Herbert Hoover

Born to a Quaker family in Iowa in 1874, Hoover graduated from the new Stanford University in 1895 and became a wealthy mining engineer working in Australia and China. When World War I broke out in 1914, he organized the Commission for Relief in Belgium, providing food to occupied Belgium, then led the U.S. Food Administration after America entered the war in 1917, earning fame as the country's "food dictator." After the war he led the American Relief Administration, feeding millions in Central and Eastern Europe and Russia. He served as Secretary of Commerce under Harding and Coolidge from 1921 to 1928, becoming known as "Secretary of Commerce and Under-Secretary of all other departments," influential in air travel, radio, and the federal response to the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. He won the presidency in a 1928 landslide, but the stock market crashed in his first year, and his response to the Depression was widely seen as inadequate and overly conservative. He lost decisively to Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932, then spent over 31 years in retirement - one of the longest on record - authoring works, criticizing the New Deal, and serving assignments for Truman a