Transcripts For CSPAN3 Politics Public Policy Today 2014090

CSPAN3 Politics Public Policy Today September 2, 2014

Yeah, 2 a day. I think i got 2. 25 after i was promoted to run the drill. On your very first job, you learned how to work with your hands, didnt you . Well, that wasnt quite the whole story. I worked in with my hands when i was a boy. Time was the agony of walking, going from mine to mine, looking for a job. I take it, then, that you during that period, you were able to lay aside a little money for future activities . Well i certainly laid enough money aside to get down to San Francisco and look for a better job. Well mr. Hoover, how did you happen to get into professional engineering after those underground mining days experience . Well, i developed a great friend of dr. Brenner 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 janner. Mr. Janner gave me a temporary appointment. He had an application for an engineer to go to australia. There i went on my first 10,000 job. Subsequently do that, your work took to you countries all over the world, didnt it . Yes, as a partner in an International Engineering firm, we managed mines in china and india and burma and australia and russia. I doesnt 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. Well it must have been good to get home, then, after one of those long trips 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 czarist days . Yes, sir, we had very large operations which we managed in russia. One of them was at a place in the urals. 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 that eventually the bolsheviks want able to operate it when they seized it because they locked up all the brains from the staff. So it was closed down for 15 years or more and all of those people put out of a job. 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. 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 possibilities, so the russians welcomed the americans. I see. We had no difficulty getting on with the people because with that type of an operation, we tried to get the best intelligence there was. 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 afterwards . Some years after that i undertook relief of communist russia on behalf of the American People and i picked some of our staff who spoke russian. Our american staff and sent them back in connection with relief. They went to kishtim to look around. There they were met by a deputation 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 from that day . Yes, i have an interesting souvenir. Ray, this was presented to me by the workmen in the mines of 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. Come from the fact that they use most impure iron in the world in order to make it. Runs 10 of sulfur. No american iron smelter would touch iron ore of more than. 1 of 1 . Nevertheless they built up quite an artistic industry. On the basis of that curious iron and the artistic quality of the russian workmen. What is that over there . Those are ancient chinese porcelains, shall we take a look at them . Ray, this is a very unusual display of the ancient chinese porcelain art in blue and white. In form and in arrangement. They are the very height of chinese concepts in artistic arrangement and in workmanship. We thought it would be appropriate that this set of five would be placed in the memorial room to mrs. Hoover downstairs and that has been done. She, of course, collected these items, did she not . She collected porcelains for over 40 years. Lets go and sit down. You were in many you were many times in china, then, werent you, mr. Hoover . Yes, i went to china originally as a part of the Engineering Firm i mentioned to you. As the chief engineer to the then department of mines. It had been created by a reform government. That job came to an end by the boxer uprising, which threw the government out. And mrs. Hoover and i have to spend a month under artillery and rifle fire. In the town of timsin until the American Marines came in and rescued us. Outside of your experience in the boxer rebel yen, mr. Hoover, how were your relations generally with the chinese . The chinese are a very friendly people. I traveled over a great part of china over the the two years prior to that. And i had nothing but courtesies from everybody. I, of course, had an official position. And had certain protections in the shape of a company of cavalry, usually. But theres nothing to comment on it particularly. Theyre an infinitely friendly people. They have a sense of humor. They are highly individualistic. And of course, poverty is the total aspect of china except in a very narrow circle. Mr. Hoover, what do you think now that the communists are in power will happen to the Chinese People . Ray, when the armies drove them out of the mainland, the first thing he did was disarm chinese population right down to the very butcher night. No population with pitch forks can ever create a revolution to throw out machine guns. The consequence is that regime is fixed until such a time as the failure of its methods and failure of productivity should cause the regime itself to change. And no doubt they will have fights amongst the chinese leaders. They have already shown that. And often enough, revolutions of that kind in history have 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. Do you think that the russian attitude on easing world tension may have some effect on the chinese reds . I think that they may have to restrain them, if they want to get their own objectives. We may be witnessing a phenomena similar 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 became the most peaceful thing there was running around the earth at that time. He joined the league of nations, he signed the kellogg pact, he made peace treaties with 30 of his neighbors. Nothing could have been more promising for lasting peace. Well in 1939, he violated every one of those agreements. So that one can only wonder that perhaps this new regime, wanting time to consolidate, being troubled by a failure in agriculture and hunger amongst 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 good will towards men. But it might be endurable. We might able to reduce the armaments 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 think i recognize it as being commonly called the equikila. This book was published just 400 years ago. It is in latin, it was in latin. And comprehended the whole gamut of the mining and metallurgical and Chemical Industries of their time. There were great difficulties in the translation from the latin because the technical terms had been invented by the author. In latin, 600 years after the language was dead. But mrs. Hoover was an accomplished linguist. She was able to read it and with her background of Technical Training and the fact that i knew something about the subjects, we were able to make a translation of it for the first time. It was purely a labor of love. It had no great practical value at that modern times. Although, many of the processes illustrated here are still in action. In any event, for a couple of hundred years, it was the textbook of those industries. And at one time, they chained it in an iron binding to the altar encathedrals in mining towns such as san luis and the priests translated it for the benefit of the miners, plus the illustrations. So that the book had at one time a great weight, but of course now its only a matter of interest. There is nothing particularly public about the book at that time. There were 2,000 copies printed and distributed amongst engineers. Since that time its become a rare item. And it now sells for 250. But we dont have any more of them. You didnt get the 250 . I didnt get the 250. Well it must have been a tremendously difficult job to translate it. It was a difficult job. It took five years. And furnished a Family Interest during that entire period. Mr. Hoover, when did your career as an engineer come to an end . It came to an end when i, shortly after i took over the belgian relief in 1914. I didnt know it at the time. We all expected the war would be over very shortly. And we would get back to work. But as the war went on and on, my clients and partners had to have some other interest. So i never went back to the profession. Who was it who asked you to get into the relief work . That was the combined pressures of leading belgians, the belgian ambassador, the prime minister, and the American Ambassador in london and the American Ambassador in brussels. They all seemed to concentrate on me to undertake that job. So that this operation carried on during the war. You certainly must have been in some exciting experiences from time to time. Well most of it was a pretty humdrum business. You had to transport a tremendous volume of food overseas with a fleet of 300 ships. You had to distribute it, transport it inland. Ration the population and take possession of it the agricultural product and so forth. It was the first Food Administration in the history of the world. The incidents that came out of it were nothing very startling. One of them i remember rather distinctly. That the Service Across the north sea was maintained by the dutch and they frequently lost but they always provided methods of escape so nobody much was drowned. One day i went down to take the boat. And i had usually paid the bill for my food and cabin at the end of the trip. But the steward came to me and said youll have to pay cash. And i said, how come . He said well last voyage, the Queen Wilhelmina went down, and the passengers owed me nine pound ten and i never got the money. You seem to be modest there, mr. Hoover. Seems to me i recall a story of actually being under fire. I was under fire a number of times. But the only time i really got wounded was when the germans were bombing a town of bologne where i was stopping overnight. I got up and looked out the window to see this performance and the germans dropped a bomb in the street right opposite the hotel, and i got showered with glass. I got cut up a lot. But i never got a purple heart. Now, didnt some of the authorities fight the feeding of starving children during your belgian relief career . Why had to transport all of our material through the british blockade. And a Great Division arose in the british cabinet as to the desirability of our going on. The military side of the cabinet insisted that 10 or 12 million starving belgians and frenchmen would invees the germans a lot and the german were also short of food and it might bring the war to a quicker end. That was their argument. I was called before the cabinet. And i found a short time of sir edward gray and lloyd george, mr. Asquith who was then prime minister, were all on my side, so i pushed the issue even further. Ultimately i got a subsidy of 5 million a month from the british to carry on the work. And in the end before we were done with four years from it, i was receiving 10 or 12 million a month from the british. You may have answered a question thats in my mind, mr. Hoover. May i ask at this point, what do you think of of the policy of starvation as an instrument of warfare . It might be an instrument of warfare. It might conceivably bring war to an earlier end. But starvation leaves a mass of human beings that are a liability to the world for all time, both themselves and their descendants. Your work in belgian relief did not end your food operation, did it, sir . No. The belgian relief effort continued throughout the war, and i continued to conduct it. When we came into war, i withdrew the american staff and substituted dutch inside of belgium. At that time, the british and french who were beginning to find food difficulties were beginning to call on me for advice. And about that time. President wilson asked me to take over the United States Food Administration. So i became food administrator of the United States. Continued on that until the timn of the armistice in 1918. Then i was asked to go to europe on behalf of all the allied governments to take over their rehabilitation of the food supply for some 315 Million People in europe. That work ended when, sir . I took it up again in russia in 1923. So you might say i had spent about nine years on that kind of a job. By that time, of course, you were in the president s cabinet as secretary of commerce. I was. And then you also had some relief work left to put on your shoulder as secretary of commerce, did you not . Well, that was the russian problem. We had one job in mississippi. Thats what i was referring to. Could you tell us something about that . The flood of 1927 was the greatest flood thats ever been known along the mississippi from cairo down. And the protections were weak and they all gave way and the country for 1,000 miles north and south and from 70 to 150 miles wanted it. So president coolidge asked me to take over that job. We moved about a million and a half of people out of the ground and pulled them out of the water and put them in camps and looked after them for three months and put them back in their homes again. We lost only three lives in that operation. Three lives. And at the expense of it was conducted entirely by american charity. We never called on the government for a dime except that i had the services of the navy and the coast guard. You referred briefly to russian relief. In 1923. Could you tell me more about that . A dreadful drought struck south russia in 1923. Maxim gorky on behalf of the communist government appealed to me to undertake some american help. I organized the operation. We sent some 200 americans into russia. They game them completely free movement. I raised congressional appropriations about 70 million of american money and we unquestionably saved about 17 million russian lives. They credited us with that. And when we finished, they got out of a very beautiful scroll addressed to my and the American People of gratitude. And youll find it somewhere here in the library in russian. But when the american communists get too entirely abusive, i send out a photograph of it in translation by way of stopping them up a little, huh . I see. Then mr. Mover, as i recall, the next great work in relief was the organization of relief during the depression. Could you tell me something about that . Well, unemployment across grew with the depression and especially when the whole economy of europe collapsed and brought us down. And i organized relief in the United States. We at the time i left office, we had about 18 Million People on relief in the United States. And mr. Roosevelt found he had to continue the same number up until about pearl harbor. Your own next operations in the field of relief then came when, sir . Well, i at the beginning of the second world war, i was appealed to by some eight or nine different governments in europe who had been occupied by the germans to again come to their relief. We organized some relief for them, but in the course of three or four, two years, the military people in control of the allied side adopted the old british doctrine, and they closed off our operations. It was not until the war was over when the inevitable post war famine began that i again was called back into service. Bear in mind that every world war will create a worldwide famine. I dont need to go into the reasons for that. But its a solemn fact. And mr. Truman was faced with a famine in 1946. Even greater than the world has ever seen before. He asked me to take a part in the management of the famine, and i did so by organizing the necessary setup in washington and again i visited 38 different nations by plane, organized their Food Administrations, got their cooperation. And in the end, we pulled through. When we started, we were convinced 800,000 people were die in the famine, but we found help all over the world that we hadnt expected. And in the end we pulled them all through. There was no mass starvation anywhere that i know of. Well its very clear, mr. Hoover, that your operations in the field of relief have been literally tremendous. May i ask you this, quite frankly, during all these years, did you accept any compensation in connection with your relief work . Ive never accepted compensation either for relief or for federal service. Except in this sense that i have at time taken federal salaries and expended them on matters outside of my own needs. And use. I was led to that by an overall question of conviction of my own. I dont say this in disparagement of men accepting salaries from the government, because most of our officials must have them to live. But it happened that i had prospered in my profession at the time when the income tax was only 1 . I was able to save a competence, and i felt that i owed to my country a debt that was unpayable and i had no right to ask her to pay me. So that that was the practice right up until 30th day of june this year. And yet, sir, i think that on occasions, you had been smeared. Yes, every public official has been smeared. I take it that the final t

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