Television and weapons of the modern era. For more information about the National Firearms museum and the n. R. A. Visit their website. You can watch American History tvs american Artifacts Program online any time. This is American History tv all weekend, every weekend on cspan3. Each week, American History tvs reel america brings you archival films that help tell the story of the 20th century. Republican Herbert Hoover served as president from 1929 to 1933. Remembered most for his time in the oval office at the start of the great depression, hoover also served as the secretary of commerce under president s harding and coolidge. In this hourlong 1960 nbc interview, hoover discusses his life beyond the presidency. Speaking with reporter ray henle, he delves into topics including his childhood his time in china during the boxer rebellion and involvement in supplying food to civilians in german occupied belgium during world world war i. This is part of the stanford librarys department of collections and university archives. This is the campus of Stanford University, one of americas great schools. This is the memorial church. This is memorial theater. And this is the library on war revolution and peace. I am meeting a Great American and an old friend. I am here to have a talk with the 31st president of the United States mr. Herbert hoover. Sit down, ray. Thank you sir. Can you tell us what it means . Well, it is the library on war, revolution and peace. The purpose of it is to present the complete history of this world since the beginning of First World War i. It has many objectives. One of them is to aid in development of measures of peace. It covers economic, military, other questions. It is now the haven of historians from all over the world. Because the german war library was destroyed in the last war the french war library was destroyed and the British War Library was greatly damaged this is practically the only complete story of what has happened in the last 50 years. How do the idea of the library start . I was crossing the north sea on a usual journey to belgium in connection with relief and i had a book written by andrew d. White. He was the great historian of the french revolution, and he complained in that book that he had not been able to present the life of the people in general of france because of the disappearance of literature, newspapers bulletins a thousand things that displayed the life of a people. I concluded that i was in a unique position to collect that material, so i established collection agencies in all of the countries at war in europe. I was going behind the lines once a month on a circuit in connection with my particular job so we started a collection of that type of literature and we moved into more important documentation. The library must contain a huge number of documents. It contains, probably, 100 million documents. Many of them are the originals which from the time points in world history. The most pathetic of them, i think i would show you and that is this. When the russians invaded poland, they took about 250 polish military prisoners. They sent them into work camps all over siberia. The later on, when the germans attacked the russians, the russians anxious to increase their military strength, asked the poles to reassemble those armies out of those work camps. They were able to find about 60,000 poles still alive out of the 250,000 that were originally sent. But every one of these poles coming out of a work camp had to get a permit, which was constituted as sort of a Railway Ticket to the headquarters where he was recruited. The poles were a small minority in each camp and they were later to learn from each depositions who else was there and how many and the tickets showed the location, so that one was able to reproduce the whole slave system at that particular period. And at that time there were obviously about 14 Million People in slave camps. We have here a map showing the location of these slave labor camps made up from the 40,000 documents which we have in the library. Youll see those marked t. You see. We have also the first issue of the communist newspaper and this issue announces the victory of the communist revolution. We have a secret file of this newspaper and the other great communist newspaper right down till today with the exception of three months, and that threemonth gap was due to an overenergetic postmaster general who considered this was subversive literature and he stopped it coming to us. So that we had to do something about that. Did you take measures there to relax the situation . I certainly relaxed the postmaster general. But i dont think weve ever been able to recover the lost numbers. And here is a document that has been of profound interest to me. This is the intimate diary of the Prime Minister of japan at the time we went to war. He made an enormous effort strenuous effort, to effect the peace of the United States and prevent the war and the pathos of this document is a warrant for its retention, of a man who made a real struggle to prevent world war ii. Excuse me did you have Something Else there mr. Hoover . I have also some parts of the diary of one of the wickedest man that ever lived and he records his various wickednesses private and public in this diary. Apparently he never expected for us to have it. Mr. Hoover, there must have been mighty interested stories connected with the collection of these documents . A multitude of dramatic incidents. I recollect that after the communist revolution in hungary at which time arose a man named bila as the dictator. One of our energetic collectors went around to the headquarters and found there was nobody there, so he proceeded to load the whole files of that outpost of communism into a truck and they finally wound up here in the library. Another case was the one where i made a request of president hebert the first president of germany, the german republic. After the First World War. After the First World War for documentation that would be apropos to this effort and hebert gave me the complete minutes of the german war council presided over by the emperor, sitting once a week or oftener during the entire First World War with all of the documentation attached to those minutes. That is the only set in the world. And finally, at the request of a german ambassador, i agreed that we would keep it in the vault for a number of years. Its not yet open to the public. Ism why why is the library located here at the Leland Stanford university, mr. Hoover . Mr. Henle, i graduated from this university. And after that, mr. Mrs. Hoover had a house on the campus here while i journeyed all over the earth. I was also a trustee of the university and very naturally i was interested in building up the institution. I know you were born in west branch iowa, and people generally know that after your mother and father died an uncle asked you to share his home in oregon. Could you tell us how it happened then that you got down here and attended Leland Stanford university . This uncle of mine was a country doctor with all of the fine attributes of country doctors of the United States. I lived with him and his family, parts of it, for a matter of about seven years. And during that time i got a job at an office boy. And on one occasion, a gentleman having some business with the firm came in and while he waited he talked with the office boy, and he was inquiring what i wanted to do, so forth. And he said, well, you ought to take up engineering. And he was himself an engineer. So we discussed it and he rather inspired my mind. And soon i noticed that Stanford University had announced the institution would be opened that autumn and the tuition would be free. That more or less fit my necessity. They announced they would hold entrance examinations in portland, oregon. I went to the appointed place. I took the examinations as well as i could, never having been to high school, but having attended a night school where i had picked up some latin and some mathematics. I passed the mathematics examinations with such distinction that the professor conducting the examinations sparked a good deal of interest in me. Inquired about my family background. He, himself, was a quaker. He was a great professor of mathematics and the president of Swathmore College for about a year. He said to come down to the university and planned a tour. And he thought i could get in and he said he would be glad to help me work my way through the university. I see. The so really, you have two cases where older men showed a keen interest in a young man trying to get along. Oh, i have a number of unforgettable obligations to men who took an interest in a youngster. They do it yet all over the United States. There were two or many more to follow. Of course, that was the beginning, then, of your engineering career was it not, mr. Hoover . I presume you dont call yourself an engineer until you get somewhere out of college but that was where i began, at Stanford University. Could you tell me, mr. Hoover, after you got your diploma, then, at Leland Stanford, what was your first job . I had work during the summer vacations during my entire time at stanford on the United States geological survey. I earned most of the money that i needed. And after having finished that season not having a job, thats after i graduated, i went into the mines at grass valley in california, being familiar with those mines from previous work i had done for the geological survey. I saw the job and i thought my diploma might be of importance and i might even get on the staff of some mine. But that diploma didnt seem to impress anybody. Want and and finally i got to a position where i took a job in the mine as a common miner and it was not a bad experience. I understand you to say, sir that you took a job as a common miner . Yeah, sure. What kind of mine was this in, sir . It was a gold mine. I didnt even have the distinction of being a miner. I was started by loading trucks. A miner is a fellow who ran a grill and i rose to that position some two or three months later. How many hours did you work . The regulation hours at that time was 10 hours a day and six days a week. Do you remember your wages . 2 a day. I think i got 2. 25 after i was promoted to run the drill. Well, sir then on your very first job, you learned how to work with your hands, didnt you . That wasnt quite the whole story. I worked with my hands when i was a boy, and what i really learned at that time was the agony of walking and going from mine to mine looking for a job. I take it then, that during that period, you were able to lay aside a little money for future activities. Well, i certainly laid enough money to get down to San Francisco and look for a better job. Mr. Hoover, then, how did you happen to get into professional engineering after those underground mining days . I developed a great friend of dr. Brauner here at stanford. He was one of those men who always boosted youngsters along. He introduced me to the leading engineer in San Francisco mr. Lewis janon. He made a temporary apartment. He had an application for an engineer to go to australia and there i went on my first 10,000 job. Then subsequently to that, your work took you to countries all over the world, didnt it, mr. Hoover . Yes, as a partner in an International Engineering firm, we managed mines in china and india and burma and australia and russia. I didnt know where all including the United States and canada, so that during the first seven years of this century, i went around the world seven times with my entire family. It must have been good to get home after one of those long trip in those days. Always a thrill to come back to america. This is the place where freedom really lived. Did you not practice engineering in russia during the czars days . Yes, sir. We had very large operations which we managed in russia. One of them was at a place where we had over 100,000 men and a very successful operation. The main interest in it was that it was a complicated chemical and metallurgical operation. Subsequently the bolsheviks, when they seized it, werent able to manipulate it because they had locked up all the brains in the staff and expelled all of our american staff so it shut down and it was closed, i think, for 15 years or more and all those people put out of a job. I see. During your experience in russia, how did you get along with the russian people . We got along extremely well because at that time the government was anxious to see the development of the Natural Resources of the country and we were the First Americans to come in. We had no political implications. British and french and all the other nationalities carried with them certain political possibility so the russians welcomed the americans. We had no trouble getting on with the people because that type of an operation, we tried to get the best intelligence. We paid wages far higher than the common wage of the country. We never had a strike or a labor difficulty. Mr. Hoover, did you ever hear from any of those russian workers afterward . Some years after that, i undertook a relief of communist russia on behalf of the American People, and i picked some of our staff who spoke russian american staff, and sent them back in connection with relief. They went to look around. There they were met by a deputyitation that came to them with a petition saying, will you not get mr. Hoover and his men to come back . Life was so much better. Do you have any souvenirs of those days mr. Hoover . Yes mr. Henle, i have what i think is an interesting souvenir come along. Ray, this was presented to me by the workmen in the kishtim mines in russia. Its a typical russian piece. It has one curious quality aside from its artistic merit which is really very good, and that is the curious plaque which resembles bronze. It comes from the most pure iron in the world in order to make it. No american iron smelted would touch more than. 1 . But nevertheless they built quite an artistic industry on the basis of that curious iron and the artistic quality of the russian workman. What is that over there . Those are ancient chinese porcelains. Shall we go over and take a look at them . Ray, this is a very unusual display of the ancient chinese porcelain art in form and in had arrangement. They are the very height of chinese concepts in artistic arrangement and in workmanship. We thought it would be appropriate that this set should be placed in the memorial room to mrs. Hoover downstairs, and that has been done. She, of course, collected these items. She collected percent lins porcelains for over 40 years. Well, lets go and sit down. You were many times in china, then werent you, mr. Hoover . Yes, i went to china originally as a part of the Engineering Firm ive mentioned to you, as the chief engineer to the then department of mines. It had been created by a reformed government. That job came to an end by the boxer uprising, which threw the government out. And mrs. Hoover and i had to spend a month under artillery and rifle fire in the town of tinsin until the American Marines came in and rescued us. Outside of your experience in the boxer rebellion, mr. Hoover how were your relations generally with the chinese . Oh, the chinese are a very friendly people. I traveled over a great part of china during the two years prior to that and had nothing but courtesies from everybody. I, of course, was supposed to have an official position and had certain protections in the shape of a company of cavalry usually. Theres nothing to comment on it in particular. Theyre infinitely friendly people. They have a sense of humor. Theyre highly individualistic. And of course poverty is the main aspect of china except in a narrow circle. Now that the communists are in power, what do you think will happen to the Chinese People . When the armies drove Chaing Kaishek out of the mainland, the first thing he did was to take away the arms of the population. The consequence is that regime is fixed until such a time until such a time as the failure of its methods, failure of productivity should cause the regime itself to change. And no doubt they will have fights amongst the chinese leaders. Theyve already shown that and often enough revolutions of that kind in history are blown up by fights among the leaders and there are some of those fights going on now. The russians, of course, will have influence on the chinese. The do you think that the russian attitude on easing world tension may have some effect on the chinese red . Well, i think they may have to restrain them if they want to get their own objectives. We may be witnessing a phenomena as well to that which we saw at the time that stalin came into power. He wanted time to build up his industry and his armies, and he was in the most peaceful thing there was running around the earth at that time. He joined the league of nations he signed the pact. He made the peace treaties with some 30 of his neighbors. Nothing could have been more promising for lasting peace. In 1939, he violated every one of those agreements. So that one can wonder that perhaps this new regime, wanting time to consolidate, being troubled by a failure in agriculture under hunger among their people, would like to have an interval of peace. I have no confidence with the objectives of those people that it would be a lasting peace with goodwill towards men but it might be endurable. We might be able to reduce the armament of the world somewhat, all of which might come out of geneva and thats what we must pray for. This book here, mr. Hoover, looks familiar. I th