individualism” Campaign Speech

About the Author

Herbert Hoover was born in Iowa on August 10, 1874, in the small town of West Branch. Hoover's family were Quakers. His father died when Hoover was six, and his mother passed away when he was ten, orphaning Hoover and his brother and sister. Hoover moved to Oregon at age eleven to live with his uncle. He attended Stanford University, earning a degree in geology, and had a successful career in mining, becoming a millionaire at age forty. During World War I, Hoover gained international fame for his humanitarian efforts on behalf of the people of Belgium. Following the war, his stature grew as he oversaw relief programs for Europe. Hoover declined efforts by figures in the Democratic Party to entice him to run for office. A registered Republican, Hoover instead served as secretary of commerce in the administrations of Harding and Coolidge. He won the presidential election in 1928, but the increasing economic strains of the Great Depression undermined his popularity, and he was defeated by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932. He remained active in party politics and later served as an adviser on humanitarian issues and government reform.

Hoover's foreign policy reflected his Quaker roots and his firsthand experiences with the devastation of World War I. He supported the Kellogg-Briand Pact, an international agreement designed to end armed conflict by banning aggressive war. The London Naval Conference of 1930 produced an accord that limited the number and size of naval warships. The president withdrew American troops from Haiti and Nicaragua and initiated an arms embargo on South America. In response to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931, his administration issued the Hoover-Stimson Doctrine, which declared that the United States would not recognize any territorial expansion that occurred through the use of force. As the global economic crisis worsened, Hoover suspended reparations from Germany.

The progressive Hoover entered office determined to reform the government. His administration undertook a range of progressive actions. Reforms were enacted at the Bureau of Indian Affairs and within both federal prisons and the veterans' hospital system. The government also initiated numerous public works projects, including the Oakland Bay Bridge (near San Francisco) and Boulder Dam (later named in Hoover's honor). However, most of the president's proposed reforms, such as old-age pensions and tax relief for lower-income Americans, failed to win passage in Congress. More significant, Hoover initially moved slowly to counter the onset of the Great Depression. Furthermore, his support for protective tariffs accelerated the country's economic decline. The president preferred laissez-faire solutions to the worsening economic and social problems, although he endorsed more government action and intervention than had any of his predecessors.

Democrats, who gained control of the House of Representatives in 1931, prevented many of the president's initiatives from being enacted and voraciously criticized the restrained nature of the administration's economic policies. Meanwhile, Hoover angered conservatives by endorsing the largest tax increase in U.S. history up to that point in 1932. He left office unpopular, but his public perception was rehabilitated over time. Hoover emerged as one of the most prominent critics of government expansion during the New Deal years and was one of the leaders of the isolationist wing of the Republican Party in the aftermath of World War II.