THE MAKING OF HERBERT HOOVER THE MAKING OF HERBERT HOOVER BY ROSE WILDER LANE NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1920 Copyright, 1920, by THE CENTURY Co. Copyright, 1<>70, by SUNSET MAGAZINE, INC. PEEFACE This is a story stranger than fiction and as real as America. In Herbert Hoover s own experi ence, from his strange boyhood to his myth-like success, he has lived through all the phases of de velopment that have created America itself. The forces that made the country made the man and behind the growth of his soul there is shown the growth of the nation. From the prologue, with its generations of pioneers facing ever west, to the epilogue, with its record of continuing service, at home and abroad, this story proves that, in the most subtle sense, Herbert Hoover represents America. The method used in handling this biographical material is so unusual that a word of explanation is necessary. The facts on which the story is based I do not believe to be open to dispute. Every detail of them has been collected with meti- culous care from sources of u&gue sjionable^au- thority. The interpretation of them is my own. . I have endeavored to present as a living human being the man whose life has been made by these facts, to show the influences of heredity and en- vi PEEFACE vironment that went toward the making of his character as I believe it to be. For the purely interpretative portions of the work, therefore, I claim no authority save my own opinion and that of many collaborators intimately acquainted with Mr. Hoover since his infancy. The greater share of any praise this book may earn belongs to Charles Kellogg Field, editor of Sunset magazine and good friend of all California writers. It was he who inspired the work, col lected a large part of the material, assisted day by day in the writing, and edited the whole. If, when the curtain descends upon these scenes in which we have tried to show the drama and the meaning of one great American life, there are any cries of " Author !" from the audience, I can appear upon the stage only long enough to say, "Spot-light, please, for Charles Kellogg Field, classmate and friend of Herbert Hoover. " K W. L. THE MAKING OF HERBEKT HOOVEE PROLOGUE THE BLOOD IN HIS VEINS IN the latter half of the sixteenth century a Eoman Catholic King of France persecuted with religious fervor the Protestants in his realm. At that time there lived in the environs of Paris a man named Huber. He was thrifty, sagacious, and prosperous in a small way; his family was growing up around him; his life ap peared destined to ripen into old age as serenely as that of the fruit-tree in his garden. He pos sessed all things to make a man contented, save one. "The need of a man s soul," he said, "is to be free." For the sake of that freedom which he valued more than all his possessions he tore up the roots of his life. He and his family, hunted fugitives, escaped into Holland with nothing ex cept the contents of the bundle he carried on his back. No more is known of him. The years buried him with the multitudes of the forgotten dead ; the language of the alien people among whom he died engulfed even his name. His sons were called 3 4 THE MAKING OF Hoover. But his spirit lived in them. It was one of the seeds from which, in the unknown fu ture, a nation was to grow. Four centuries marched over his grave, bury ing beside him kingdoms and faiths and genera tions of men, swinging the World s center of gravity westward across an ocean to a new conti nent, and out of that nation rose a man who was to make and unmake kingdoms, to feed whole peoples, and to sway the fortunes of a world war. This man sat at a desk in a business office, a quiet place in the midst of chaos. A structure reared by centuries was rocking on its founda tions, twenty-six nations were struggling in a death-grapple, Europe faced starvation, America was shaken as by an earthquake. The cry was for strong men, for men who could rule. Free peoples gave up their freedom ; men and opinions were conscripted; old, dearly bought liberties were abandoned in the panic of the world. Herbert Hoover, descendant through four centu ries from Huber the Frenchman, was Food Dic tator to one hundred million persons. The Allied cause depended upon food, the food could come only from America, and Herbert Hoover was re sponsible for America s action. Greater power than that of an emperor was in his hands, and men expected him to use it. "No," he said. "Freedom is a force too pre- HERBERT HOOVER 5 cious to be destroyed. Men do not need rulers; they need education. I shall tell the Ameri can people the facts ; they will act upon them. I shall organize their efforts, but the power that will make them successful must come from a free people. " The authentic voice of America spoke those words, heard through a babel of hysterical shouts about Americanism. It was the voice of men and women who broke the resistance of an untamed continent, who destroyed a wilderness to build a republic. Herbert Hoover spoke for them because their spirit had made his. Behind him were five generations of men whose laborious, inconspicuous lives had served a great ideal. Their struggle to create America had created Herbert Hoover. The need of the human soul for freedom had driven Huber from France. Nearly two hundred years later, in 1740, the hope of finding freedom in a new world brought his three descendants, Christian, Jonas, and Andrew Hoover, across the perilous seas. On the frontier in Maryland Andrew built a log house and established a home. He was a strong, hard-fisted man, with a quiet manner and a merry eye. He became a good woodsman and a clever hunter. His cabin was comfortable, and the small farm thrived. But, alone in the woods with his ax or his gun, he thought deeply, and it came to him that his soul 6 THE MAKING OF had not found freedom. There was still the church, ruling the small community with the fierce bigotry into which the American pioneers had turned their hard-won freedom from Catholicism. There were certain forms, such as baptism, that must be observed, certain tithes that must be paid, an iron creed that must be professed. At night before the fire he discussed these things with his wife Margaret. "A free man obeys nothing but his own con science, 7 Andrew decided at last. And when a traveler, staying overnight, told of the Friends community on Huwarra Creek, Andrew and Mar garet left the place they had built and set out into the wilderness of North Carolina. The early groups of Friends in America were perhaps the best compromise between individual ism and community needs that man has ever reached. Men and women were equal members of the Society; personal conscience was the only law giver, and the worship of God had been freed of all creed and ritual. In this environment Andrew Hoover and his wife found peace, and in it they reared their thirteen children. In the prime of his manhood their son John be came restless. Beyond the forests, toward the west, an unpeopled continent called to the pioneer spirit. Word came that the central government of the United States had thrown open to settle- HERBERT HOOVER 7 ment the lands of the Western Reserve, beyond the Ohio River. John and his seven brothers sold their houses and lands, loaded goods and food on wagons, said good-by to all they had known, and set out toward the wild West. Two of the brothers, on horses, herded the cattle that followed the wagons ; John rode ahead, a rifle across the saddle pommel, and Jesse, his eleven-year-old son, proudly drove one of the teams. Thus they journeyed through the forests, crossed the mountains of Virginia, and came down to the plains of the Ohio Valley. They made their last camp in Miami County, Ohio, not far from a log cabin on Stillwater Creek, where a little girl named Rebecca Yount lay awake at night, hearing the snuffling and snarling of pan thers that scratched at the log walls of the pig-pen. Nine years later, when she was eighteen, this girl married Jesse Hoover, and it was she who was des tined one day to hold her great-grandson Herbert Hoover in her lap and console him with cookies because the big boys had gone hunting without him. Rebecca, girl and woman, was remarkable for an indomitable strength of purpose, a great capacity for work, and an extraordinary executive ability. She bore and reared to manhood and womanhood nine children, and she adopted and mothered nine teen more. 8 THE MAKING OF She was a noted housekeeper of Miami County ; her cured meats, homespun linens, and patchwork quilts were famous in the country-side. Nothing was wasted in her hands. In the autumn she tried out the year s supply of lard; she made sausages, head-cheese and pickled pig s-feet; she made her soap by leaching wood-ashes and boiling the lye with waste scraps of fat. When her carefully turned and made-over gowns were past use they were cut down and made dainty with fresh ker chiefs for the girls ; when no one could longer wear them the larger pieces were used for patchwork quilts, the rest was cut into strips, sewed together, and wound into balls during the winter evenings. Her loom transformed them into serviceable rugs. Nor did her duties end with her own household and the care of her twenty-eight children. She was a Friend, a member of the Society, and she felt the responsibility of that citizenship. Her opinions were a force not only in the community but in the state. For many years she was an elder; at Yearly Meeting she addressed the As sembly, and the entire ministry of the West was profoundly influenced by her. At the age of ninety-four she still kept herself informed in national politics, saying: "As long as I live under the government of our country I think it right that I should know what that govern ment is doing, and that I should form my opinions HERBERT HOOVER upon it, with God s help, and be ready to express than. 99 This was the woman who at the age of fifty-three counseled her husband to leave their lifelong home and go farther west, in order to provide for the future of their children and grandchildren in a new country. Free land in Ohio was becoming hard to find. The original homesteads were not large enough for the whole family, and Mary Davis Hoover, the wife of Rebecca s son Eli, wished her children to have farms of their own. Mary was not strong; she feared she had not much longer to live, and her flushed cheeks grew redder with ex citement while she urged her husband to make haste in finding land for the three boys. So Eli and two of his brothers setiput for the West. When they returned, reporting that in Iowa there were thousands of acres of good land open to homesteading, and that it was bare prairie, unencumbered with the heart-breaking heavy forests whose destruction cost so much labor and time, Rebecca and her husband were persuaded that it was best to move. The next spring they left Miami County, the only home they remembered, and went out to the prairies. Eli and his brothers went with them, but Rebecca took Mary s five children as her own. Mary had died in the winter; she was not to see the land she had wanted for her boys. Had she 10 THE MAKING OF lived, Herbert Hoover s father might have been a farmer, instead of a blacksmith who later left his forge and became a dealer in farm machinery. For Jesse, the middle one of Mary s sons, was more interested in farm tools than in using them. His grandfather and uncles staked out their home steads on the plains of central Iowa, midway be tween the Iowa and Cedar rivers, and their houses, clustered around the meeting-house, made the little town of West Branch, named in memory of the home town left behind in Ohio. Jesse s brothers ranged far over the rolling miles of wild grass, where deer browsed and whirring multitudes of prairie-chickens fed, but Jesse liked best to play in the farm tool-shed. On rainy Seventh-Day afternaons he watched Uncle Benajah heating a plowshare in glowing coals, sharpening it with shrewd blows, and plung ing it, hissing, into the tempering water. Unper- ceived by Grandmother Eebecca, he carried to the meeting-house on First-Day morning a few nails or a home-made hinge, hidden in his pocket, and touched them now and then during the long, rever ent silences in which a small boy s dangling legs grew weary. On the porch of the meeting-house he first met the brown-haired, gray-eyed little girl Huldah Randall Minthorn. Her mother had brought her by stage from Detroit, with her six brothers and HERBERT HOOVER 11 sisters ; the father was following more slowly, with two beautiful Percheron horses. Huldah told Jesse at once about the horses ; they had come with the family all the way from Toronto, Canada, and every one on the boat had admired them. Their legs were as huge as trees, she said, and their skins were soft and shiny like silk. Even then there was a beauty and a grace about the little Huldah Minthorn. They were a legacy from that William Minthorn who had sailed from England in 1725, and who, with his wife, had died on the long, stormy voyage, leaving his four small sons to land alone on the coast of America. Amid the forests of Connecticut, through the hardships of pioneer times and the Indian wars, these boys and their son s sons had never lost a love of beauty and of learning. The third William Minthorn had been a college student in Hartford. His grandson, Huldah s father, carried in his saddle-bags across Canada, the Great Lakes, Michigan, Indiana and Illinois, down into Iowa, his few cherished books. Mary Wesley Minthorn, Huldah s mother, was a tiny, bright-eyed woman whose quick smile warred with her smoothly banded hair and Quaker bonnet. In her soul she secretly fought with a passion for color, especially purple. Her gowns were gray or sober brown, with a white kerchief neatly folded across the breast ; her bonnets were gray, tied with strings of white lawn, and she 12 THE MAKING OF turned her thoughts away from ribbons. But woven coverlets were a snare to her. Her skill with the loom was a housewifely talent, not blame worthy, but in her own conscience she sometimes felt that she took too great delight in it, and in the making of designs for the weaving. She devised them herself, drawing them accurately to scale; she colored them, feeling pleasure in each brush stroke, and she never wove two coverlets alike. All her love of beauty went into those drawings, into the dyeing of bright-colored hanks of thread, and into the hours when she sat before her loom, watching the small patterns grow large beneath her flying fingers. She sometimes feared that these coverlets were a sinful indulgence, but she never quite felt that she must give them up. There was a fine, strong spirit in her that rose to meet and conquer life. Her husband had hardly arrived with the Percheron horses, staked out his homestead, and built a shelter for his family, when he died. She was left with seven young children, a hundred and sixty acres of un broken prairie, and the team. On the morning when her husband lay in his coffin she stood beside it in her Quaker bonnet and shawl, her hands folded on her breast, and made a vow. "I will take care of the children," she said. "I will feed them and clothe them and bring them up to be God-fearing men and women. And every HERBERT HOOVER 13 one of them shall have a university education." She did these things, alone. Such neighborly help as she was forced to accept in the heavy field work she scrupulously repaid. For seventeen years she managed the farm and the household; she and her children hoed, cooked, scrubbed, saved, and prayed. At the end of that time each of her children had received the best of schooling, her two sons had graduated with honors from Iowa State University, and her daughter Huldah, after two years in a private school and one term in the university, was happily married to Jesse Hoover. 1 The village remembered that autumn because it was the one in which the first threshing-machine appeared in that part of Iowa. It was a crude, stationary affair, whose wheels were driven by two horses walking slowly in an endless circle. But it was a marvel to the farmers, who had never seen anything like it. It had been shipped in sections from the East and no one was able to put it together until Jesse Hoover saw it. He studied its parts and, carefully assembled them, and the machine worked. There was significance in the incident of the threshing-machine; it marked the passing of a period in American history. The frontier had gone ; agriculture was established ; the era of the machine had come. The Civil War was lately i Iowa City, March 12, 1870. 14 THE MAKING OF ended; manufacturing was securely enthroned in the North, and modern industry was well started on that course destined inevitably to lead to the growth of great cities and corporations, and tre mendous concentration of wealth and power. Four years later, in a small brown cottage near Jesse Hoover s blacksmith shop, Herbert Clark Hoover was born. 1 His life began at the end of one pioneer age and the beginning of another. The spirit of five generations of American pio neers was his spirit ; the blood of Andrew Hoover, of John Hoover, of Rebecca Yount, of William Minthorn and Mary Wesley was in his veins. Their lives had gone to the making of America; his life was to be part of the future. A LETTER FROM HERBERT HOOVER S AUNT January 21, 1920. DEAR DAUGHTER : Thy letter received, and I will tell the things I know, for as thee says the story should be the truth. 1 well remember the day Herbert was born. I had spent a day with Huldah, visiting and sewing. Thee was with me, Jesse and Huldah always made much of thee, because thee represented the little girl they hoped soon to have. Next morning early, Jesse came and tapped on my window and said, "Well, we have another General Grant at our house. 2 Huldah would like to see thee." So we went, thee and I. 1 August 10, 1874. 2 U. S. Grant was then President of the United States. HERBERT HOOVER 15 They then lived in a little house by the blacksmith shop. It was a tiny house, but always so clean and neat, for Huldah was a nice housekeeper and kept house nice, whether it was small or large. It was, however, the kind of good housekeeping that does not destroy the family. Children always had a good time there. There was a hobby horse, and balls and tops, but there was a place for them when they were not in use. With Huldah, things were always finished. I can see that bureau drawer now, with everything ready for the coming event, all made by hand, for none of us had a sewing machine in those days. Herbert was a sweet baby that first day, round and plump, and looked about very cordial at everybody. THE MAKING OF HERBERT HOOVER CHAPTER I HIS earliest impression was of sunshine, green leaves, and his mother s voice talking to God. This was in the sitting-room, after break fast. He and his brother Tad climbed into chairs and sat with dangling legs while his father read in a solemn voice from the large black Bible. His mother held Sister May on her lap. Then they all knelt down on the rag carpet with their elbows on the chair seats, and after a little silence his mother began to speak. He did not clearly understand what she said, but the sound of her voice was beautiful. He looked between his fingers and saw the morning sunshine on the row of plants in the window. It lay in a black-barred oblong on the floor. A corner of it reached across the folds of his mother s gray dress and touched her hair, and her hair shone. The room was very still. This stillness, the sunshine on the green leaves, and the low humming of the tea-kettle on the kitchen stove, seemed part of the 18 THE MAKING OF Presence to which his mother spoke. The Pres ence itself filled the room with a strange quiet friendliness. He wriggled a little, but noiselessly, and looked severely to see if Sister May was keeping still. Then, with a little bustle of moving chairs, they all rose. His father put on his hat and coat to go to the store, and his mother began gathering up the breakfast dishes. 1 i Bun and play, Bertie, she said. But do not get thy feet wet. She wrapped a muffler around his throat and buttoned his coat. Then she kissed him. Her hands were swift and firm, but gentle, and there was a smile in her eyes. He squirmed away quickly, because he was in a hurry to get outdoors with his sled. The house stood in a big yard. In front of it was a row of six large maple-trees whose trunks made gray shadows on the snow. On the other side of the road not far away was the little brown house where he had lived when a baby, and beyond it smoke was curling up from the blacksmith shop that once had been his father s. There was a sudden jangle of sleigh-bells, and Uncle John Minthorn s sleigh flashed past, drawn by two plunging, steaming horses. The boy had an instant s vision of Dr. John, half standing, his weight on the taut reins in one hand, a whip in the other, his teeth showing in a smile. Then he HERBERT HOOVER 19 was gone, in a flurry of snow. Dr. John s horses were wild, half -broken things; he drove like the wind, and the sleigh was not one to which small boys could fasten their sleds. Bertie dragged his sled along the path by the kitchen door, under the eaves fringed with icicles. A long one hung close to his mittened hand, but Mother had forbidden him to eat icicles. Behind the house was the garden, where the snow humped over buried potato-vines and lay in a drift beside the grape-arbor. The bare brown vines were coated with ice, and made a crackling sound when he kicked a post. The house was at the foot of Chamber s Hill; tugging the sled, he trudged up the slope, his short legs plunging through the drifts. The hill was alive with swooping sleds, with shouts, laughter, boys rolling in the snow, little girls squealing with excitement. He was now in his own world, surrounded by innumerable cross currents of likes and dislikes, fears and admira tions. George and Mamie Coombs were there; Ettie and Willie and Eddie Smith; Harriette, Blanche, and Theodore Miles, and many others. Among them he saw enemies and allies the big boy who had rubbed his face with snow, Tad 1 his own big brother, who had valiantly defended him, i Theodore Jesse Hoover, three and a half years older than Her bert Hoover, now head of the mining department of Stanford Uni versity. 20 THE MAKING OF and the tattle-tale who had rushed home to tell about the fight. They shouted to him, he shouted back, and continued his way up the hill, imperturb able, self-contained, and serious. His purpose was to reach the top and slide down without delay. He stopped, panting, at the summit. The long, hard-packed track wound below him, past Joseph Cook s leafless orchard, down the breathless drop by the cottonwood trees, across the dangerous lane where teams might be met, and out on the curve that ended at the bridge. He drew up his sled to make the plunge, and paused. Willie Smith stood before him, holding the rope of a slim new sled, a sled striped with red paint, shining with varnish, elegantly formed and shod with steel runners. 1 a got a new sled," said Willie. Bertie ap proached and looked at it thoughtfully. "My father made mine," he announced at last with satisfaction. "Mine s got steel runners," said Willie. "It s a good sled," said Bertie, and prepared to slide. "You haven t got steel runners," Willie con tinued. "No," said Bertie. "Mine are iron. My father used to be a blacksmith when I was little." "Mine s the best sled," Willie insisted. "I 11 trade a ride." HERBERT HOOVER 21 "No," said Bertie. "I like my sled." "I wouldn t trade mine for two of it," said Willie. There are n t two of it, Bertie remarked. I got the only one like it in the world. There was a pause. "What 11 you give me if I 11 tradel" asked Willie. "What does thee want to trade for? Thee has a good sled," said Bertie. His mother, coming to the doorway at dinner time, saw her small son in the distance, pulling a smaller cousin homeward on a bright new sled. She waited under the maples till the boy reached her. "Where did thee get the new sled, Bertie?" "I traded for it," said Bertie, smiling back at her. "Willie wanted to trade. Willie likes my old sled better. Oh, Mother, look, it s got real steel runners!" They went up the path together, and the friend liness of the house shut them all in once more. The house was like a small circle of security and warmth, to which one would always return. The beginning and end of all adventuring was there, in that sensation of serene well-being that one felt without thinking of it. There was no place in that house where a child was not free to go and to be happy. On stormy afternoons what romps there were! Then the 22 THE MAKING OF cousins would come to play, and there was racing up and down the stairs, and noise, and laughter, hide- n -go-seek in the closets and behind Mother s skirts where she sat demurely sewing ; rummaging in the cooky jar, and bringing up of whole pans of apples from the cellar, and popping of corn in the kitchen. The heart of it all was his mother. She was there as the sunshine was there, or the air, a part of his solid, unalterable world. He did not imagine any place or situation where she would not be. She was more than the mother who bathed and dressed and soothed him ; she was the order, the serenity, and the goodness upon which life was built. And with her, like a radiance, like an emanation from her smile, from her slim hands, from the sheen on her brown hair and the fresh ness of her gowns, was Christ. She told him of the Child in Bethlehem ; she told him of the Good Shepherd who maketh one to lie down in green pastures, who leadeth beside still waters ; she told him of the Healer at whose touch the sick were made whole and the blind were given sight ; and she told him of the Sacrifice on Calvary. These remained in his mind as characters moving in that dim realm of the past, of the future, of all that existed beyond the circle of his life. With them were Elijah and the bears, Elisha and the fiery chariot, Solomon, and David, and Noah. But HEEBEET HOOVEE 23 there was another Christ, the One to whom his mother talked, the One who was part of her gentle ness and of her service for every one. It was He who deepened her smile and made a light in her eyes. This, too, was a fact like the sunshine ; one did not think about it, one simply lived in it. On First Days, bathed and immaculately dressed, he and Tad walked sedately to the meet ing-house, where God was. They did not like to go there ; they would have preferred wearing their everyday clothes and playing in Uncle Laban s hay-scented barn, or out on the hillsides with their cousins. But that was the way the world was made ; on First Days one went with all the village to God s house. The meeting-house stood by itself in large grounds. Beside it was the graveyard where Great-grandfather Jesse Hoover and Grandfather- Theodore Minthorn lay; it was shivery and yet fascinating to think of that. Down the long tree- shaded street teams came slowly ; there was a quiet little eddy of people where the buggies stopped ; uncles and aunts and cousins climbed out and waited while the horses were tied in the long sheds behind the meeting-house. There was Grandfather Eli, with Great-Uncle William and Uncle Benjamin Miles; there was Grandmother Minthorn, a figure like a sparrow in the gray bonnet and shawl, beside Uncle Penn. All the 24 THE MAKING OF cousins from the country were there. What news there was to tell and to hear ! But this was First Day; children should be seen and not heard. Silence must be kept like a lock on eager lips. Even grown-ups spoke little, in subdued tones. 1 l I am glad to see thee, Huldah. "How is thee, Mother f" "God s goodness is about me always. " His mother, holding Sister May by the hand, went with Grandmother through the women s door. But he was a man, and entered the dim stillness of the meeting-house through the men s door with Tad and their father. Quickly he climbed on a bench, and looking over the high partition he saw the rows of women s bonnets, bent forward a little, hiding their faces. He saw his mother quietly taking her place with the others, and before she should observe his head above the partition he slid down beside Tad, and could see her no longer. He sat on a high, hard bench, and looked at his great-uncle John Y., who sat in a high place among the elders. 1 They were solemn men with long beards, ranged in four rows at the end of the room, one row above another, so that all their faces looked gravely down upon him. And he thought of God as a grave Being with a beard, who never i John Y. Hoover occupied a seat next but one to the head of the meeting. Later he became the regular pastor of the Friends Church at West Branch. HERBERT HOOVER 25 smiled. Then the shuffling of feet ended, and silence filled the place. The silence was like a weight. It grew slowly heavier ; it became burdensome ; it became intoler able. He turned his head, a little by a little, and looked at the intent, serious faces about him. He looked at the ceiling. He looked at the cracks in the wall. His legs began to ache. Suddenly, to his surprise, they straightened vigorously and his boots struck the bench before him with a loud noise. The gentle reproach in his father s eyes made him ashamed. He sat up straight. The silence continued. Then he heard his mother s voice. He could not see her because of the high partition between the women and the men, but he saw the elders faces turned gravely toward the point beyond it, where she was. Her voice, low and vibrant, was like the spirit of her, without her body. It came across the partition to him, and spoke of Christ. It said that He was all-merciful and that His love was about them always ; it said that as they served and loved one another, so they served and loved Him, and that to live in Christ was a joy beyond telling and a peace beyond understanding. Her voice ceased, and there was silence again. It continued forever, through an eternity in which an infinite boredom descended upon his spirit. His body ceased to ache. His mind became numb. 26 THE MAKING OF He no longer saw with interest the slow going to sleep of old Benjamin Winters. His eyes no longer followed up and down the cracks in the wall. He simply sat there. When at last this stupor ended, when he could slide stiffly down from the bench and follow his father out into the world of sound and movement, he was like a prisoner released. Under the trees in front of the meeting-house families were reassembling, in an atmosphere of quietly happy relaxation. There were smiles, nods, low-voiced talk of the service and of weather and crops. His father took the soft, sleepy May from Grandmother s arms and hoisted her upon one shoulder. Mother s face was bright ; he knew without hearing the talk of it how wonderfully she had been moved by the Spirit. He hastened to meet his boy cousins, and heard that George had got a pet raccoon and had been promised a gun for hunting rabbits. The boys stood together, talking soberly about it, their eyes shining. Long ing to run, to jump, to shout in the joy of their release from meeting, they were held motionless by the eyes of the community upon them. He had his duties; there was the wood-box to be filled, the garden to be weeded in summer, er rands to be run. Playthings must be put away, face and hands must be washed; clothes must be kept clean and whole. He must tell the truth HERBERT HOOVER 27 always, and be obedient, and always help any one whenever he could. But these things were to be done because doing them made happiness ; it made a small glow of happiness for him who did them, and a large, vague happiness somewhere in heaven. When his tasks were done he could always play ; he could run and jump and shout as much as he liked. There was the hill to slide upon in winter, and in the spring when sap was running boys could make maple sugar from the trees on it. The big ger boys bored holes in the south side of the tree trunks, hung pails to catch the dripping sap, built a fire. Bertie ran up and down, helping to empty the pails, stirring the boiling syrup, and carrying wood. At last they all fell to with spoons and ate the hot sugar from the kettle. Then there was the brook where one went fishing with a crooked stick for a pole and angleworms on the hook, and caught sometimes a "mud-cat" five inches long. There was Uncle Laban s barn, where the dusty sunlight fell through the cracks on mounds of hay, and one could do great daring jumps from rafters, while all the little girl cousins screamed and cov ered their eyes. Best of all, perhaps, there was Father s store. The big building and the large dusty yard beside it, filled with tools and farm machinery, were fascinating to a curious small boy. Father 28 THE MAKING OF was never too busy to explain the new machines, to show what made an engine go, and how wheels and endless belts transmitted power. Most excit ing of all, Father had bought and erected a great new invention, the sensation of a summer a machine that put barbs on fence wire. People came for miles to see it, and to talk about its product. Swiftly, with little jerks, it pulled into its mysterious recesses the shining lengths of smooth wire unrolling from a big spool, and at the other side the wire came out with sharp prongs wrapped about it at intervals. Farmers looked at it, and shook their heads in wonder. The speed of modern progress amazed them. Here was a machine that made, in a few hours, as much fenc ing as men could build with logs or field stones in weeks of labor. Simply set posts, stretch this wire on them, and the farm was fenced. More conservative men were opposed to these newfangled inventions; they said that when the wire rusted the prongs would work loose. They were right. Two-strand barbed wire was yet undreamed of ; Jesse Hoover, desirous of improv ing the product of his little factory, hit on the idea of covering the wire with tar to delay its* rusting. So in the yard a fire was kept burning beneath a huge kettle of tar, and when a reel was filled it was dipped into the kettle. There were no dull moments there for Bertie. HERBERT HOOVER 29 One day while he stood beside the kettle a ques tion suddenly occurred to him. What would hap pen if a blazing stick were put into the tar ? Was tar like water! Would it put out fire? If it did not put out fire, what would it do? None of his investigations into the surprising nature of things had given him any information by which to decide the question. Tar was unknown to him ; it might do anything. He looked about for some one to solve the prob lem. No one was in sight. His father was in the store; the hired man had disappeared. He was left to his own resources. The black mass in the kettle moved turgidly, queer colors quivered on its surface; it was enigmatic, challenging. What would it do? He squatted beside the fire-box and pulled out a long flaming stick. He rose. For an instant a sensation like fear held his hand ; it was the sensation of a pioneer confronting the immens ity of the unknown. Then, with a courageous ges ture, he thrust the brand into the kettle. The kettle, too, held its breath for an instant. Then, slow, implacable and monstrous, a red flame rose like a tower. Swiftly, as by magic, the sky was overspread with a black, thick smoke. He choked, he heard shouts, and turning wildly to run he collided with a leaping figure. The rest was delirium. He saw men running with ladders and pails. 30 THE MAKING OF He saw the shingled roof of the store curling, and little red flames running along the eaves. A line of men reached from the store to the town pump, and an endless stream of half-filled pails leaped from hand to hand. He had a glimpse of his father, blackened with smoke, on the roof, beating at the flames with a wet sack. He longed to help, but he did not know what to do; and then his mother came, white but calm, and took him away. He went with her without protest. That night at the supper-table he heard his father tell how the store, and perhaps the town, had been saved. The fire, it was thought, had been caused by the unwatched kettle of tar, which must have boiled over. Bertie said nothing. If he had been asked, he would have told what he had done, but no one asked him. He sat unnoticed, eating silently. He was sorry and ter rified, yet he was glad. It was such a strange feel ing that when he had gone to bed he lay awake for a long time, hearing the katydid in the wild crab- apple tree outside his window. He had done a frightening thing; the shock of it was still in his nerves and the crime of it on his conscience, but he had not meant to do wrong. He had been inno cently experimenting, and the result was not entirely disheartening. "Anyway, I found out what it would do," he thought. "I found it out all by myself." He HERBERT HOOVER 31 wondered if he would be punished if he told. He i thought not. But he decided that it was best to keep his own counsel in the matter. And for forty , years he did so. One First Day, in meeting, after the accustomed silence had settled down, a man rose and began to speak. He was a stranger, newly arrived from the East, and all the faces turned toward him. His eyes were black and piercing, his cheeks were sunken, and his voice shook every one. He spoke of sin and of hell where the worm never dies ; he said that his hearers were lost in the ways of Satan and that God called on them to repent while there was yet time. His eyes were full of a ter rible earnestness and his face was white and set, like those of the men who had put out the tar fire. When he had finished he wiped his forehead with his hand and was silent a moment. Then he said, "God moves me to say that, Friends willing, I shall hold a series of meetings, beginning to-mor row. Then he sat down. When the man rose and went out they all began talking earnestly together and with the women. The children, wide-eyed and quiet, stood close to their parents, listening and trying to understand what had happened. Nothing was the same after that. On the streets and at home no one talked of anything but the stranger and his message. In Father s store 32 THE MAKING OF the farmers no longer came stamping in, smiling, as they used to. They stood in groups and argued, with serious faces, about new things "conviction of sin" and " sanctification. y Father s eyes were worried, and far into the night he and Mother talked and prayed together. Every night David Updegraff spoke in the meet ing-house. He spoke of sin and the wrath of God ; he said that the hearts of men were desperately wicked and their feet laid hold on hell, and he begged the people to follow in the way of salva tion. Women sobbed, and men hid their faces. The zest was gone from play. On the street corners groups of boys stood talking soberly. It was said that the old ways of worshiping God were wrong. Friend Updegraff had been sent by God to tell the people this. He said that the old ways were lifeless forms and that the true Spirit was no longer in them. Families were divided by this question; one boy s grandmother was shut in her room weeping and praying day and night because her daughter believed the stranger; another s grown-up brother had left home because of his father s anger. Wives spent nights on their knees praying that their husbands might see the light and be saved. It seemed that the solid foundations of the village were breaking up. But home remained a secure place of refuge. Nothing could destroy that. Mother was still HERBERT HOOVER 33 gentle. Father was still kind. And though they were more grave and their prayers were longer and more earnest, one still felt a steady faith that all was well. Through it all, home emerged unshaken, and somehow with a deeper, more beautiful meaning. The stranger had brought joy to Mother; she had found a new spiritual knowledge. She was sanc tified and would never sin again. These things were beyond a small boy s understanding, but to his mother they meant a living nearness to God that made her life more full of service for others, and it was through her that he saw life. There were many ways of worshiping God, it seemed, and people thought of Him in many different ways. But through all the confusion his mother remained a Christian, and unchanged. The meeting-house was changed. The partition between men and women was taken away, and an organ was brought in. Hymns were sung now during the services, there was a minister who stood behind a pulpit and preached, and First Day had a new name; it was called Sunday. There were names for all the other days, too, and many of the boys no longer said "thee" but "you" instead. The new words had a strange sound on the tongue, so that it was fun to say them. But it was not kind to use them before the older people who had left the meeting-house and built a small 34 THE MAKING OF one of their own, with the partition dividing it, where they could worship in the way they had always known. So Bertie learned another lan guage than the " plain speech " of his fathers the new one brought by David Updegraff. Everything outside his home was changing, like an eddy around a safe rock. Uncle Laban and Aunt Agnes and the playmate cousins had gone away to a place called Indian Territory. Grand father Eli had come back from Hardin County and started a pump-factory. The pump was another ingenious invention making life almost too easy for farmers. Uncle Benajah had one, and rapidly others appeared everywhere, and all the cattle learned to pump their own drinking-water. The cows stood on a wooden platform that slowly sunk under their weight and the water poured into a trough. When they had drunk it they walked away and the platform rose again and stood ready for the next cow. Grandfather s factory was an interesting place of carpenters benches and forges, where six or seven farmers sons, not contented to stay on the old homesteads, worked under Grandfather s direction. It was somewhat like a grown-up school, and somewhat like Father s store. Bertie played about among the men while they worked and brought them dippers of water from the pail that stood among heaps of shavings in a corner. HERBERT HOOVER 35 They were big, jolly men who called one another by their first names, had friendly wrestling- matches at noon and took great pride in the pumps they made. They made Bertie a hatchet to play with, and after he had tried it on sticks and found that it would not cut iron he laid his forefinger on a block and chopped it. He yelled in amazement and consternation. Red blood ran out of his finger, over the chopping-block and the men s clothes. It would not stop running. No one could stop it. Grandfather caught him up like a baby and ran to Dr. John s office. "Sit still," Uncle John said sternly. And he sat still, shaken by frightened sobs, while Uncle John sewed the finger with a needle and thread and tied it up in a bundle of bandages. "Young man, thee almost cut thy finger off," Uncle John said. But thee is a brave boy. Here is a penny. Go spend it for sweets, but do not play with hatchets any more." An angry scar remained always on his finger to remind him of those words. But he did play with hatchets, for now he knew their dangerous nature and how to manage them. He had been all winter in school and was tri umphantly through the primer class when in the spring Uncle Laban reappeared, and Bertie was told that he was to visit his cousins in Indian Ter ritory. Then he learned how large the world is. 36 THE MAKING OF They rode for days on a railway train, seeing fields and forests and towns going past the win dows ; then they rode on a stage-coach through an exciting country of wooded hills, and at last they arrived at a big stone house beside the road and there were Aunt Agnes and Blanche and Har- riette and Theodore Miles, just as they had been in West Branch. It was all a very long way from Father and Mother. However, he manfully con cealed the lonesomeness inside him. The cousins were very much excited. They laughed a great deal, and he did not know the joke. But he knew they were concealing some thing. They showed him the dogs, and the cat and kittens, and the brook where they waded. Then they led him suddenly around the corner of Uncle Laban s office and there by an oak-tree stood a live Indian. He was a tall, fearsome-looking man with a leather-colored skin. A red-and-orange blanket concealed his arms, and long feathers stood up above his fierce black eyes and made an angry- looking ruff down his back. The shock of such an apparition halted Bertie with a jerk. He heard his heart thumping. This must be Chief Joseph, the terrible Indian who long before, at a lecture in West Branch, had fired guns until Tad had been brought home yelling with fright. Tad had HERBERT HOOVER 37 been saved ; Father had been there to rescue him. But there was no one to rescue Bertie now. The cousins had retreated behind him, leaving him un supported, and the Indian fixed him with an awful gaze. He stood his ground a moment, gulped, and then advanced; "How do you do?" he quav ered politely. The cousins uttered a disappointed yell that was music in his ears, but he gave no sign. He stood with his legs a little apart, his hands in his trousers pockets, and gazed his fill at the Indian. "What kind -of a bird did those feathers grow on!" he inquired at length. The Indian merely grunted, but half an hour later he gave him a strip of soft leather cunningly embroidered with beads. He stayed a long time at Uncle Laban s. The rolling prairie land and the long tree-shaded street of West Branch became like a dream; he lived now in a world of trees and hills, of Indian wickiups, stolid squaws, brown bright-eyed papooses carried in beaded baskets, and curious playthings. There were strange rocks of all kinds along the brooks and on the hills. There was one called flint, that made arrow-heads, and a gritty one called sandstone, and one called keel that made marks like chalk. There were curious curled ones like stone snails, and others that sparkled, and others that were the size and shape 38 THE MAKING OF of iron screws. He wondered about those rocks ; no one could tell him where they came from or why they were so strange. He had a good time playing with his cousins and when at dark the lonely feeling ached inside him he concealed it as much as possible. He knew his father and mother were waiting for him, unchanged; he would go back to them some day. At last the day came ; the stage was waiting. He said good-by to all the cousins, he was kissed by Aunt Agnes, Uncle Laban went into the house to bring out his boxes. Uncle Laban reappeared in the doorway, exclaiming: "Bertie, what has thee in those boxes? I can hardly lift them." His cherished rocks were in the boxes. For days he had gone over the collection, comparing, selecting, packing. After Aunt Agnes had packed his clothes he had taken them out, and substituted more rocks. He wanted those rocks. They were important. Couldn t Uncle Laban understand how important they were? He stood by, help lessly protesting, while the boxes were opened, and the rocks were taken out, and things like underwear and jackets were put in. "Thee has said enough, Bertie. Thee cannot carry away all those rocks. It is impossible. Thee can have ten, no more. There were unmanly tears in his eyes. He was HERBERT HOOVER 39 torn with indecision, bending over those treasured stones. But the stage was waiting, and implaca ble authority would not allow delay. Blindly he chose, and helpless, borne by irresistible, inscrut able fate, he was torn from his accumulated wealth. "They were all such strange rocks!" he lamented, once more in the warmth of his mother s sympathy. "Mother, they were like this and he talked about them till sleep overcame him and he woke again in his familiar bed and saw the garden and the crab-apple tree outside the win dow. The maple-trees were flaming red in front of the house and all the long street was frisky with fallen yellow leaves. There was a crispness in the morning air when with books and slates he and Tad set out for school. He was in the first reader now. The hours passed pleasantly enough while he worked sums on his slate or toed the crack in the floor at spelling-time. He did not mind school; he adjusted himself to it with equanimity. It was part of a world he felt himself increasingly able to manage. He had no conflicts with the teachers and held his own with the boys at recess. Sometimes, he knew, he would go to the university as Uncle John Minthorn and Uncle Penn had done ; Father and Mother were always planning for that, and he must be diligent in his studies. 40 THE MAKING OF But he rushed out gladly at four o clock to scuffle through the dry leaves on the sidewalk or naughtily rattle a stick along a picket-fence. And he liked to rake the yard and clear the dead plants from the garden, piling up the bonfire his father would light after supper to flame in the darkness and fill the cold air with the smell of burning leaves. Then snow came, and there was coasting again on Saturday afternoons, and the prospect of Christmas rose once more, after being forgot ten so long. He began to feel the passing of time in the slow rotation of the seasons, like a rhythm through the stable universe. An unexpected holiday broke the routine of school earlier than the Christmas holidays. His father was in bed with a severe cold and Great- uncle Benajah, driving into town one Saturday, offered to take the boys home with him. "It will save thee the bother of looking out for them while Jesse is sick, Huldah, he said. We can take them for a few days as well as not." So, warmly wrapped and admonished to be good boys, they crowded upon the wagon seat beside Uncle Benajah, tucked the buffalo-robe snugly around their legs, and gaily waved good-by to Mother. It was always fun to visit at Uncle Benajah s. There was Eover, the eager rabbit-hunter; there was the pet raccoon, that most cleanly of animals, HERBERT HOOVER 41 who could not be coaxed to eat the smallest morsel until he had washed it in clear water with his own paws, and there were the big barns where one could fork hay down to the horses, watch George milking the cows, and fill foaming saucers for the hungrily waiting cats. In the woodshed a captive owl sat ruffling his gray feathers and blinking, turning his head quite around to follow the slight est movement. Bertie spent hours persistently circling that owl, led by the false hope that the bird would twist off its own neck. Under the long sheds by the barn Uncle Ben- ajah shucked corn, stripping the husks from the ears with an iron husking-peg strapped in the palm of his hand. When the wheelbarrow was filled the boys wheeled it to the granary and emptied it on the sliding yellow heap of corn. Then they carried in wood, stamping the snow from their feet outside the kitchen door and dumping their armfuls into the big wood-box beside the stove where Great-aunt Ella fried doughnuts in a smoking kettle of fat. And the visiting nephews must spend some time with Great-grandmother Rebecca. Great-grandmother Rebecca, eighty years old, would not give up her own independent home. She lived in the other half of the house, and when one called on her one knocked at the door of her sitting-room and waited until she said, "Come 42 THE MAKING OF in." The door opened on a small, spotlessly clean room. The window was full of geraniums and begonias in pots. Great-grandmother, in a white cap, with a white kerchief neatly crossed beneath her withered chin, sat in a rocking-chair, swaying gently back and forth, sewing. Beside the Bible on the table at her elbow were neat piles of colored pieces cut for patchwork ; she took up two of them, laid them together, ran her needle in and out with little quick movements of her gnarled hands, and then spread the patchwork on her knee and pressed out the seam with her thumb-nail, looking over her spectacles at you. There was an atmos phere of orderly activity and precision about her. "Hast thee been a good boy!" she asked in a brisk, kind voice. It was rather awesome to visit Great-grandmother, but one felt pleasant after ward. In the evenings the boys shelled and popped corn in the big kitchen, while Aunt Ella set the sponge for bread and Uncle Benajah, wearing his spectacles, silently read a newspaper. Then they went yawning up the chilly stairs to undress quickly and climb into the billowy feather-bed. A knocking at the front door awoke him. The room was quite dark. The knocking was somehow terrifying. There were sounds of movements in the house, a door opening, the scratching of a match. Uncle Benajah s voice said, "Hello?" HERBERT HOOVER 43 " Jesse s taken very bad. I Ve come to get the boys/ A glare of lamplight hurt his eyes, while he struggled to get into clothes that were all wrong and to fasten buttons that he could not find. He did not cry. He was too much frightened. Tad got his arms into the sleeves of his coat and wrapped a muffler anyway around his neck and face. Then they were in a buggy, flying between a white earth and a starlit sky, behind galloping horses. But the sky and the fields and the buggy all seemed to be held still in an icy terror. For hours, for ages, forever, the white road ran past the wheels and the horses galloped and time stood still. There would never be an end to this. Then it ended, and he was hurrying up the path to a house whose every window was yellow with light in the darkness. The sitting-room seemed crowded with people. When he saw Mother, very white and not smiling, but quiet as ever, he knew without being told. His father was dead. She was all that was left. "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord," Grandmother Minthorn said. And his mother, with that still, white look on her face, knew something he could only dimly understand. For through the days that followed when he was not sobbing because he 44 THE MAKING OF wanted his father he was standing aghast in a world in which a father could die. 1 Half of his home was gone. His father was gone, gone forever, so that he would never see him any more. Under the maples, where he had met his father coming from the store, in the sitting- room where they had sat together, at the table where Father had always been in the chair next his, there was nothing but emptiness. It was an emptiness that was like a presence; one felt it there all the time. It was like a cold wind, so that he put his arms around his mother to keep it from her; he talked to her a great deal, so that she mighj; not hear the silence. But it was there, and he was terrified. For he felt now that noth ing was safe. He felt the precariousness of the hold one has on anything. This passed, and there was solid ground beneath his feet again. School went on as usual and he went there every day. He came home to the house he had always known, and it was home, and Mother was there. Mother and Brother Tad and May and he were together, and Father looked down on them from heaven, where he was happy. It was not the same as having Father with them, but God knew best. And everything else went on as before, except that the store was sold. Mother saved the money for the children s edu- i Jesse Hoover died December 13, 1880. HERBERT HOOVER 45 cation. She said this to Grandmother Minthorn one afternoon in the sitting-room. She rose sud denly and spoke in a low voice. "I must save every cent of this money that I possibly can," she said. "It must be saved for the children s education. " Grandmother Minthorn said quietly: "Thee is right, Huldah. God will help thee, as He helped me. Thee will find a way. A little after that school ended and some of the boys went out to the farms to pick strawberries. Tad and he asked Mother if they might go, too, and she said yes. So he began to earn money. Early in the morning while the grass was still dewy they set out for Thompson Walker s place at the edge of town. The strawberry plants grew in long rows, with little vines running over the ground between them. Under the low flat leaves the berries grew in clusters. You lifted the leaves to look for them, and the largest berries were hardest to find. Berries must not be pulled from the stems, the little cap of green leaf must be left on them. So the stem of each berry must be carefully snipped between thumb and finger nail. Soon the sun was very hot on the back of the neck, and one s back ached from bending. There were hard-shelled, five-cornered bugs that clung to the berries, and every berry they touched was said to turn bitter. A sweet, warm odor came 46 THE MAKING OF from the strawberry leaves when they were hot in the sun. A morning was a very long time, but the afternoon was longer. Still, every quart of berries picked meant two cents and a half. When there were no more ripe berries in the field he trudged home, tired but satisfied. In the morning more berries would be ripe. After sup per he counted the money he had made that day. At the end of the season he had picked two hun dred and twenty quarts of berries and earned five dollars and fifty cents. He gave this to his mother to pay for his education. Then with a satisfied mind he began a summer of play. And it was a never-to-be-forgotten sum mer, for he lived it like an Indian. Uncle Ben jamin Miles, who lived in a big house, had a sub sidy from the Government for an Indian school; a dozen Indian girls lived there, and five boys. Uncle Benjamin had decided that Tad and Bertie should be playmates of the three young Indians left at school through vacation. Bertie was inwardly elated ; here was new terri tory to explore. And, he had seen Indians before, at Uncle Laban s ; this gave him a certain author ity. Thus he was graduated from the ranks of little boys who " tagged/ He was old enough now to play with the big boys almost as an equal. With Tad and the three Indians he vanished from sight of the village for that summer. HERBERT HOOVER 47 They led a subterranean existence thenceforth. No more for them the commonplace ways of road and open field. They skulked by ditch and stream, they stalked the unsuspecting farmer through leafy corn-rows. Wagonroads became the trails of enemies, and Bertie learned to read them at an expert glance, reporting to the waiting braves that Great-uncle William Miles had lately passed that way, doubtless armed to the teeth, and that retreat was advisable. He learned how to build a fire in woods wet from rain, and how to trace wild bees to their nests, and what treatment was best for bee stings. He learned how to make properly weighted arrows, and how to decorate them in straw-smoke, and how to acquire the straw without any discussion with its owner. It was he who marched into town and got from a puzzled butcher the beef-sinews so indispensable to the life of a savage, and it was he who, in the memorable mas sacre of Matts Larsen s chickens in the corn-field, proved beyond all doubt his contention that the modern sling-shot is superior to any bow and arrow. By the time the project of building a secret council-^place had taken form his important place in a savafge life was well recognized. He helped explore "The Grove," and took part in the solemn debates that followed. A certain dense hazel thicket was decided upon, and in the stillness of the 48 THE MAKING OF woods, slipping from tree to tree, vanishing at sound of any step, he helped gather bark and cut down saplings. All the work must be done noise lessly; no one must know. With most terrible penalties they bound one another to secrecy; they devised a system of bird-calls with which to signal the approach of any one. And in the hazel thicket, concealed with Indian skill, they built two wind- and-rain-proof wickiups, eight feet by eight, walled by trees and branches and roofed with bark. Only the five companions knew of these wick iups. Not even Mother was told about them. Beneath their bark roof secret meetings were held, and apples were hidden, and stores of nuts and wild plums. Here, too, Tad and Bertie brought treasures from their collection of curious stones, gathered on the railroad embankment, where in an emergency stolen apples were hidden in the gravel. There were many curious stones there- agates, and bits that looked like wood, and white hard ones, and others marked with veins of color. Not even the Indian boys knew whence these strange rocks came, or why they were marked with star-shaped patterns and stripes and circles. But Tad, kept from the wickiups during one whole afternoon by a violent toothache, returned with information that had turned anguish into excite ment. Edward Walker, the dentist, had a collec- HERBERT HOOVER 49 tion of stones in his office, stones different from these and even more interesting. Bertie hastened at once to the dentist s and there saw the rocks. He carried several of his own, and displayed them. Dr. Walker told him that the pointed ones were coral; they had once been alive, in the margin of an arm of the sea that had covered Iowa eons ago. How did he know there was a sea? The stones proved it. The others were petrified wood. What was "petri fied"? What made it happen! How had the trees been there, if there was a sea? Then had they been there before the sea, or afterward? Dr. Walker knew no more about it ; he was busy. Bertie withdrew, wildly excited, and rushed to tell the news. The stones he held in his hand proved there had once been a sea all over Iowa ! What other mysteries they might reveal no one could say. But those rocks had become valuable beyond all reckoning; they should be handled rev erently and oh, inspiration ! polished like those at the dentist s. The wickiups were deserted that day, while at the grindstone Tad and Bertie toiled to polish the coral. Their loving labor made deep scratches on the grindstone, but little more, so at last they abandoned the task and went back to the wickiups. Here between the thick stems of hazel was their own domain, where no one but themselves could 50 THE MAKING OF ever come. Here they feathered their arrows of "ironwood," here they discussed hunting plans, here they returned with slain yellowhammer or wild dove, and cooked and ate. Here in sudden storms they took refuge and around a stealthy fire roasted potatoes and ears of corn, while rain mur mured on the hazel leaves and trees sighed in the wind. Bertie felt himself indeed a man then, able to cope with all the elements and to lead a free life wherever he might be. Still, it was pleasant to go home when darkness came, to sit at the supper-table in the lamplight and watch his mother filling the plates as usual, all unsuspecting the secrets he knew. "Did thee have a -good time to-day, Bertie?" "Yes, Mother. * Does thee like the little Indian boys f "Oh, yes, Mother. I like them very much." "I am glad. Benjamin tells me they are good boys. They do not swear nor lie nor do anything unkind I" "No, Mother. " They never did. Through and through, they were playmates any boy might be proud of. No one was so clever as they in all the ways of the woods, no one more fair in play or work, no one more clean and honorable in every word and act. Autumn came too soon, with its frost on the colored leaves, its sweet wild grapes, and its threat HERBERT HOOVER 51 of school. Playtime ended. The wickiups were left to rot in the rain and snow, while he must go back to books and slate, and the Indian boys to Uncle Benjamin s. He was in the third reader now, and beginning history. And he read in the history book, "The Indians were red savages, cruel and treacherous. " He said nothing about it, for it was not his way to contradict teachers, but he did not believe the history book. He knew about Indians; he had learned about them for himself. He would have liked to play with them the next summer, but when the long winter had passed they were gone. Uncle Benjamin s school had been moved to Salem, Iowa, and Uncle Benjamin was going to Oregon, a vague place far in the West. It was decided, too, that he and Tad and Sister May were to go visiting with Mother. They were going to visit Uncle Merlin Marshall and Uncle Samuel in Plymouth County. Again he journeyed by train and by stage, very grown-up now, and experienced in such matters ; and they arrived at a town of little wooden build ings set in a level prairie. Uncle Merlin and Uncle Samuel had come here because land was cheap. There were no trees on the streets, and instead of fields and pastures there was the level plain covered with wild grass, on which the new small houses looked lonesome. He felt lonely, 52 THE MAKING OF too, and liked to stay near Mother. Tad and the older cousins let him go fishing with them, and they hunted prairie-chickens nests among the wild grasses and flowers, but it was not like home. And when he woke in the night, strangling with the frightening choke of croup in his throat, he was more terrified than ever before, and cried for his mother like a baby, instead of a man nearly nine years old. All summer long they visited uncles and aunts in Storey County, where there were woods full of flowers and May-apples, and at Hubbard, Iowa, where Uncle Davis lived. Uncle Davis was a large, smiling man, who let him ride the horses, and showed him how to make a whistle of peeled willow. There were many new rocks there, too, and Aunt Maria did not at all mind his bringing them into the house. She put them on a shelf that he could reach without standing on a chair. Here, too, Mother became interested in rocks, and would go with him into the fields to look for new ones. She could not answer his questions about them, but she made him a promise. "When thee grows up, thee shall go to a uni versity and learn all about rocks. " Did they tell one about rocks in universities? Did they tell one about petrified trees there, and why there was once a big sea all over Iowa, and where it had gone f They did not tell him about HERBERT HOOVER 53 such things in school. He would like to go to a university. When could he go to a university, like Uncle Penn? "As soon as thee is old enough, if thee works well in school/ his mother said, "thee shall go to a university. He liked Uncle Davis s house; he liked Aunt Maria, who gave him cookies, and Uncle Davis, who smoked large black cigars, interesting to watch. But he was glad to be at home again. He was glad even to be going to school, because he came back every evening to the house that was his home, and with life once more a solid thing beneath his feet he felt confident and manly. It was only when Mother went away to meeting in other towns that he felt that nine years was not a very great age, after all. It was not so bad in the daytime, but when night came he missed her. He would not admit it, even to Tad, but he would have liked her to tuck in the covers around him and say good night. He felt rather small and lonely at bedtime, without her. She was a min ister now, and often she went away to speak at meetings. It was the work God liked her to do, and the Friends wanted her so much that they gave her money, which was to help send him and Tad to a university. So he was brave about it. But she always told him when she was coming back, and he always managed to be playing in \ 54 THE MAKING OF front of the house when the buggy came that brought her. So he felt aggrieved when one day, while she was gone to Springdale Meeting, he came down the street and saw a buggy standing under the maples, and the house door open. But she had said she would not be home until to-morrow. He ran up the path and dashed into the sitting-room, calling, "Mother!" Then his heart stopped, for the woman who lived next door came out of the bedroom and said, "Hush!" His mother .was ill. She had been struck down in meeting, and they had brought her home and carried her into the house. She was in bed. Dr. Houser was there, and the strange man and woman who had brought her. He must be quiet. He was very quiet all that night, while there were lights downstairs and low voices and the sound of feet, and he was quiet all the next day. The doctor was still there, and uncles and aunts came. He did not ask any questions, for he was afraid of the answers. He stayed close to the bedroom door, except when he felt some one was looking at him. Then he went outside and shiv ered in the cold close to the wall beneath the bed room window. And then, in the second night, some one came and woke him quickly but very gently and took him and Tad into the bedroom. In the morning all the uncles and aunts and HERBERT HOOVER 55 cousins came. The quiet house was full of them, but it was empty, for his mother was dead. There was a terrible emptiness everywhere, and in it he was alone, helpless, and dumb with a terror he could not escape. There was no refuge left to which he could run and be safe. 1 iHuldah Randall Hoover died February 24, 1884. CHAPTER II IT was a bright winter afternoon following a night of falling snow. Lying awake on a damp pillow, the boy had heard the soft, almost imper ceptible whisper of the snowflakes against the window-pane and the creaking of tree branches bending under their weight. His mother was gone ; he would never see her again. He had seen her buried under the raw earth in the snowy churchyard, and God had taken her to heaven. He did not wish her to be in heaven ; he wished her there beside him. He wished to see and touch her. His whole being was one agonized cry to her to come back to him. But he could not have her. All his longing made no difference. The inexor able fact was there, like a solid, indifferent, and topless wall against which clamor was futile. Now the dazzling white sunshine streamed piti lessly through the windows of the sitting-room where he stood waiting to learn what would be done with him. Uncle Allan Hoover was there in his stiff black suit; Aunt Millie, wiping her eyes with her handkerchief; Step-grandmother Han nah, and Uncle Merlin Marshall, and Great-uncle 56 HERBERT HOOVER 57 Benajah, clearing his throat with a rasping sound before he spoke. Little Grandmother Minthoru held the brown-eyed baby sister in her lap, where she cuddled very quietly. Beside the center-table sat that kindly old gentleman, Laurie Tatum, who had managed Father s money for Mother and had often come to talk to her about it. There were papers on the table, and letters; a letter from Uncle Laban Miles in Indian Territory, offering a home for one of the boys, and a letter from Uncle. Davis saying that he would take Theodore as his own son, teach him farming, and when he was twenty-one give him a good wagon and team, according to the custom of fathers with their sons. These matters and others had been discussed and decided upon. Grandmother Minthorn wanted Sister May and was to have her. Theo dore was to go to Uncle Davis. Grandmother Minthorn had asked the judge to make Laurie Tatum executor of the estate. He would sell the house and take care of the money until the chil dren needed it for their education. And Bertie was to live with Uncle Allan and Aunt Millie. He looked at them across the sunny, rag-car peted space. Aunt Millie was kind. But just then he did not wish to go to any woman who was not his mother. Uncle Allan looked gravely at him above the beard he stroked with long, nervous fingers. Bertie hesitated, went toward him, and 58 THE MAKING OF then with a little run flung himself into Uncle Allan s welcoming arms and sobbed against the black coat. He was ashamed, but he could not help it. This was the last time that he cried like a baby, for now he was nine years old, going on ten, and a man alone in the world. That afternoon he said good-by to Tad and Sis ter May. The home was gone and all that had made it was being scattered. His clothes were packed, and the two mottos his mother had given him, beautifully worked in wool and framed i Leave Me Not, Neither Forsake Me, God of My Salvation/ and "I Will Never Leave nor Forsake Thee." Laurie Tatum, his good friend who had often given him pennies and fatherly advice, talked to him about his future conduct. He must be kind and brave and prudent. He must help as much as he could on Uncle Allan s farm; he was too small to help much, and for that reason it was just that he should pay part of his board from the money that was his. Laurie Tatum would manage it for him until he was old enough to go to college; in the meantime here was a small black book in which Bertie should set down any money he received and the purpose for which it was spent. "God bless thee, my boy." So he drove away from the house of the maples, with Uncle Allan and Aunt Millie, and began a HERBERT HOOVER 59 new life on the farm in Cedar County. Every thing was changed; he must adjust himself to another home, to other playmates, to unaccus tomed ways and faces. All that he had given his mother and could never give any one else he must keep locked in his own heart. But the change was not without its excitements and pleasures ; he played and ate and helped with the chores enthusi astically, and though he kept his own council about many things, no one else knew it. Uncle Allan and Aunt Millie made no distinction between him and their own son Walter, just his age ; they awarded praise and blame with impar tial justice and affection. He brought in wood, pumped water, fed the horses and learned to har ness them, taught the young calves to drink from a pail, and with a corn-planter in his hand trudged the fresh-turned furrows in the spring. Uncle Allan had tolerance for boys; when they stopped too long at the end of a row to watch a beetle or spy on a quail s nest his shout across the field, "Boys!" was more a reminder than a rebuke. Haying-time drew near, and it was Bertie s idea to harness one of the calves and teach it to draw a mowing-machine. Uncle Allan heard this solemnly and made no objection. So the boys set to work in the shed behind the house, cutting and sewing old straps to make a small harness, and when Aunt Millie needed stove-wood she called 60 THE MAKING OF twice. Before the harness was finished Bertie had evolved another idea. They would make a mow ing-machine, too. Uncle Allan was doubtful about that, but Bertie anxiously explained that he could make it with old boards and a worn cross-cut saw that he had acquired by barter ; all he asked were a few bolts and the use of the tools. Uncle Allan yielded. "Thee may try it." The mowing-machine was a triumph. The wheels were borrowed from an old buggy, the framework was neatly sawed and nailed, and the steel cutting-edges, sharpened by patient toil with a file, actually moved back and forth like those of the big machines. Aunt Millie was called to admire it; Uncle Allan praised it highly. The meadows were not ready to be cut, he said, but the boys could mow the grass in the side yard. So one morning after the chores were done they led the unsuspecting calf to the shed door and harnessed him. He stood stolidly while they did it. He was used to the harness. Walter fastened the traces to the whiffletree and Bertie took up the reins. "Git up!" he said. The calf did not move. "Poke him a little, Walter. Git up!" His feet were suddenly lifted from the ground. Bawling aloud, the calf fled. The mowing- machine leaped after him, and Bertie, grimly hold ing to the reins, followed in giant strides. The HERBERT HOOVER 61 active haunches of the calf, the threat of the machine s lurching knives, the terrible fact that he was devastating the lettuce bed, mingled in one horrid chaos. He held tight to the reins. Aunt Millie was screaming, Bertie ! Let go ! " There was a crash. The reins broke. He sat down hard among young tomato-plants. The bawling calf, tail high in air, sped through the barn-yard and away, with Walter in hurried pursuit. The mowing-machine lay a wreck against the apple-tree trunk. Aunt Millie, weak with laughter, wiped her eyes with her apron and laughed again. Bertie rose slowly, inspected his trousers for rents, put his hands in his pockets, and looked at the remnants of the beautiful machine. "Well, that s ended, " he said equably. What was the use of complaining? The thing was done. "Bertie is like his -father/ 7 Uncle Allan said at the dinner-table. And he reminded Aunt Millie that the hard, unhappy times of the Civil War had made men of the boys of those days. Jesse Hoover at sixteen had done a man s work in the fields, had carried a man s responsibilities, and had been thoughtful and serious beyond his years. "Bertie misses his mother more than he lets on," Aunt Millie thought, looking at the round, 62 THE MAKING OF cheerfully sober little face. As much as she could she tried to fill Huldah s place, and Bertie under stood and was grateful. When he woke in the nights, fighting for breath, choked with the croup that still caught him by the throat in the darkness, he saw her with the lighted lamp in her hand, a calico wrapper hastily thrown over her nightgown, hastening to his rescue. She put onion poultices on his chest. She wrapped him in warmed blankets and held him in her arms, suffering with him, doing all she could to help him. In those long night hours while his head lay against her broad shoulder and the lamplight slowly turned pale in the dawn the old longing for his mother was hardest to bear. But he must not let Aunt Millie know that, because it would hurt her. No one else could be his mother, but Aunt Millie did her best, and he loved her. The summer went by in its orderly cycle of farm work. The corn had come up and was harrowed and plowed; the hay ripened for cutting in the meadows. In the early mornings he harnessed the horses and drove the two-horse mowing- machine to the fields as soon as the dew was off the timothy and clover. He rode in the high iron seat, the sedate farm horses plodded before him, and behind him the green hay, dotted with daisies and blue corn-flowers, fell neatly in its four-foot swath. A clean, sweet odor rose from it. The HEEBEET HOOVER 63 sun grew warmer on his back. At the end of each row he shifted the levers, the horses turned about, he lowered the shining knives again and followed the edge of standing hay back across the meadow. There was time to think. He thought of the men he knew who were farmers; he thought of his mother s plans for his education, that now he must carry out. He debated the question of spending ten cents for fish-hooks, and considered in this connection the price of shoes. Laurie Tatum gave him five dollars a month for such expenses, and he kept his accounts neatly in the little black book. In the afternoons when the sun was hottest he stopped the horses occasionally at the end of a row and let them rest in the shade of the apple-trees by the fence. He drank from the jug of water that lay covered with hay, and he had leisure to watch the birds and to make a horrible noise with a grass-blade held between the thumbs. But his conviction that he did not wish to be a farmer grew steadily more firm. One night he came from the meadows white and shaking. He was hardly able to put up the horses. He staggered blindly to the house and told Aunt Millie that he did not want any supper. His fore head was cpld and damp. Uncle Allan was called at once, and Walter was sent to hitch up the buggy and go for the doctor while Aunt Millie put him 64 THE MAKING OF to bed. She accused herself and Uncle Allan impartially while she did it. "We Ve let him work too hard in the hot sun. We should have watched over him better. He s going to be sick, and it is our fault. What would Huldah say if she knew? There, there, Bertie! does that feel better? Has Walter started yet? Allan, I shall never forgive myself " But at that moment the cause of Bertie s illness became apparent, and when the worst was over Aunt Millie sat down and laughed till she wept, while Uncle Allan said sternly, "Bertie, did we not tell thee not to eat those green apples?" "Yes, Uncle Allan, " he said meekly, suspecting nevertheless that there was a smile beneath Uncle Allan s beard. He waited in suspense, for he knew Uncle Allan s conscience, and he knew that he deserved to be punished. Uncle Allan s strug gle was brief. "Then let this be a lesson, and do not disobey us again." "No, Uncle Allan." After the haying came the harvesting of wheat and oats. Aunt Millie worked for a week baking pies, cakes, dozens of loaves of bread, great pans of beans and rice-pudding to feed the threshers. The threshing-machine arrived, with three sun burned, hard-muscled men who were up before dawn and worked till the last light faded from the HERBEET HOOVER 65 sky. All the neighbors also came over and helped. At dark, the tired horses came clumping into the barn with a jingling of harness and Bertie and Walter did the chores by lantern-light, while in the kitchen Aunt Millie washed the supper dishes and set the breakfast-table. Uncle Allan paid two cents a bushel for the threshing of .the wheat, and three cents for the oats. He sold the wheat for forty cents or less and the oats for twenty-three. No help was needed for the corn ; Uncle Allan and the two boys had planted it, harrowed it twice, hoed it, plowed it four times. After the threshers were gone they cut some of the hard corn-stalks, shocked them, and hauled the shocks to the barn-yard. There in the frosty autumn evenings after the cows were milked they husked the yellow ears by lantern- light, Bertie working with his own little husking- peg. But mostly they "husked the corn standing in the field, often with snow on the ground. Bertie worked thoughtfully at this ; he was reflect ing that corn sold for fifteen to thirty cents a bushel. He thought, too, about cows. His enthusiasm for calves was gone ; they were boisterous, unrea sonable beasts that bunted the pails they should drink from, that ran in every direction they should not when a boy drove them every night from pas ture, that were liable to choke on apples or 66 THE MAKING OF cut themselves on barbed wire. They grew into cows that must be fed and watered and milked twice a day. Then the milk must be strained, and carried down cellar and up again, and skimmed. When the butter was churned and worked and s; salted and carried to town, it sold for ten cents a pound. School had begun. Bertie and Walter walked the two miles every day with books and lunch-pail, and at his desk Bertie stole time from his proper studies to do a little figuring of his own. The results confirmed his earlier opinion. Uncle Allan could be a farmer if he liked, but Bertie would not. From his point of view the time he spent in farming was worse than tiresome ; it was wasted. During the next summer a letter arrived from Uncle John Minthorn, now in Oregon, offering to take Bertie. Uncle Allan and Aunt Millie dis cussed it with him, and they rode to Springdale to talk it over with Laurie Tatum. Bertie remem bered Uncle John only vaguely ; most of the uncles and aunts had moved away and gone out of his life. Dr. John had married Mother s friend Laura Miles, a sister of Uncle Laban, and they had followed her father, Benjamin Miles, into missionary work among the Indians. One of the most brilliant physicians and sur geons in the West, Dr. John had abandoned his HERBERT HOOVER 67 promising career in its beginning to give medical service to the Ponca Agency Indians; he had become superintendent of Chief Joseph s tribe and later head of the Chilocco Indian School; then he had gone to Oregon and had built up the small Forest Grove Indian School into a thriving institution. He was now opening a new school, the Pacific Academy, for a small Friends settle ment named Newberg, and Bertie could be a stu dent there. "Millie and I shall be sorry to lose Bertie," Uncle Allan said heavily, "but it seems our duty to let him go. John can give him more advantages than we can here. I do not know a man I would go further to hear than John when he is in the mind to talk. He has a good education and he has deep thoughts of his own. I have heard him in five minutes give a man ideas to think about for a week or more." Laurie Tatum took off his spectacles and pol ished them with his black silk handkerchief. They were talking in his parlor, with its neat chairs against the wall, its rows of heavy books, and the shining pink-and-white shell on the center-table. Bertie sat straight, his cap in his hands, and listened. Laurie Tatum said that he had talked it over with Grandmother Minthorn ; she thought it best that Bertie go. "John Minthorn is a good man," said Laurie 68 THE MAKING OF Tatum in his slow, kind voice. "He would give the boy a good Christian home and many advan tages. As thee says, he has both learning and understanding." He slowly replaced the spec tacles on his nose and looked at Bertie over the steel rims. "Bertie, thee is eleven years old. What has thee to say about it I " The boy answered regretfully, for he loved Uncle Allan and Aunt Millie and would be sorry to leave them. But before him was the West with its new adventure, and there was also the academy, to be considered as a step away from the farm and toward the university. I think I had better go. So it was decided. Uncle Allan went with him while he bought a new suit ; Aunt Millie carefully ironed and mended for him and packed the tele scope bag that had been his mother s. His two treasured mottos went into it, and a collection of crooked sticks that was his pride. On a crisp Sep tember morning they all drove to the station. He shook Uncle Allan s hand several times, and when they saw the train coming down the track Aunt Millie hugged him tightly. "Be a good boy, Bertie. " "I will, Aunt Millie," he promised fervently. Then he manfully climbed the car steps, and the it ain bore him away toward the West. He traveled with a neighbor of Uncle Allan s, 01 Hammel his name was Oliver, but he was HERBERT HOOVER 69 called 01 and they were both provided with large lunch-baskets. They rode in the day-coach, which was cheaper than the Pullman, and at night they curled on the plush-covered seats and slept not uncomfortably. They waited twelve hours at Council Bluffs, the junction point for all west bound trains, and there he saw the Missouri River, a great body of yellow water wider than he had imagined a river could be. And in the morning he woke to gaze on an interminable empty plain, houseless and fenceless, stretching to the edges of the world. For five days and five nights they rode, across parched sage-brush plains, through deep canons whose rock walls shut out the sky, past monster mountains crowned with snow, and through gigan tic forests where he saw the curious needle-leaved pine and the feathery cedar and hemlock above the blue waters of the Columbia River. 01 Ham- mel told him of the hundred-foot masts made from those trees, and of the huge, red-fleshed fish, the salmon, that were scooped from the stream by great turning wheels, like the water-wheels of mills. They alighted in Portland, a roaring city of fifty thousand people, that confused him with its crowds and noise, and there they got on the river boat that would carry them to Newberg where the railroad did not go. 01 Hammel went into the little cabin, but Bertie 70 THE MAKING OF stayed on deck where the freight was piled and watched the foam of the paddle-wheel and the autumn-colored banks of the Willamette. He had never seen so many trees. His eagerness for information conquered his shyness ; he spoke to a fellow-traveler in overalls who lounged at the rail chewing tobacco, and was told their names. There stood the flaming red dogwood, the yellow maples, the silvery-green spruces, among the dark cedars and pines. Beyond them were the blue Cascades, and far away, like the glory in the sky pictured in the Bible, he saw in sunlight above the clouds the snowy peak of Mount Hood. From time to time the boat edged close to the bank, its ripples breaking up the clear mirrored colors of the trees. A deck-hand threw a looped rope over a raw-cut stump ; the boat stopped. Boxes were put out on the ground, among the pine- needles and chips ; other packages were taken on, receipts for them were hastily scrawled and left in a box nailed to a tree; the boat resumed its course. They passed the locks at Oregon City, moving through the opened gates that closed behind them, rising with the rising water, moving again through higher gates. There were people on the banks here, and mills and factories. Below, the forest shut in again. At four o clock they reached Wynooska Land- HERBERT HOOVER 71 ing, a level space at the foot of the wall of trees. Above stumps and trampled mud stood a large warehouse, whose open doors showed stacks of plump wheat-sacks. Beyond it a yellow road wound upward over the bank. Horses were tied to the trees, and there was a little group of men at the landing. It was all very different from anything he had known. He stepped bravely out to meet it, lugging his telescope bag, and stood hesitating, in his long trousers and little round jacket, very conscious that he was much smaller than he felt. Then his hand was grasped by that of Uncle John Minthorn and he was looking up into a grave, handsome face, at serious eyes and a black mustache. Uncle John accepted him at his own valuation, as a man and not as a child. "Put thy bag in the buggy, Bertie, and untie the horses. I will be there in a moment." They drove rapidly up the yellow road that fol lowed the high bank of a small stream. There were fir and cedars on the bank, but the other side of the road had been cleared and burned; it was desolate with charred stumps and blackened earth. Bertie answered Uncle John s questions about West Branch people. Dr. John s horses went fast ; he gave an impression of a man very much hurried, with many important things on his mind. He did not smile easily, but at the rare times when 72 THE MAKING OF he did there appeared in his face, for an instant, all the sunshine and warmth that had been in Mother s smile. They passed a new, unpainted house, another nearly built; they were in Newberg. It was a village much smaller than West Branch, sur rounded by fir and cedar forests, clearings still full of stumps, and mountains on whose sides were squares of yellow, the stubble of harvested wheat- fields. Uncle John pointed out the Pacific Acad emy, fresh in its first coat of paint. Education is the foundation of a worthy life, Bertie. No build ing will stand without foundation. First of all, seek understanding. Put education before every thing else." "Yes, Uncle John." There were two or three small cottages built near the academy. Uncle John lived in one of them; as soon as the girls dormitory was finished they would move into it. There was no room for Bertie in the cottage, already crowded with three little girl cousins, but he could sleep in a tiny room in the main building. Aunt Laura welcomed him in a kind, practical way; she, too, treated him as much older than her own children. Her own little boy who had died had been four years younger than he. He rose at once to meet this estimate of him, and his first act, when he stood in the cottage sit- HERBERT HOOVER 73 ting-room surrounded by these strange faces, was to take from his pocket and show to Uncle John! ; the little black book in which were set down every > sum of money he had received and the use toj Which he had put it. But his second remark betrayed him. Beginning to unbuckle the straps of the telescope bag, he thought of the precious collection in it, and inquired, "Are there any crooked sticks here?" He had made himself ridiculous. Crooked sticks in Oregon, in those endless forests! Aunt Laura s matter-of-fact inquiries about his under wear and the state of his socks, in the presence of the interested little girl cousins, were fagots added to the heap of his humiliations. If he was to be met as a grown-up person, he should not be treated as a child. He carried his collection of crooked sticks to the woodpile and left them there. He left the last of his childhood with them, unregret- ted, and took up the life of a twelve-year-old boy in Newberg. Newberg was a pioneer town at the farthest western edge of the old pioneer America. Its people were Friends; hard-working, God-fearing men and women whose fiber had been hard enough to make the cutting-edge of civilization against a continent-wide wilderness. He learned from them also that life is hard and earnest ; that duty is the guide to follow; that time was not given 74 THE MAKING OF man to be spent in idleness ; nor the days of youth in wasteful playing. He was expected, of course, to work for his board. The world was not so made that men received anything without making payment for it. His money must be saved for his later education ; therefore, like boys who had no money and lived with their fathers, he paid with his labor. Like them, he rose early in the morning and fed and watered the horses, milked the cow, carried wood and water; he curried the horses, washed the buggy, cleaned the stable after school, and on Saturdays he found work among the neighbors that brought him small sums. This was a train ing designed to make good men. He accepted it willingly enough. Every one around him worked; work was the fundamental fact of life. But he felt new, independent impul ses rising within him now; he felt that he was a man, taking a man s part in the world, holding his own and paying his way in new surroundings and among strangers. He could discipline him self; he resented discipline from without. And he was aware that Uncle John and Aunt Laura had taken him as an added responsibility in their overloaded lives; that they felt it their duty to control his actions for his own good. He could not be sullen ; there was a well of sane cheerfulness in him that washed away sullenness. HERBEET HOOVER 75 But he became more silent, and in his very silence there was an aloofness and an exasperation. He knew this, but he could not help it. And he grew to detest horses. He made no concealment of this fact, so inexplicable to Dr. John, to whom horses were the one passion and pride left from his dash ing youth in West Branch. He said openly that he hated horses; he hated to water and feed and harness them; he absolutely refused to ride one, though he knew that Dr. John had expected him to take pleasure in doing so. He went his own way quietly, avoiding opposi tion as much as he could with honesty; defeated always in any clash between his own opinions and Dr. John s sense of duty toward him. He was cheerful among the boy friends that he quickly made ; he was always in the school-yard games at recess, though never a leader. And daily he be came more silent, more unobtrusive, looking with observant eyes at the life around him and think ing it over without spoken comment. He woke in the mornings, alone in his tiny bare room. He dressed, shivering, washed his face in the stinging cold water, and went briskly to do the chores. Aunt Laura had been up before him ; she had washed and dressed the children and super vised breakfast for the girls in the dormitory ; she was busy with a hundred details of housekeeping and mothering them all, and before her was a day 76 THE MAKING OF of teaching in the school. Bertie ate a hearty breakfast in silence, knelt for morning prayers, and went to make his bed before schooltime. When the bell rang a hundred students met in the assembly-room. He was the smallest and youngest among them; many of them were young men and women, some were married and had chil dren of their own. From the platform Dr. John looked down on them all ; he felt a personal respon sibility for the welfare of each of them. He was principal of the struggling new academy, a member of the Board of Trustees, concerned with its debts and with raising the money for needed buildings; he was teacher in the class rooms, and he was the only physician in Yamhill County. His mind was overcrowded with work and many anxieties, yet each morning he called the students together and tried to give them help and inspiration. He was a good speaker, his voice was clear and impressive, and there was earnest thought behind his words: This morning we will think about the life of Joseph, who was chosen by God to be ruler over Egypt. God has a plan for the life of every one. He arranges all our experiences with the object of carrying out that plan, and that plan would be the one each of us would choose if we could see it as a whole, as God sees it. But we cannot see our lives as a whole, so we must take them on faith. HEEBEET HOOVEE 77 "God intended Joseph to be a ruler. There fore he gave him dreams of ruling, so that Joseph would use his own efforts in that direction, and not waste his time and strength in fruitless efforts in any other direction. God intended Joseph to rule over Egypt, a nation composed largely of slaves. Therefore God let him be a slave, in order that he might have sympathy for slaves. "God knew that to be a ruler it is necessary to understand politics. So he let Joseph be sold to Potiphar, in order that he might stand behind Potiphar s chair and listen to politics talked by the rulers, the Ins, during several years. And for practice in ruling, he was put in charge of Potiphar s household. "Then Joseph was sent to prison, not to a prison for common criminals but to one filled with the king s political prisoners, the Outs. Here he learned the other side of Egypt s politics, and learned to rule over the Outs, for the keeper of the prison committed all things into his hand. "When he graduated out of this university for practical experience, he went to the throne, the only properly trained ruler that ever lived. For God had intended him to be a ruler and had trained him for ruling, and Joseph had followed God s plan with faith in Him, though at the time he could not see God s final purpose. So we learn from the story of Joseph that what might have 78 THE MAKING OF seemed to be hardships were, to one that worked by faith, the most precious privileges. " After a brief prayer the students went to their books. The work was easy for Bertie; he stood high in his classes, among students so much older than he. Mathematics had no terrors for him ; it fitted the orderly processes of his mind. He felt a sense of power in this conquering of knowledge ; he was happy at his desk. Dr. John said little in praise of his accomplishments, telling him instead that pride is a snare that traps a man s feet and brings him down to disaster. Every evening at seven o clock in Dr. John s house conversation stopped. The lamp was put in the center of the table, and the children sat about it with their books and studied until bed time. Aunt Laura was busy with the girl board ers or with lesson-papers ; Uncle John was buried in academy affairs, or driving over the mountain roads in the darkness to visit the sick. At nine o clock Bertie rose, said good night, and went to bed. Sundays were different. On Sunday morning, after the chores and breakfast, he went to Sabbath School. He remained for the meeting afterward. At twelve o clock or later he went sedately home ward with the other boys, walking carefully, with thought for Sunday shoes and garments. He was not enthusiastic about Sabbath School; he felt HERBERT HOOVER 79 that he could be a good boy without it. The con tribution plate was a vexation to him. Was it not enough to sit repeating lessons that he already knew, without being asked to pay for it? He gave generously to missions that served less for tunate boys than himself, but he could not honestly be a cheerful giver to Sabbath School, and he knew that the Lord had no love for his unwilling nickel. An escape from this grudging giv ing offered itself, and he grasped it immedi ately. "Bertie, I thought I saw you put a quarter in the plate, " his best friend remarked with awe. "I did." "But how can you afford it? I can only give a nickel. "Well, you see Uncle John always gives me twice as much as I put in." At the dinner-table Uncle John gave him the money, which he added to his savings for uni versity days. There would be some sense in spending money to learn things he did not already know. After dinner he must sit quietly reading the Bible until three o clock. At that hour he went to the meeting of the Band of Hope, the children s temperance society to which, in that town never invaded by a saloon, all children must give their Sunday afternoons. There was time for several 80 THE MAKING OF more chapters of the Bible before the cold Sunday supper, and then he went to evening services, carrying the lantern that at ten o clock lighted his way home to bed. In this manner the months went past, lightened by occasional hours of play and darkened by the increasing silent struggle between his growing independence and Dr. John s conscientious disci pline. During the summer vacation he had a good job, and he learned to swim in a deep pool below the saw-mill where whirring band-saws sliced the moving pine logs into raw lumber that smelled of turpentine in the sun. He saw the coming of the railroad to Newberg, and at the blacksmith shop where wheat-farmers waited while their horses were shod he heard the first talk of orchards. Many a time his will clashed with Uncle John s, but he obeyed, without a word, resentment blazing in him. Uncle John knew well enough the things he did not like. One night, after such an encoun ter, when Bertie sat in the kitchen, silent and tight-lipped, Dr. John said to his wife: " Laura, there is only one way to break a colt to lead. Begin when he is a suckling and put a halter on him and let him run beside his mother. Then when he is old enough to break he remembers the halter and there is no trouble. If he is old enough to break before he knows the halter there HERBERT HOOVER 81 will be a fight to get it on him. Sometimes the fight is not worth the trouble/ Bertie rose and went to bed. A few weeks later he made arrangements to work for his board at Benjamin Miles s. That stern old Quaker, father of Uncle Laban and Aunt Laura, had even more strict ideas of the proper duties of boys. He held the belief that the younger generation was spoiling children by too easy discipline. " Satan finds work for idle hands/ J he said, and intending to guard Bertie from falling into idle habits he set him to grub bing out the stump of a ten-foot fir in the back yard. It was a back-breaking task that filled every week-day moment between chores and school hours. He was glad, now, that the Seventh Day was a day of rest. And one September Sunday morning as he started for church a buggy drove into the yard. He looked, and stood still. His heart stood still. Tad! The big brother had come all the way from Iowa to be with him. He had company now in the little corner room of the academy building where they slept together, and for the first time another per son knew of the torturing earaches that kept him awake at night, and of the resentment he felt because, paying his own way like a man, he was treated as a child. 82 THE MAKING OF Tad was openly rebellious, both for himself and for Bertie. Tad was seventeen years old, warm hearted, headstrong. He did terrible things. He went for long trips in the hills instead of attend ing Sabbath School ; it was whispered that he had smoked; he threatened to go to a country dance. One day when his sense of justice was outraged he started a fight in the very academy yard. He stood brazenly before Uncle John and said that as long as he felt that he was doing right he did not care what other people thought. "You ought to think about what other people think, said Bertie, bringing up a conclusion from his storehouse of them. "What they think is a fact, like like a buzz-saw. You have to get along with it. You can do what you think is right, just the same." That was a memorable winter because the mill- pond froze hard enough for skating. Bertie, late of Iowa, had the only pair of boys skates in town. Of course he could not refuse to lend them. For many days he looked forward to enjoying those skates himself, but there were so many boys who wished to learn to skate in their few free hours that his turn was long delayed. However, he stood on the bank and watched the spectacle of the other boys efforts, which was much more fun than a selfish use of the skates would have been. His thirteenth year came, and he had a decision HERBERT HOOVER 83 to make. The Pacific Academy was well estab lished, and Uncle John was moving to Salem, going into the land business with B. S. Cook. The third wave in the development of the West was rising: first the forests, then the wheat, now the orchards. Bertie could go to work in Uncle John s office, or he could continue in school. The choice was left to him. He consulted the little black book. There was not enough money to send him through college ; he would have to work his way through. He was tired of chores and odd jobs; besides, he knew only farm work. He would need business expe rience to pay his way through a university. An opportunity to learn business methods had pre sented itself; he would grasp it. "I will take the job, Uncle John." In Uncle John s rare smile Bertie for the first time had a glimpse of the pride his uncle felt in him. But it was suppressed instantly. "Thee will go with Tad to drive the horses and cow to Salem, then. Dr. John was again the disciplina rian. In the hurry of packing, of leaving the academy affairs in order, of last visits to the sick, on the one side, in the nervousness that came from nights tormented by the earache and from hasty meals in a disordered household, on the other, the long- gathering storm broke. Uncle John was peremp- 84 THE MAKING OF tory ; Bertie s self-control slipped from his trem bling hands. He stood up and spoke, bitterly and defiantly. In the littered yard, among the packing-cases, while the startled horses listened, the spirit of him clashed against the spirit, so like his, in Uncle John. In the red moment both for got the incident, the last tiny jar, that had precip itated the encounter. Each faced the other with the fury of righteousness outraged; neither could retreat. The memory of that battle lay long between them, never spoken of, through the first days in Salem. Bertie lived in Uncle John s house on the outskirts of the city, in Highland Friends colony, a subdivision being sold by the new Oregon Land Company; he worked in the company s office, where Uncle John was a partner. They met a hundred times a day, and their coldness slowly became an unexpressed respect for each other. For Uncle John was an able, far-seeing business man, and Bertie matched him with an equal ability as office boy. Salem was a city of eight thousand people, like a tree, drawing its sustenance from the fertile acres of wheatland that were rapidly becoming orchards. Here was the opportunity of the Ore gon Land Company to help build the future of Salem. Orchards! A hundred families living prosperously where ten had lived before; large HERBERT HOOVER 85 ranches cut into small farms; small farms into town lots; roads made streets; streets laid with rails for street cars; fortunes pouring into the land-offices. These were the dreams of the men who organized the Oregon Land Company. In the background Bertie watched it all, silent, observant and very busy. Grandmother Min- thorn and May had come from Iowa and were living in a cottage beside Dr. John s house. There were chores to be done for them: wood to be chopped, water to be carried. He arrived at the office in the morning while the long street was still damp with dew between rows of locked two- story buildings. He opened the office doors, swept the floor and sidewalk, dusted the desks, and opened the morning mail. He glanced through the letters, sorted them, and laid them ready for Uncle John and Mr. Cook. Then he rearranged the window displays sheaves of wheat, mam moth pumpkins, red apples, and jars of enormous prunes in alcohol. By this time the day s work was beginning; men passed the plate-glass win dows, stores were opened, the horse-car went leis urely down the street. Mr. Cook came in, large, good-natured, saying heartily, "Good morning, Bert ! Fine day ! Laura Huelat, the pretty fif teen-year-old stenographer, arrived and went into her little glass-walled cage. And Mr. Cottle, who handled the Eastern advertising, entered hastily, 86 THE MAKING OF saying, "Bert! Where s the?" Whatever it was, Bert put his hand upon it instantly and presented it without an unnecessary word. It was a busy office. All day long men came and went, letters arrived, maps were being made, con tracts closed, notes extended, checks sent to the bank. The company advertised in one thousand Eastern papers; Bert handled the details of the advertising. The company took options on three thousand acres of land, planted it, built roads, set out orchards and resold the small fruit-farms; Bert went over each tract, made the blue-prints, built in the office windows a relief-map with every hill and tree in place, and tiled all the papers according to a system of his own. The company sent an exhibit to Chicago; Bert planned the exhibit and saw it properly packed. 4 Bert ! A Henry Smith of Detroit writes he 11 be in on the night train. Where s our corre spondence with him?" He reached into his files, took out the letters, and laid them at the speaker s elbow. "Bert! How much was paid down on that McDowell sale?" "Twenty-one hundred and forty dollars; bal ance at seven per cent, in three years. Bert, did we tell that Omaha man Where s Bert, Miss Huelat?" "Gone to the bank, Mr. Cook." HERBERT HOOVER 87 "Oh, fish-hooks! Well, I 11 have to wait till he comes back. When he was not answering questions, run ning errands, multigraphing letters or seated at his high desk making maps, he lounged silently at the edge of conversation his hands in the pockets of his gray suit, shoulders hunched a little, a small round hat pulled down on his head and listened. No one noticed him particularly ; no one explained business methods to him. He did not mind. Quietly, all the time, he put down rows of facts in the orderly note-book of his mind, added them, and filed away the totals. The company was losing sales to other land companies. Drawn by the Oregon Land Com pany s advertising, men arrived in Salem from the East, went to hotels, and were seized by rival salesmen. Oregon Land salesmen complained bitterly, but it had always been that way in the land business; the sale was to the swiftest. Bert took a Saturday afternoon and made a list of all the empty furnished houses and pleas ant rooms to rent in Salem. Then he presented a proposition to his uncle. He would meet all trains with the buggy, take new-comers out at once and settle them in places less public than hotels, where the Oregon Land Company s salesmen could wrestle with them uninterrupted by rivals. He wanted the commissions for renting the houses. 88 THE MAKING OF He got them. The Oregon Land Company got the sales. It was as simple as that. But he was annoyed by the salesmen s exclamations: "It works like a charm! How did you ever think of it, Bert ? Why did n t we think of it months ago ? If I d had that Nebraska crowd to themselves last August like I had Lamson last week I d have made a sale of " Why did men talk so much and think so little? He considered taking a business course at night-school and tried it for a few weeks. But he gave up the idea because it cost him the evening hours in the office. Lounging there between seven and nine o clock at night under the flare of the gas-light, in the crowd of men that came and went, or sitting behind locked doors at conferences of the partners, he learned more about business than he could from books. One night in the company s second year he sat in a corner, hands in pockets, hat pulled down over his eyes, and listened to a conference with cred itors. The company was solvent, but the momen tum of its expansion had pushed it to the edge of safety. There were outstanding notes and op tions that must be extended ; there were payments overdue on farms whose purchasers must be car ried by the company or the sales lost. At any one of a dozen points an unreasonable creditor could precipitate the company s failure. HERBERT HOOVER 89 But the talk grew excited. It became personal. Each man, trying to protect himself, afraid, sus picions, raised his voice a little higher than the last. Fists were pounded on the table. Tem pers escaped control in the excitement. "Do you mean to insinuate that I am not an honest man?" "Well, didn t you say that" The lights went out. Confused by the sudden darkness, the antagonists united in complaint against the gas company. Lighted matches held to the open jets flickered and went out. They couldn t sit there talking in the dark. Why in tarnation could n t a public-service company give some service! Might as well postpone the con ference till next day. They groped their way around desks and chairs, got out into the street, and went home. Uncle John was about to lock the office door when a hand appeared in the aper ture, and then the matter-of-fact countenance of Bert. He stepped out and locked the door with his own key. "Bert! Did thee turn out the lights?" "They were only running up the gas bill. There was no use in that kind of talk," said Bert, and getting on his bicycle he pedaled homeward, leaving the company s difficulties to be amicably adjusted next day. The little horse-cars of the Salem street railway 90 THE MAKING OF ambled along its tracks only at long intervals, but the space between the rails was tightly floored with fir boards that made an excellent path for bicycles. Bert rode home upon it through the darkness, passing the deserted two-story brick buildings of the main street where yellow pools of light lay under the occasional arc-light, turning into the residence section where magnificent houses of white-painted wood, ornamented with scroll-work, turrets, and panes of colored glass, stood far back on lawns guarded by cast-iron deer, and then pedaling past empty weed-grown lots toward Highland Friends Addition. New cot tages were springing up there, on lots whose his tory of selling and reselling he knew in every detail. He owned one himself, taken off its buy er s hands at a reasonable discount and held for resale at a propitious moment. He passed Highland Friends 7 church, the nucleus of the subdivision, built by the Oregon Land Company on firm stone foundations and standing there to point with its scroll-decorated steeple toward the rewards of a righteous life. Every Sunday morning he went to meeting. His membership in Highland Friends church was a real thing in his life. He did not accept it without further consideration, as a thing accomplished; he thought about it. As he pedaled past the building, a shadow against the starlit sky, he HERBERT HOOVER 91 pondered the reasons that make men Christians and examined his own motives. He hoped that he was not a Christian only because he wanted to save his own soul; that would b<? nothing better than self-interest. He put his bicycle in its place in Uncle John s barn, across the street from the large white house where he lived. There were no lights in Grand mother Minthorn s cottage of scalloped shingles. She and Sister May were asleep. He closed the barn doors, climbed the ladder to the barn attic, and lighted the oil lamp that stood on a table there. The bookcase he had made stood beside it, filled with his books. He chose a text-book on geometry, took a pencil from his stock of well- sharpened ones, and pulling up the patched kitchen chair sat down to work. On the sloping shingle roof a spider swung to and fro, laboriously weaving with invisible silken strands a web that would be ready when dawn brought the day s opportunity for spiders. The lamp burned with a soft humming sound in the stillness. Bert s mind toiled over geometric lines and calculations. The hands of the battered alarm-clock moved with little jerks toward mid night. The air grew colder. He turned up his coat collar, made one last attempt at conquering a stubborn Angle C, gave it up, and reached for an apple in a box beside the table. He set his teeth 92 THE MAKING OF into it, and taking a sheaf of booklets from his coat pocket began turning them over, glancing at them. He was sixteen. Time to be choosing his uni versity. That summer Theodore was going back to Iowa to enter Penn College. Bert considered his own plans. He read the Penn College pros pectus sent to Tad, and did not like it. The family grieved because he wanted a university that em phasized religion less and science more. His re ligious views he could manage for himself ; what he wanted from a university were facts especially facts about mathematics, geology, and mining. Through the Oregon Land Company s office there was a constant drift of men from the Oregon mountains, men who were miners or interested in mining. They showed pieces of petrified wood from the petrified forests, agates picked up on the jeweled Oregon beaches, bits of quartz, nuggets, curious rocks that revived Bert s never-lost inter est in the secrets hidden in stones. Also, mining engineering paid. His one meeting with a suc cessful mining engineer whe had passed through Salem had impressed him with that fact. He had sent for literature from every university in the United States, and pored over it. Stanford, the new university about to open its doors in California, seemed best suited to his needs. It offered a good scientific course and HEEBEET HOOVEE 93 made a special appeal to boys who must work their way. Entrance examinations would be held in Portland. He decided on Stanford. But could he pass the examinations? "Bert s going to college this fall," said one Salem business man to another. "Well, the Oregon Land Company 11 miss him. He s pretty near the backbone of that office, I judge. B. S. Cook was telling me the other day they did n t know how they d get along without him." "I hear you re going to college, Bert," Mr. Williams, a banker, said one afternoon when Bert came into the bank. "I am, Mr. Williams." "Well, I wish you d try to get Fred interested in going with you. He ought to be going to col lege, but he does n t seem to take much interest in it." "I 11 be glad to do what I can, Mr. Williams." He did not know Fred Williams very well. Fred, the banker s son who went to school and to parties, who stood on the street corner with his own crowd, jingling the loose money in his pockets of his good clothes, while Bert toiled over maps and blue-prints in the land-office, naturally was not one of his friends. But the university was a subject with which to begin conversation; Fred bored at the prospect, Bert diplomatically rousing 94 THE MAKING OF enthusiasm. And they went together to Portland for the entrance examinations. Fred was a good fellow. He made friends eas ily in the smoking-car, lounging confidently at ease, well dressed, smoking with the skill of long practice his good cigarettes. Bert listened to the talk and felt himself very much out of it. It was a glimpse of a world to which he was not accus tomed ; he was at a disadvantage. He sat isolated in the crowd, unnoticed, silently observing. Be neath the surface impressions that he accumu lated a substratum of his mind added up again his own equipment. Three years in the academy had given him the equivalent of two years of high school. He had gone through two books of geometry and done much miscellaneous reading by himself. The land-office had given him busi ness training. He had about eight hundred dol lars in cash. If only he could pass the entrance examination he knew he could get through the university somehow. Fred was accustomed to traveling. He knew his way about Portland very well indeed. He stepped into the right hotel bus, joked with the driver, greeted the hotel clerk by name, and went out after supper, secure in his years of schooling, leaving Bert feverishly accumulating names and dates from a history book. Next day they faced the examination. Pro- HERBERT HOOVER 95 f essor Swain, a big man with a warm, kindly man ner, was encouraging, but the questions he asked appalled Bert. The boy sat dumbfounded before a problem in geometry that revealed heights of mathematics he had never glimpsed. It must be solved, but how! He set his teeth and bent over it; his mind roused its every energy to combat; his muscles hardened, and the world became a rhomboid bisected laterally by unmanageable lines. Professor Swain s hand on his shoulder was an earthquake shock. "What seems to be the trouble?" Two ques tions, an answer, and his ignorance stood revealed. He had studied only two books of geometry ; this , was an original problem based on the fourth book. "Come to my hotel this evening. Mrs. Swain and I should like to talk to you." He went, and he was self-possessed, quiet, and in the depths of his mind still determined. There were nearly four months before the university opened. Four months; two books of geometry. But he would fail, if he failed, still fighting. There were the barn attic and all the hours of the night. He said little, replying courteously to Pro fessor Swain s questions and being polite to Mrs. Swain, a pleasant lady whose composed manner and fashionable bangs gave her an air of sophisti cation. "Could I take the examinations again later, Professor Swain? I want to try it again." 96 THE MAKING OF He returned to Salem that night and on the tele graph wires above the train a message traveled to Uncle John : Passing through Salem to-morrow afternoon. Cannot stop. Please meet train to discuss your nephew s entrance Stanford. On the station platform in two hurried moments Professor Swain gave Uncle John the verdict : "Bert is not properly equipped to enter the uni versity. He lacks two books of geometry, and he cannot pass in English. But tell him to make up as much as he can and to come to Stanford in September. He is the kind of boy the university wants, and Stanford will make concessions to get him. He may have to enter with conditions to make up, but we will see that he enters. You have a nephew to be proud of, Dr. Minthorn." "Bert is a good boy," Uncle John admitted. "I will give him your message, Professor Swain. I am indebted to you for your courtesy and interest." He returned to the office and found Bert filing letters. "You can leave that and go home and study, Bertie," he said. "After this, take all the time you need from the office. Professor Swain wants you to make up two books of geometry and English." Life became a series of geometrical proposi- HERBERT HOOVER 97 tions. Bert ate, drank, breathed geometry, and when sleep overcame him in the morning hours he dreamed geometry. The text-books accompanied him to the office, to the dinner-table, and back to the barn attic after supper. Fred Williams, too, had failed to pass the math ematics test, and his father offered to take Bert s Highland Addition lot off his hands for the money invested in it, if he would coach Fred in geometry. The money was a small addition to the hoard with which he was going out into the world. He was seventeen, a man now, ready to follow unaided the tradition of university education that had begun half a century earlier when Grand mother Minthorn was left a widow, with Huldah a little girl beside her. He said nothing about this to Fred Williams, that debonair companion who was lavishly buying new suits and striped shirts in anticipation of college life, but he did not forget it. He was to be reminded of it again on the August day when they left together for California. "I often think that Huldah would like to see thee now," Grandmother Minthorn said when he stooped to kiss her soft, withered cheek. "Thee has always been a good boy, Bertie. I shall pray that thee does a conscientious work." "Thee shall have cause to be proud of me some day, Grandmother," he promised, with a smile whimsical enough to cover his emotions. It was 98 HERBERT HOOVER not an emotion that a grown man cared to display, either to himself or to another college man like Fred, whom, when the train had started, he fol lowed into the new world of the smoking-car. CHAPTER III TWO nights and a day on the train. It was a long journey, and for the first time Bert Hoover knew the sensation of sleeping in a Pull man berth, the pillows quivering beneath his head and the dark forests racing past the window. He ate in a dining-car, uncomfortable with a menu- card in his hand and a waiter at his elbow. Fore tastes of the strange life to which he was going; glimpses of the many little difficulties before him. 3 Canons and forests, peaks beyond peaks of the Coast Range mountains, shifted and wheeled about the circling, climbing train. Little brown stations, lonely between depths of tree-tops and heights of rocky cliffs. Mount Shasta s snow- tipped summit, gaunt against an orange evening sky. Night, and the mirrored windows reflected the yawning passengers, while a negro struggled with swaying green curtains, making up the berths. A new world; he was not yet able to move freely in it, but he would be some day. Morning on the level fertile lands of the Sacra mento Valley in California. Interminable yellow wheat-fields, vast expanses on which the great 99 100 THE MAKING OF granaries were small black dots. A gray mist over gray water; that was the edge of Suisun Straits, an arm of San Francisco Bay. Fisher men s huts among the tules; long weed-tangled piers that were fish-traps; sea-gulls circling above them. Then Oakland, a ferry-boat larger than any house, the cold sea- wind against his face, and endless miles of San Francisco Bay with islands and tall-masted ships; then the Ferry Building, and Market Street opening impressively before him. San Francisco was a bewildering metropolis, a confusion of buildings and people and carriages and rattling cable-cars. Policemen directed him and Fred Williams ; with relief, his manly dignity not destroyed by any mistake, he found himself on the train carrying him away from it all, toward Stanford University at last. The train ran through a golden, happy country. Little yellow poppies fluttered thick upon the right-of-way; beyond them wheat-fields again, golden in the August sun, spattered with the shade of low-spreading oaks ; and close at hand, against the deep blue sky, the soft, round, treeless foot hills of California, yellow-gold and golden-brown in the midsummer drought, rolling up to the dark redwood-crested mountain wall that stood between the bay and the ocean. Little towns, gay with geraniums and marigolds and palms, went past; HERBEET HOOVEB 101 slender lines of young eucalyptus glittered green beside the track, and silvery-blue at the edge of the land the waters of San Francisco Bay fol lowed mile after mile, refusing to be left behind. This was a country bewildering in its beauty, its softness, its luxuriance, a country such as he had never imagined. "Menlo Park! All out for Stanford Univers ity I" Beside the track stood the big vehicle labeled "University Buss." The word did not trouble Bert. Spelling interested him not at all. But later it was to give him many an anxious hour. The driver estimated the two boys with a shrewd eye. "You fellows going to Stanford? Buildings ain t finished yet, you know; you can t stay there." "But we re going to Adelante Villa." "All right, hop in. I 11 take you s far s the university. A dusty road, paralleling the railway track, led them past stubble-fields and vineyards. As they crossed a wooden bridge over a deep dry arroyo, the driver motioned toward the left. "That s the tree the ranch is named for Palo Alto Spanish for tree," he explained. The redwood stood beside the railroad bridge just beyond them, towering into the August blue, a noble enough tree, but not so splendid in its 102 THE MAKING OF branches as the firs he had left in Oregon. This new country hadn t everything. Just beyond the bridge great gates stood open the university doubtless. But the team went by. "The Stanford residence is up there/ com mented the driver. "The boy is in a vault near the house, but the new mausoleum is about finished in them trees yonder. " To the left ran the single track and beyond it stretched the shining grain-fields toward a hor izon misty in the heat. Bert noted a wooden- canopied bench beside the track in the wilderness of yellow. "Palo Alto. Train stops on signal," said a sign. Just there the horses turned sharply to the right and headed up a long straight ave nue through a grove of pines and eucalyptus. Novel little fan palms were being set out along this avenue. Far ahead, beyond the arboretum, lay the shining fields again, and there Bert could see, low upon the sun-scorched plain, the creamy yel low walls and glistening red-tiled roofs of an arcaded building whose towers rose bright against the curving lines of misty blue and green hills. "That there s the university," said the driver, pointing ahead with his whip. "Over there, to the left, that big building, is the dormitory, but it ain t ready. The white barns, up there to the right, is the stock-farm finest race-horses in the HERBERT HOOVER 103 world raised right there; that s the governor s hobby. Adelante Villa s up beyond there. You boys going to stay there, you say? Nice place, I hear. Haunted, though. They say the woman that s buried in the dooryard spooks round at night. Some of the professors are staying there with their wives. They re Eastern folks, but they re all right so far s I know. Well, here we are. The ride 11 cost you one dollar apiece. So- long, boys. Good luck." The university ! He stood in a litter of chipped sandstone and looked at it. A quadrangle of cor ridors, Mission-arched, rising above piles of lum ber and vats of cement. Busy workmen spread ing the cement floor beneath the arches, climbing ladders, shouting directions. The sound of ham mers and saws, of sand gritting on shovels, of the clanging, puffing locomotive that ran on spur- tracks laid through the grain-fields. Everywhere activity, creating, building toward the future, hopeful, hurrying. No traditions, no past. Only to-day, and to-day flung back in the race toward to-morrow. America. Stanford ! He thrust his hands deep into his pockets, and his jaw set hard. No obstacle of examination would keep him out of all this. He was here, and he was going to stay. Adelante Villa was a large old house smothered in dense vines and damp with the shade of 104 THE MAKING OF cypresses. Its lawn was a tangle of neglected weeds in which flowers struggled to survive, and the steps creaked when stepped upon. In the dim hall a bright-eyed, flushed young woman welcomed the boys with an ease before which Bert s awk wardness was dumb. She was Miss Pearson, who was to coach him in English until Stanford opened and Adelante Villa became a girl s boarding- school. l Come right in, boys ! So this is the Mr. Hoo ver to whom I Ve been writing! I m glad to see you; Professor Swain s been telling me about you. He and Mrs. Swain are staying with us until their house is finished. You 11 meet them at dinner. This is your room. It isn t quite ready yet; the blankets haven t come. But we are getting the house in order as rapidly as possi-- ble. You won t mind a few discomforts just at first, I know." No, he did not mind a few discomforts. When she had left him in the high, old-fashioned room he unpacked his bag, put books and paper on the rickety marble-topped table, and, choosing the most solid chair, sat down to attack his geometry. His first job was to pass those entrance examina tions. Miss Fletcher coached him in mathematics, Miss Pearson in English. He worked hard at his HEEBEET HOOVEE 105 books, but he learned much besides in the intervals of study. He helped those two young, enthusi astic Eadcliffe women struggle with the problems of making the old house habitable ; he took care of Jim, the horse, and drove the two miles to Menlo for groceries and candles and the mail. In the evenings there were talks with Professor Swain, that big, hearty, friendly man, and with his wife and Professor Anderson, of the English Department, all from the East and all laughing at their difficulties and enthusiastic about the new university. It was Mr. Anderson s idea that no student should be graduated from college without being able to express himself well in written Eng lish. Bert was uneasy about this. Composition was so much harder than mathematics. There was a memorable visit to President Jordan at Escondite Cottage, east of the buildings, where he felt the fire and idealism of the great man who was creating Stanford. Unobtrusive, speaking very little, Bert listened and watched and knew that he was part of a big, democratic undertaking. September. He passed in mathematics, failed in English. He was not interested in English, though he had tried to learn enough to earn the necessary credits in it. But he could enter Stan ford, majoring in mechanical engineering, with the English conditions to work off later. So that 106 THE MAKING OF was all right. Because Laurie Tatum, his guard ian, lived there, he registered from Springdale, Iowa. He moved from Adelante Villa to Encina Hall, on the campus. The huge empty building echoed the sound of his feet on the corridor floors, still sticky with varnish. He was the first college man to sleep there, lighting his way to a shivery bed with a candle, for the lights were not yet in and the red blankets woven from the wool of Senator Stanford s own sheep were still in the crates. In the mornings he was awakened by the clanging triangle, calling the workmen from their blankets in the bunk-house to the last feverish labor of finishing the university buildings. Arch upon arch the long corridors stretched beneath their red-tiled roofs. The curving shadows made a pattern on the sunny pavements. Opening, closing, opening again beside him as he walked, the archways disclosed beyond the low green of the vineyard and the gold of stubble the gracious lines of the hills against the sapphire and pearl of the California sky. Out by the white barns of the stock-farm eucalyptus trees shook silvery leaves in the morning sunlight, and the red wheels of Senator Stanford s buggy made a spot of color as he drove on his morning round of inspection. It was very good to be alive on those mornings ; very good to be alive and in Stanford. HERBERT HOOVER 107 Bert had a job in the registrar s office now and already students were coming to register. Well- dressed, care-free, debonair young men with fathers in tow, they stopped at his desk and looked at him in surprise. "I didn t come here to talk to you!" He saw himself in their eyes, a country boy with a bad complexion, in a cheap ready-made suit. "I m here to register you, and I m going to do it. Name, please?" They registered. At any rate, he did not care for their opinion of him. He knew his own handicaps and his own abilities. He knew what he wanted and that he would get it. This concealed hardihood of purpose he shared with other students who registered men six, eight, nine years older than he, who, like him, had worked hard for the privilege of studying at Stanford. He understood these men and they understood him. He would have friends enough. There was a growing stir of life in the rawly new buildings. Workmen took down the last scaf folding, removed the guarding planks from the dry cement pavements, spread the last bit of asphalt in the great three-acre quadrangle. Carpenters finished woodwork and hung doors, in an odor of fresh varnish and newly cut wood. The professors families were moving into the row of houses that rose gaunt from the cracked adobe across the field from the big dormitory. Ten 108 THE MAKING OF houses there were and some one called The Bow the " Decalogue. " More students were finding quarters in Enema; a piano was installed, tables and chairs appeared in the dining-room. Strange faces multiplied. In the office he knew the fac ulty s perplexities : one hundred students had been expected ; four hundred had come. On the eve of the great day when Stanford was to open the vast lobby of Encina was a blur of people. Three hundred young college men, try ing their newly fledged wings of independence with timid bravado, thronged the great staircase and eddied in the swirling crowd below. Three hundred strange faces laughing, serious, beetle- browed, sunnily good-humored, many of them "bearded like the prof," bare heads, gray- capped heads, heads wearing derby hats ; suits of all sizes, styles, and colors, mixed and mingled before his gaze with a pandemonium of sound; high, nervous voices, gruff, low-toned greetings, scraps of talk < Hello, there, White Plains !" "Hello, yourself, Sacramento!" " not so bad. Dad 11 send me the furniture I " " getting a hundred a month from home. He s the son of Beneath -it all a ceaseless shuffle of feet, and from the piano in the second-floor alcove a crashing of chords, loud pedal down, and tenor and bass voices, sounding down the great stair-well : HEEBERT HOOVER 109 " There is a tavern in the town, in the town, And there my true love sits him down "But, fellows, we Ve got to get up a yell for to-morrow ! How s this Ye Gods ! Listen a minute, can t you?" Megaphoned voice between cupped hands: "Hey, fellows! Listen to this for a yell ! All together now ! "Wah hoo! Wah hoo! L! S! J! U! STANFORD!" A new world, strange, novel, bewildering. He stood silent, hands in his pockets, close to the cor ridor wall, like a stout little island in the wash of breakers. He looked at it all, an outsider, very much alone, unshaken but isolated. He had never sung with a bunch of fellows nor heard a piano played like that nor slapped a man familiarly on the shoulder ; it was not in him to stand up before a crowd and yell through cupped hands at it, com pelling it to listen. He was a world in himself, rounded and self-centered, but the penalty for such completeness was the ache of loneliness that he doggedly concealed. Then out of the whirl of strangeness suddenly came a face that he recognized, and a heavy, low voice that hailed him. "Hello, there, Bert Hoover!" 110 THE MAKING OF "Hello!" he responded. It was Henry Pierce, son of the richest wheat-grower in Yamhill County, Oregon. They had not known each other in Salem, but the high-school boy had often noted the real-estate boy on his speeding bicycle. The gulf between their far-separated lives was bridged now ; they were both sons of Stanford. "Glad to see you down here, Bert. Looks like things 11 happen, huh?" "Yes." See you to-morrow, old man ; folks waiting for me. Come around to seventy-five if you can." "Thanks. I will." Ten o clock. He joined the line waiting for candles at Mr. Fesler s office, and went soberly to bed. To-morrow work would begin. Twenty dollars a month for board and lodging ! He would have to make money. Couldn t use up all his principal; he d need some money when he grad uated. At least he must be sure of his four years. Surely the professors would have odd jobs that would help out. He wouldn t wait on table : that was for fellows who had not had busi ness experience. Well, it was great to think of all there was ahead of him. Conditions to work off bother English, anyhow! Good fellow, Henry Pierce ; worth while knowing him. He blew out the candle. Night came softly in at the window of Room 38. Stars, and flat wide HERBERT HOOVER 111 fields, and a dark clump of oaks. The big build ing was all astir around him, like a great hotel. Many feet went along the porch past his window and down the uncarpeted hallways, doors slammed, voices answered voices. Faintly from an upstairs corridor a long way off came the full- throated yell, "Wall hoo! Wah hoo!" It was as though an owl had barked. With a contented grin, Hoover, Stanford 95, rolled over in the darkness and slept. Meadow-larks singing in the grain-fields awoke him to the opening day. He washed gingerly in water dark brown in color and smell, for some thing was still wrong with the water-supply. Breakfast eaten, he wandered, curious, over to the Quad. The sun was now warm in a cloudless sky. From the asphalt pavement of the vast en closure a tarry odor rose to mingle with the smell of varnish and tar-weed in the fresh air of that October morning. At the west entrance decor ators from the city were putting the finishing touches to the speaker s stand. Palms and bam boo filled the closed archway and masked the lum ber ; wagon-loads of grape-vines heavy with clus tered fruit, purple, green, hung from the rails. From under the keystone of the great arch a paint ing of young Stanford looked down upon these 112 THE MAKING OF activities in his memory. Bert thought of the great museum building, now ready to house won derful collections, the nucleus of which were things that this youngster had gathered. He remembered certain childish collections in Iowa, and shrugged his shoulders. Workmen in over alls were setting out hundreds of camp chairs. The professors hastened up and down The Kow in their shirt-sleeves, carrying pails of water from the one tank that supplied all their houses. The atmosphere was alert with expectancy. By half-past nine wagons and carriages were driving into the quadrangle. At ten, special trains from San Francisco ran in on the freight tracks and discharged their crowds in front of the main entrance. At half -past ten, every seat was filled ; a solid acre of people waited in the hot sun shine, many hundreds more walked up and down under the arches. Camera men from the city newspapers were erecting tall tripods or climbing to vantage-points on the roofs. The professors appeared, serene and composed, their shirt-sleeves hidden by immaculate coats. Great and powerful men were on that platform, men who had come to do honor to the new university, to its pioneer class, yes, to do honor to him, Bert Hoover, mem ber of that class ! He found a seat among those reserved for stu dents, a hard seat in the broiling sun, so far from HERBERT HOOVER 113 the stage that he could not hear clearly what was said. For an hour he sat there, without moving, watching those men rise, and speak, and sit down again. He saw President Jordan, young, keen, even-voiced, talking beneath the shade of an umbrella held by Professor Swain. Both men were tall and impressive. Already he felt that both were his friends. The big professor then held the umbrella over little Dr. Martin Kellogg, president of the University of California, at Berk eley. Of course Berkeley was their rival. Bert grinned at the sight, but not for long. Senator Stanford rose, with Mrs. Stanford beside him. Senator Stanford ! the man who had made pos sible this university, the man who was giving this great opportunity to four hundred boys and girls. Senator Stanford himself had once been poor; by his own efforts he had made himself a multi millionaire. He had built a railroad that made the Pacific Coast part of America; millions had been poured into his hands. Now, with his only son no longer living to be blessed with this wealth, he was pouring it out to the world. The chil dren of California shall be our children." Somehow Senator Stanford and his wife, stand ing there in memory of the dead boy, to give all that might have been his to other less fortunate children, became linked up with Bert Hoover s own life, with his own ambitions. Hard work, 114 THE MAKING OF thrift, accomplishment and service. This was the pioneer heritage, the American spirit. Get much in order to give greatly. In this lavishly rich world the strong individual, industrious, hard-willed, deserved and won great wealth and gave it back in ways that served all humanity. This was the real success. Before him on the palm-walled platform, beneath the sandstone arches and the red-tiled roofs softly glowing against the bright blue sky, Senator Stanford stood as the living embodiment of a noble, suc cessful life. Work, success, service, the Amer ican spirit, the spirit of Stanford ! Some words that Dr. Jordan had said that day rushed back into his mind. "Theirs is the power to live after death, working and shaping benefi cently in the minds of many, keeping their hands mightily on human affairs after the flesh has been dust for years. " Yes, death did not end service; if you accomplished enough in life you could send its effects on after you, as this man was doing. Suddenly he thought of his father, stopped so early in his work, yet leaving that little fund from the business and the insurance, which his mother had striven so hard to save for his education and a good part of which Laurie Tatum still held for him. In their own small way they too had had that power ; they were living after death with him as he sat there in the glowing Quad with his big HERBERT HOOVER 115 chance before him, his own efforts to be joined by theirs. No, it was not alone the Stanfords who were helping him to his training for a successful life. Upon his small affairs was the touch of hands that had been dust for years. As the quick tears, which bothered him some times, came to his eyes, the students surged to their feet and together with one voice, they woke the echoes of the arched corridors : "Wah hoo! Wah hoo! L! S! J! U! STANFORD!" The last sharp sound of the repeated yell smote the air. The crowd rose, moved slowly, eddied into groups. Bert Hoover, making for the shade of the corridor, ran into Henry Pierce and Sam Collins. They hailed him joyously : "Come on, Hoover! now for the grub!" They broke into a trot, headed for the clamor ing bunch at Encina. "Grub!" they shouted to others as they ran. But their hearts were high and free. They were full-fledged college men. Stanford belonged to them ! And they to it. Out of the many-colored current of college life he took what he wanted. Mathematics, with his friend Professor Swain ; he liked both of them and he registered in three classes of Math. Wood working in the airy brick shop building back of the 116 THE MAKING OF Quad, with Buchanan, the foreman. And linear and free-hand drawing, because Professor Gale required these of his students in mechanical engi neering. As yet there was no geology, but the register said that Dr. John Casper Branner, State Geologist of Arkansas, was coming the following semester, just after New Year s. Bert had set his heart on geology. When Dr. Branner should arrive he would be in his first class, if that were possible. Meanwhile in the lobby of Encina, under the arches of the moonlit Quad, up in the fellows rooms after dinner, he watched the formless mass of Stanford students slowly becoming an organ ization. He saw a bit of society in the process of making itself. Groups formed slowly. The very nature of Stanford, being pioneering, was democratic. Freshmen and professors labored together, with inadequate materials and high hopes, to build a new university. Many of the profs roomed in the hall. There had not yet come the leisure and plenty that develop class distinctions; the atmos phere was one of immediate, practical effort. Pragmatic. The new word, expressing the one contribution to philosophy that blossomed from the hard experience of the American pioneer, ex pressed also the spirit of Stanford and the phil osophy of Bert Hoover. Truth and right were HERBERT HOOVER 117 not abstractions ; they were qualities of the prac tical thing, the thing that " worked. " Theories, ideals, plans, machines were submitted to the same test. Were they of immediate practical service? If they were, they were right. Hard work was right; thrift was right; individual freedom, indi vidual initiative were right. Still, though slowly, the groups formed. The beginnings of the glee-club were there, in the bunch of fellows who hung around the piano, and strummed banjos and mandolins in the moonlit corridors of the Quad. There was the athletic crowd, already kicking and batting balls around in the grain-fields in front of the scaffolding of the new gymnasium, and wondering if there would be contests with the quarter-century-old college across the bay. The "angels" of Roble dormi tory were exerting a social influence. Already the fellows in Encina had proposed an evening party and sent an invitation to Roble. But the girls, learning that the boys were practising with piano and violin in anticipation of dancing, felt that such festivity would not be in accord with the Stanford spirit. "It will get into the papers, and people will think we >re in a hurry for such things, " the "angels" decided, and sent a note declining Encina Hall s invitation. Whereupon, after an indignation meeting, the boys retorted with a curt 118 THE MAKING OF notification that owing to circumstances over which they had no control the invitation was with drawn. All these things Bert Hoover observed, loung ing about the halls, silent and unobtrusive as ever, hands in pockets and shoulders hunched a little. In the afternoons before dinner he drifted into the Den of Iniquity, Room 20, where sounds of howling mirth or crashing furniture testified that the fellows were raising Cain as usual. He walked in quietly, settled into a comfortable chair, and picked up one of Nat Ellery s Eastern papers. No matter how the noise surged about him, he could read without hearing it. Come out of it, you darned dig!" said Bud Frankenfield, punching him affectionately. "You 11 dry up and blow away." "Well, you do the blowing all right, Bud," he replied, "but I guess you 11 never dry up." And he grinned while the others yelled. Then he sat cheerfully absorbing the New York and European news, with one ear open to the arguments around him. "I tell you it is n t right, fellows. We ought to kick about it. Look at the hot-cakes seventeen deep in a tin dish. The bottom ones a hog d turn up his nose to look at em. And that tomb stone pudding four times a week. Makes me sick!" Zion, gesticulating from his seat on the HERBERT HOOVER 119 table-corner, spoke with passion. "I say, let s do something about it ! We re paying, are n t we, for" Nat Ellery, slim, quick and high-strung, struck in: Oh, shut up, Zion ! Where s your gratitude f Did you ever get beans cooked as many ways before? Hey! there s the gong!" Pell-mell, they tumbled out of the Den of Iniquity and were swallowed in the clamor of the dining-room. The food was poorly cooked and badly served, but Bert ate very little, anyway. Seldom speaking, he broke into a low chuckle now and then at the repartee that flew across the table. But when the uncertain lights failed suddenly and baked potatoes began to fly, he dodged them equably and took no part in the rough-house. What was the sense of wasting energy in throwing food around f The corridors of the Quad, beautiful in the misty twilight, murmured with the low talk and lagging footsteps of couples waiting there. Down toward Roble a mandolin tinkled sadly and a voice rose plaintively, There s a secret in my heart, sweet Marie!" The soft winter air, moist with a memory of first rain and fragrant with young grass and eucalyptus trees, blew across the open fields. Oh, it was great to be alive; to be alive and in Stanford ! 120 THE MAKING OF The new year opened auspiciously, for with it came the heralded geologist from Arkansas. Dr. Branner proved to be another big fellow, like Jordan and Swain, thickly bearded, with an ex pression that reminded Bert of an eagle. He brought with him several young men who had been working under him on the state survey of Ark ansas. These men registered at Stanford for graduate work under Branner. Bert saw several of them at work installing the geological labora tory in the rooms next to President Jordan and the registrar. He had gone to Dr. Branner and told him of his desire to register in geology. Dr. Branner s class in Geology 1 called for five hours a week and freshmen were welcome. Bert dropped drawing and plunged, delighted, into this fascinating new acquaintance with the earth. Its secrets were opened to him: he saw disclosed the vast epochs of time, the aeons of nature s blind, wasteful endeavor to create a world and people it. It was annoying to feel languid and spiritless when there was so much work to be done. The world about him was full of energy, expressed in lush grass, in glistening little new leaves on every tree and shrub. Every prospect pleased and only he was feeling mean in the February sunshine ; his skin showed a kind of rash, he was uncomfortable, even listless. One afternoon, wondering what was the matter, he went over to the men s gym- HEEBEET HOOVEE 121 nasium and asked the physical director for advice. The doctor smiled indulgently. "You are evidently a nature-lover, like Pro fessor Griggs. There was a paper on the door this morning saying * Professor Griggs will not meet his classes this morning. Fact is, he is suf fering like yourself from rhustoxicodendronitis. " The director smiled again at the blank look on the freshman s face. "Poison-oak, that is. Take this and apply it to the places that itch." Bert took the medicine and went over to Encina, meadow-larks laughing at him as he went. In Eoom 38 he anointed himself dutifully and then, out of sorts with life generally, he crawled into bed in the uncurtained alcove. Nex,t morning he did not get up and finally the doctor came in to see him. The rash was now everywhere on his lanky body. This time there were no smiles and no long words. "Measles!" ejaculated the doctor. Ten days later Bert emerged, blinking, from the room whence his room-mate had unceremoni ously fled. He was feeling well enough, but his eyes were acting queerly. At the doctor s urging he went up to the city and was fitted to glasses. "You probably won t have to wear them long," the oculist encouraged him. This meant money gone for misfortunes. But he was doing pretty well with the agency for the 122 THE MAKING OF Red Star Laundry, in Encina. At first he had to gather the laundry bags and to distribute the paper-wrapped parcels, but now he was getting this done for him and his business was to keep the accounts up to the minute. Collections were not so very difficult, except where the boys had been up to the city and there was no money for him despite the goodly sums entered to the account of " laundry " in the expense accounts sent home. " Lo, Bert! Going up for the game?" "If I can manage it, you bet ! The first football game, the first time Stanford s fresh new cardinal would wave above a contest field in glorious defiance of California s blue-and- gold ! He could not afford to go, but he could not afford to miss it. A dollar and a quarter for rail way fare; ten cents for the street cars; a ticket to the bleachers ; luncheon at a cafe ; a bit of red ribbon for his buttonhole; dinner and the the ater party afterward five dollars would be gone, a week s board and room. He had had no time to watch the team practice in the spring dusk, but the very air he breathed was electric with the spirit of this contest. The first game ! Could he, a loyal Stanford man, stay away from that? No. He saw the special train swing up the spur-track opposite Encina and the committee busily decorating it with cardinal bunting and he HERBERT HOOVER 123 was in the cheering, riotous mob that poured from the train at Valencia Street Station late that March morning and down into the noisy confusion of invaded San Francisco. He swung on the run ning-board of the cable-car that crawled up the Haight Street hills through miles of gray wooden houses to the Olympic Club grounds opposite the park, and in the pushing, surging crowd he got through the gates and found his place in the stand. "Rah! Rah! Rah! Rah ! Rah ! Rah ! Rah ! Rah ! STANFORD!" His yell was part of one roar of sound from four hundred throats, drowning in his ears the derisive Ha ! Ha ! Ha ! " of California. Over head the blue sky, the March sun beating down obligingly on thousands of young heads, on hun dreds of banners, cardinal and blue-and-gold. A yelling, hooting, cheering, stirring crowd. There on the field Stanford s own, Stanford men, ready to fight for Stanford against a team averaging fifteen pounds heavier. " Great day, is n t it?" "Fine." "I wonder why they don t get started." Conference on the field. Captain Foulks of California, Captain Whittemore of Stanford, heads together. A pause. A restlessness 124 THE MAKING OF spreading. The college yells again. And again! But questions running along the tiers of seats. "Is something wrong? Why don t they start ?" "Isn t it time the game began? " "Half an hour late already. What s the mat ter?" "Funny, isn t it, Bert?" "Yes." "What do you think s happened?" The answer was spreading slowly, from seat to seat along the packed rows. "Nobody thought to bring a football ! "Well, wha d y think about that, Bert?" A sound like a sigh went over the massed crowds; they were settling down to wait the hour, sixty long minutes, for the lazy cable-cars to bring up v the ball from Market Street. "I think we need some sort of a system." Oh, well, Bert, you know they ve got too much to think about. "Yes. That s the reason." But even his clear sanity was lost when the game began. Turmoil. Shouting. Fearful suspense running along the nerves like a chill. Yell after yell of triumph shaking the air. Victory! Victory for Stanford! Victory for the Stanford spirit! Fourteen to ten for Stan ford ! Drag home your blue-and-gold in the dust, HERBERT HOOVER 125 Berkeley. The young university has shown what your quarter-century-old haughtiness was worth ! Stanford! Wow! Hoarse, exhausted with shouting yet shouting still, intoxicated with the crowd s intoxication, he marched with the fellows down the hills and into Market Street. The town was theirs, the world was theirs, the universe was theirs. Fourteen to ten, for Stanford ! Dinner at a restaurant rocking with noise. "The Spider and the Fly" at the Bush Street Theatre. Then the special train at midnight, along with the happy team. Five dollars nearly gone, careful little figures in the account book. But it was worth it. Glory, it was worth it ! Five days later Senator and Mrs. Stanford came home from Washington. The senator s red buggy wheels flashed once more in the sunlight as he made his morning rounds of the stock-farm. The word rang through Encina : I 11 tell you, fellows ! Let s give them a serenade to-night." Mandolins and guitars twanged to tuning thumbs. The tramp of four hundred feet on the road between the vineyard and the windows of the Stanford house softly yellow through the foliage ahead. The windows grew larger, sharp-edged; their light dimly illumined the wide veranda. "Sh! Shut up, there! Want to give us 126 THE MAKING OF away!" the leader s whisper hissed through the shuffling crowd. "Keep still, can t you! Eeady now? All right. Now, all together We 11 rush, we 11 rush, we 11 rush the ball along ; A kick, a shove, we 11 send it through the throng." Bravely the mandolins, the banjos, and the guitars beat out the tune and loudly rang the voices, awakening the rabbits and the quail in the arboretum. Bert did not sing ; he had never tried to sing, but there under the stars he lifted up his voice with the others as he had lifted it in town, for he was a Stanford man. * * While we are shouting for Stanford ! The dark veranda was suddenly flooded with radiance from a ceiling light and there in the door way was the gray-haired senator, dignified and stately, with a voice that was a little unsteady: "Thank you, gentlemen. I thank you. Mrs. Stanford and I wish to We d be glad to have you come in." They walked soberly and respectfully through the hall, into the library. Two hundred fellows, they almost filled it. Bert backed against the wall and Lester Hinsdale backed against him. In a hollow square, three boys deep, the serenaders stood, lining the walls. California s children, come to fill an empty place. The senator stood rather helplessly before them, clearing his throat. HERBERT HOOVER 127 Then Mrs. Stanford, in her rich black dress with its touches of purple, looking as though she were about to cry, put out her hands : Oh, my dear young gentlemen ! We were just leaving Washington when the news came. I can t tell you how delighted we were to hear of the great victory in baseball!" A little shudder ran through the ranks, while two hundred minds cried silently, "FOOTBALL!" "And which is Mr. Clemans?" The moment ary coldness melted in enthusiasm. Twenty hands pushed forward the blushing full-back. The senator shook his hand ; Mrs. Stanford shook his hand and for an exciting moment seemed about to kiss him. Then, standing with a hand on the hero s shoulder, the senator spoke to his collective sons. He spoke gravely and earnestly, urging them all to practise just those virtues that had been preached to Bert Hoover since his earliest infancy. "And remember," he said, at the end: "upon the individual efforts of each of you mainly de pends your future success in life. All we can do for you is to place the opportunity within your reach. A generous education should be the birth right of every American citizen. The opportunity is yours ; it rests with you to grasp and improve it. Remember that life is above all practical. You are here to fit yourself for a useful career. 128 THE MAKING OF Mrs. Stanford and I want you to know that in each individual student we feel a parental interest." His words somehow were finer than on the open ing day, more impressive here in this quiet library. But his presence spoke louder than his words. He stood there a big, powerful man, a man hon ored by a place in his country s Senate, and he seemed the symbol of the practical worth of the virtues that he preached. He stood for an honest success, well earned ; great wealth, well used. Next month came the victory in the first game of baseball and the gleeful nightgown parade that celebrated it, a ghostly drill of triumph over the road to Palo Alto, now becoming a town. Bert was only mildly interested. The real concern of life lay in the chance of going to Arkansas with Newsom, one of the older men, and getting work on the survey, for all it would mean to him in experience and money. Commencement Week ar rived, an occasion of interest for the handful of seniors from other colleges, taking their degrees from the new university, but of little importance to the freshman hordes, headed for home. He had passed with flying colors in all the subjects he cared about, but English IB was left to drag behind him through another year. And now the Arkansas dream was coming true and he was off to work in geology and to be paid for it ! HERBERT HOOVER 129 At five o clock on a cloudy afternoon six months later he laid down the little hammer with which he had been driving neat rows of pins into a block of wood, straightened his bent shoulders, and sighed. The big room in the Geology Building was already dark ; only his shaded light poured a pool of radiance on his table ; the other boys had gone. It was time to get home to supper and geology text-books. He put away neatly the boxes of pins, the ham mer, the piece of wood almost covered with a cor rugated surface of steel points. To-morrow he could begin filling them in with clay. He d been pretty lucky, getting that Arkansas relief-map job. There were advantages in being poor. Take Kimball, now ; Kimball was as good in geol ogy as he was, but Kimball s father had money. Kimball hadn t got that chance to work all sum mer in Arkansas. Valuable experience it had been, too. Pretty soft, getting a job that taught him while it fed him ! A drizzling rain was beginning to dim and soften the lights of the Quad, making them misty yellow globes. Long silvery streaks of light lay on the shining black pavements under the arches. He walked rapidly, head bent, in that fast, tireless stride that left behind him any man who tried to keep up with his hill walks. The glimmering of Encina faded into the darkness behind him as 130 THE MAKING OF he swung down the long drive toward Palo Alto. In twelve months the wheat-fields by the railway tracks had become a little town, a scattered group of new houses connected by muddy roads and wandering narrow sidewalks. He lived there now, in Romero Hall, a furnished house rented and managed cooperatively. Eeturning to Stanford that fall to find the cooking at Encina no better and the price raised to $28.50 a month, he had quietly helped to organize Eomero Hall. The boys were already eating in the dining- room. He flung his cap at the hall rack, ran a hand through his hair, and slipped into his place. DeLos Magee was listening tolerantly to a row about football; Frank Drumheller, the Wildcat from Walla Walla, pounded the table in his earn estness, while Frank Nash and Ajax Brown both talked at the same time, caring less to be heard than to express their opinions. Frank Nash was a rich man s son who courted the reputation of a sport. Yes, decidedly there were advantages in being poor. Just the same, it was a good thing to be a mixer. Strange that a fellow could n t break out of his shell more easily; his mind worked quickly enough inside it ; it was only in expressing himself that he felt awkward, tied down by some thing intangible. His abstemious meal finished, he slid back from the table. HERBERT HOOVER 131 "Hoover, why the devil don t you eat more?" Fred Williams demanded. "Fatten up ; put some flesh on that skeleton of yours." "I use my food for high-class tissue, Fred." He stretched his angular, loose-jointed body, put his feet in another chair, and leaned back quietly for a little amusement. He knew the idiosyncra sies of that Romero crowd, held together by the one common need of comfortable living outside of Encina. Nothing was more fun than to get them started by a word or two and then sit back and listen. "Well, you Daffodil Poet, how are you getting along with Barrack-room Ballads?" They were, off. Edward Maslin Hulme, writer of delicate lyrics, started at the touch of the flick ing remark. "You rock-digger, your soul s calcined by your intimate association with subterrestrial strata. What do you know about poetry? Kipling s a great poet the voice of the best English Chet Magee leaned forward: "Kipling s cal cined himself, with rotten British imperialism. If you re talking English poetry, talk Browning. " Charley Cram came in at that : "Yes, or Shelley. If you can show me anything in Browning that touches the lipe Bert thrust his hands into his pockets, slid far ther down on his backbone, and gave himself up to the fun of listening. 132 THE MAKING OF "Any quotation from the English poets is good," the Daffodil Poet declared, and was cheered by a burst of applause from the literary end of the table, mingled with antagonistic groans. "The only good English poet that ever lived was a Scotchman who knew good booze, " scoffed Fred Williams, the Dago-red expert. "What s the matter with Byron !" Frank Nash demanded, true to form as a sport. "The only English poem worth a damn is Don Juan." "Worth a damn is right," said Fred Burrows, but the Wildcat from Walla Walla was talking, too: "You fellows all make me sick. You re all mushy. No real two-gun man can read poetry without turning into a sissy. Two chairs tipped over backward; the Daffodil Poet and Tom Pom- eroy were restrained by peace-makers, and through the melee Sam Collins swore reproach fully at Bert. He got up. "Boys, why don t you read some real poetry made in America!" he said. "Whitcomb Riley, Walt Whitman, Joaquin Miller! America doesn t have to go to England for poets. We beat the English in poetry just as we beat em in government and beat em in fight He went down under the rush, four mad red- faced champions of English poetry on top of him. But valiantly he defended himself with good HERBERT HOOVER 133 American punches, and what did a few broken dishes and chairs matter? Gee, it was great to be alive! to be alive and a sophomore in Stan ford! Grinning, he emerged from the scrap. The fel lows liked him, when they thought of him at all. He picked up a chair or two, went into the hallway, and pulled on his cap. Upstairs there was a sound of feet, slamming doors, running water. One of the English champions was dressing to go to a dance. Bert would have liked to dance, but his very muscles balked at attempting it. Collins, coming through the hallway, clapped him on the shoulder. "Going to help me tackle those bills to-night? They re in one holy mess. Somehow I can t make those wholesalers total up their statements or send em on time, and there s two crates of festive eggs I got to chase down before I die." "Sure I will," he replied. "I Ve got to see a man on laundry business now, but I 11 be right back." The rain had ceased ; a star twinkled here and there amid banks of driven cloud. One street- lamp shed a doubtful light on Waverley Street, where the two-plank sidewalk offered a refuge from the mud. The shrill clamor of tree-toads sang tenor to the bass of frogs in the ditches ; the boards creaked beneath his quick step. In a pool 134 THE MAKING OF of darkness under an oak he stopped suddenly and stood alert. There was a sharp yell from the darkness ahead. The sound of a desperate, pant ing struggle. Curses. Cries of derisive triumph. "No you don t! Oh, you would, would you?" Dimly he saw four figures carrying away a fifth, like a scene in a melodrama. He slid quietly close to the tree trunk. A rush! No one had told him of it, but there it was. Those young Freshies were out after the Sophs, were they! Luckily he was wearing his work clothes and could put up a fight if they jumped him. He put his cap in his coat pocket; the boards creaked no more under his weight. In and out of the shadow, skirting mud-puddles, tangling his feet in cross-lot weeds, cautiously alert as an Indian, he followed the hilarious fresh men and their victim. Ah! Piles of lumber, heaps of shavings, the scaffolding of an unfinished house ! The freshmen disappeared in the black ness of the open doorway. Strange, muffled sounds, and grunts,, and joyous, exultant, laughter sounded within the thin walls. The four fresh men came out and did a silent war-dance of delight before they raced back on the way they had come. He stepped across the threshold and felt his way up unrailed stairs in the darkness. The floor of the upper room was covered with bound figures, writhing in sawdust among kegs of nails and scat- HERBERT HOOVER 135 tered tools. "Sst! It s me Bert Hoover, " he whispered, and the silence was like a shout. He felt for ropes, slashing them with his knife. Exclamations, curses, and threats followed the handkerchief gags from twenty sophomore mouths. " Those damn Freshies! Come on, fellows! Let s give em 1 No. We don t want to throw away our ad vantage. Lay low, and surprise em when they come back, he urged. "Bert s right, boys. If we keep still and wait f or > em They lay together in the pine-smell ing darkness, whispered tales of treachery and vows of revenge buzzing among them. "Sh! They re coming!" Feet in the grass. Feet on the lumber piles. Feet on the stairs. Silently Bert seized a freshman around the knees and brought him yelping down. And then pande monium. Wild yells, crashing bodies, rocking floors. Boot-soles in his face, hands in his hair. "Let go, you blamed fool! I m Ninety-five !" Friends, foes, one struggling mass. Fists landing somewhere, grunts. Outside, shrill yells of Fresh men raising the alarm. Ladders against the walls, windows blocked with fresh enemies. Gee, what a fight ! What a fight ! A freshman in his arms. Too close to strike. Straining muscles, heaving chest, gasps. Roll ing. Over, under, up again. Hanging on, teeth 136 THE MAKING OF set and then a sickening instant on a brink- balancing, swaying and over the edge. Ugh! He struck mud and shavings on the ground below. Breath gone. The weight of the Freshie on his chest. Yells of freshman triumph. Yells for help, and for ropes. The Sophs were overcome. A knee in his chest, a rope around his straining wrists. Come on, you Sophs ! The camera s waiting. You re going to have a picture of your selves, all made just for you!" " Won t you be beautiful in your pretty little ropes on the steps of Encina?" "Oh, naughty, naughty! Help me gag this chap, somebody. His language is n t nice, it 11 spoil the flash-light. Oh, you would bite, would you? Such a pretty little sophomore, too!" "Now, fellows! Bring em on to the bus!" Quietly, curved in the darkness, Bert loosened the knot at his ankles. A swift turn of his body, a straight, hard kick, a freshman howl lost in the uproar, and he was free. Running across the fields, dodging through gardens, over a fence, around a barn, and shaking with silent laughter he trotted down his own street and into Romero. "Good Lord, Bert! What s been the row?" Sam Collins gazed at him across a table littered with papers. He brushed the shavings from his coat with a hasty hand and slid into a chair. "Freshmen try- HERBERT HOOVER 137 ing to tie up the whole Pioneer Class. Great scrap. I just happened along in time- Collins leaned back and listened. Several years older than Bert, he too was working his way through college; he sold school supplies. It was easy to be natural and chummy with men like him. He understood a fellow. He didn t go in for dancing and girls, either ; he had a good hard grip on life. It was these facile, light-hearted, easy going fellows that made the old inhibitions close upon a man like a shell. Sam Collins was as easy to get along with as a professor. Dr. Branner, now he was like an old friend. And the new professor, J. P. Smith, who had come on to Stanford to teach paleontology he was a good chum on a camping trip. They had had good fun and learned a lot, too, on the trip to Pescadero in search of fossil shells ; another expe dition, this time to Ocean View, was already planned. Professors, and men like Collins and Kimball, were interested in the things that inter ested him; their minds ran in the same channels. Just the same, he was missing something by not being a better mixer; a man ought to be able to get both sides of college life. "Athletics are certainly picking up," said Col lins. "Now that Walter Camp s out here to coach the team there 11 be something doing in the game." 138 THE MAKING OF "Yes. Stanford s pretty busy these days. Baseball, football, debating clubs, concerts. It s all in a muddle, though. Student-body affairs ought to be organized. "Well, what can you do when the seniors and frats have got all the jobs! I don t like the fra ternity idea much, Bert. I m afraid it s bad for the democratic spirit of the university. The under-classmen are the real Stanford crowd. There aren t fifty upper-classmen, and yet they re running things because they brought in the fraternities." "No, that isn t it. The trouble is that they aren t running things. Everybody s starting something on his own hook; there isn t any co- \ ordination of activities. There ought to be some unified system, with a responsible head. Here the student body will be handling thousands of dol lars, and no one person responsible. Some crowds making money and some losing it, and no one knowing where it comes from or where it goes to. And there are a lot of enterprises worth while that don t pay in money. If there was a central clearing house, those that do make money could carry the others." "You re right about that, Bert." It was a big problem. Hundreds of students; scores of different groups among them. Activi ties rising spontaneously in all directions. The HERBERT HOOVER 139 classes of 95 and 96, sophomores and freshmen, the bulk of the university, a huge formless mass struggling blindly toward some form. Politics in the hands of the few upper-classmen who had come from old universities. No one else giving much attention to them. No coherent Stanford student body yet created. "Well, are we going to get at those Romero bills to-night?" The junior year began in mourning. Senator Stanford was dead. He had died in the summer, his going casting a gloom over the early vacation months during which the relief -map of Arkansas was finished, and clouding the joyful news that it had received a prize at the World s Fair at Chi cago. The summer had struggled under the blight of the panic of 93. Nineteen banks had failed in three days in Oregon; Uncle John Minthorri had been ruined. It was not a happy vacation, though Bert had found some interesting tertiary speci mens in the Oregon mountains and sent down to the university a collection of fossils found on the Astoria trail of the Wilkes expedition of the thirties. He opened the year with fifteen hours credits for summer work in geology. The panic has not touched his little inheritance, guarded faithfully by Laurie Tatum, but only a couple of hundred 140 THE MAKING OF dollars remained of it. However, the State of Arkansas had paid him well for his work on the map, and Dr. Branner promised him jobs in the laboratory. The new blacksmith shop had opened, too, offer ing a fascinating knowledge of metals and tools. "Dad" Peterson, silent and absorbed as himself, gazed at his first efforts from beneath bushy eye brows and offered one warning: "There s no use working nine hours at this, Hoover. I can t give credits for more than three hours." "Well, Dad, I 11 just credit myself with the other six," he replied cheerfully. After that the shop was his. He could use the treasured lathe whenever he wanted it; he was freely allowed expensive metals with which to work when the supply ran short, and other students, driven to foraging for them, brought from the ranch black smith bitter complaints that steel and iron myster iously vanished if he so much as laid them down. There was no more money for additional equip ment, hardly enough for running-expenses, in Stanford now. The estate was in litigation ; on Senator Stanford s death the United States Gov ernment had demanded the repayment of some millions of dollars lent by it to the railroad he had helped to build. If the Government won the suit, the university must close its doors; mean- HERBERT HOOVER 141 while it struggled on under an increasing load of debt, professors giving up part of their small salaries, students working shoulder to shoulder with them in the common danger and hope. Politics was in the air that year. The Stanford spirit was becoming coherent. It expressed itself suddenly in a consciousness on the part of the "barbs," the non-fraternity element, that the fra ternity groups were acting for themselves rather than for Stanford as a whole. The barbs were growing revolutionary. "That Psi is spelled wrong," said Bert Hoover, lounging one night in Sam Collins s room. "It ought to be spelled s-i-g-h." Yeh ! Why so, Hoover ? "Because, like Alexander the Great, they sigh because there are no more jobs or offices to con quer Collins looked up from his book. This matter of fraternity dominance had engaged his attention for some time ; he had talked to some of the faculty about it, and to Harvard and Yale graduates he met in the city. He was curious to know how they thought the system worked out in the older universities; was it abused politically as it had come to be at Stanford? "Hoover," he said, "how do you feel about this thing? Are you against a man simply be cause he s a frat man?" 142 THE MAKING OF Bert took his feet from the table and sat up. "No," he said, intensely. "It isn t that. I m against any man, frat or barb, who puts his own crowd ahead of the college. I m for the man, not for the bunch he belongs to. Look at the way things stand here. It isn t the fitness of a man for the job; it is n t even a matter of reward for services. It s simply to boost some fraternity by taking everything in sight. What we need is a spirit of service to the whole student body. I m against the fraternities simply because they use their organizations to keep the mass of the stu dents from getting a fair shake." "Hoover, come into the fight!" "All right, I will." Lester Hinsdale dropped in and welcomed the recruit with enthusiasm into a game in which he was already keenly interested. "But what we need also," said Bert, warming to the new activity, "is a real organization of student-body affairs. We 11 never get anywhere with anything at loose ends this way. We need" System ! completed Collins. * You organiza tion shark ! You d like to audit Stanford the way you audited Romero s grocery bills last year. Hoover would make a good treasurer for the stu dent body, Hinsdale." Of course, his lack of personal popularity was HERBERT HOOVER 143 a drawback to a political career. He would have to break down the shell that had grown so hard around him in Oregon, get out of it somehow. He was going every Sunday now to the informal evenings at Dr. Branner s, and getting along very well, prodding himself out of his habit of silence, helping to pass the steaming cups of choc olate that Mrs. Branner poured. He tried a few dance-steps with the boys in the parlor at Encina and grinned cheerfully when bystanders kidded him. I think it is good for a man to be a mixer, he said; "good in every w r ay." The spring was coming. Another year and he would be leaving Stanford. Now for the big fight, the election of student-body officers for his senior year. Big projects were afoot, big plans worked out in the conferences of the barb leaders. He was one of them now, a man to be reckoned with in Stanford politics. He worked with Zion on the new constitution; his suggestions were heard with respect, discussed, accepted. There must be an entire reorganization of university affairs ; the creation of a new executive committee of the student body with full control over all the funds received from student activities. "The way things are going here is rotten, sim ply rotten ! The athletic committee is a farce. It does n t build toward anything ; it has n t any defi nite Stanford spirit; it simply takes in all the 144 THE MAKING OF money it can get and lets it go no one knows where. It exists simply to bust the surplus. And look at the way it lets the management go. The idea of allowing volunteer teams to organize them selves and go out and call themselves Stanford teams and divide* the gate-receipts ! It s out rageous. The treasurer of the executive commit tee must be given full control of the whole athletic activity yes, and all shows and enterprises under the Stanford name and he must be held responsi ble for it all. With acting managers under him." "You re right, Hoover. And you re the man for the job." "Well, I don t know about that, Hinsdale." Yet his heart had leaped. A big opportunity! To be the man to pull all that college world together, to organize it, put it on a solid basis, leave it as a monument behind him when he left Stanford ! His big chance to distinguish himself as a Stanford man. But there were many things to be considered. The barbs must put up a man who could be elected, too. He was not very pop ular. The boys had a certain confidence in him, no doubt; they knew from the laundry business that he could handle accounts. He was treasurer of the class, right then, but that amounted to little. Could he swing a winning vote for a big job? The "Camp" would be for him, fifty or sixty men, solid barb, inhabiting the makeshift buildings HEEBEET HOOVEE 145 deserted by the workmen, cooking their own food, washing their own clothes, many of them the brightest minds in college. He was at home in that crowd ; in many ways they were his kind of men. "Hoover can deliver the Camp," Hinsdale and Collins agreed. But there were Eoble Hall, the frats, the musical and literary crowds, the athletic group. He had no influence in any of them. It was up to his friends. If Collins, Hins dale, Eay Wilbur urged him to run, offered their support, he would have enough backing to risk making the fight. There was no need for false modesty; he knew he could do the job well if he got it. He tingled to get at the details of it. But he was not the only man in the university who could do the job well. And there was nothing to prevent his helping any good man who did get it. But it was a very big chance for him. His organ izing ability was the one thing which he could give. 1 1 We want you, Hoover, they urged. You re absolutely the man for the place." He hesitated, rattling the keys in his pocket. "I 11 think about it." Then the night in Eay Wilbur s room when all together they urged him to make the fight, rea soned, pleaded, pounded home arguments with their fists on the table. "Well, see here. If I m going to run, there 146 THE MAKING OF must be a clause written into the new constitution providing that the job doesn t carry any salary with it until the second year." "But, Hoover, that s nonsense. You re work ing your way through. It s going to be a job that will take a lot of your time. It s worth a decent salary and you re entitled to it." "I can t help that. I can t get behind a consti tution that gives the treasurer a fat salary, and then run for Treasurer. I m not in this to get myself a good job. I want to see the job done. I won t put myself in a position where any one can say anything else." "There s something in that," said Collins, thoughtfully. "Then you 11 run, Hoover?" "If you put it up to me that way " he turned the keys over and over in his pocket, then thrust his hands deeper and clenched them "Yes." He was in it then, in it with every ounce of his energy and enthusiasm. Let the lectures go. Laboratory work could wait. He already had credits ahead. As for English, time enough later to worry about that. He was rounding up sup port for the new constitution, buttonholing men in corners of the Quad, routing out groups at Encina and getting them over to meetings in the chapel. The constitution was put through. Then the fight for the election, mass meetings, HERBERT HOOVER 147 parades, demonstrations in front of Encina, in front of Roble; Hinsdale making speeches; hur riedly called conferences of the inner circle at midnight in Collins s room. Rumors flying like wildfire over the campus, skilfully fought with back-fire of other rumors. Under the arches of the Quad and down the road to Mayfield in the soft April night the wild campaign yell : "Rah! Rah! Rix! Hinsdale ! Hoover ! Hicks ! Barbs on top And the f rats in a fix!" That was not exactly his sentiment. He was against group control, any group, anywhere. But it was his group that would bring about the re form, anyway. They had been without a voice for long enough. It was their turn now. And he was in this game heart and soul. Let em yell. At five o clock of election day the vote was announced. President: no election. Treasurer: no election. Football manager: no election. Never had there been so many votes polled ; never had a contest been so close. In his room at Encina they waited for the dinner gong. It was a stern consultation, a determined gathering together of forces, a canvass of possi bilities, vote by vote. "We re in for a real fight now. Let s get this thing in shape." Hoover 148 THE MAKING OF sat at the table, sheets of paper before him, pencil in hand. " Every vote will count and we can t waste our energies. Wilbur, can you get that young Freshie Smith f " "Give him to Hinsdale. He s a queener. He s gone on a girl who wants to get into the Thetas. Hinsdale s got a wire through there. Who s next*" Methodically he went through the lists, discuss ing, comparing notes, jotting down memoranda of characters, private histories, secretly nursed am bitions. "And there are ten in this university reading mere books to learn psychology ! A feverish week, in which he slept little and ate less. But he never needed food or rest when he was working. Electioneering all day for Hins dale and Hicks. Nightly conferences, names checked off, lists revised. At two o clock on the last morning, "Well, it looks as though we 11 put it through this time." Again the Quad was alive with voters, a crowd around the polls, a steadily moving line past them. On the outskirts, in the corners, backing doubtful ones against the sandstone walls, arguing, brow beating, sternly holding up wabbling backbones, marshaling the squads of Three-H votes, he worked without pause. The vote was incredibly large. Not a matriculated soul had been over- HERBERT HOOVER 149 looked. In the laboratories, the corridors, the library, heelers were routing out the indifferent, the political slackers. Messengers rushed on bicycles to furnished rooms in Palo Alto and dragged digs from their text-books. The polls closed. The count ended. Silence fell over the waiting crowds. But he knew the result before it was read. Hinsdale 380; Magee 274. Hoover 370; Grosh 282. Hicks 375 ; Kessinger 285. The Three H s had won. In Encina that night there was a great celebration. The jubilant pro ponents of the three winners were crowded to gether so thickly that when the champions ap peared they had to be passed over the heads of the crowd to a place near the window to make their speeches. With an open box of cigars in each hand, the treasurer-elect made this triumphal flight through the air. Rah ! Rah ! Rix ! Hinsdale ! Hoover ! Hicks ! Barbs on top And the f rats in a fix ! His election speech was brief. He ended it with a request for another yell, though he did not say why he called for it. Altogether now : 150 THE MAKING OF Bah ! Rah ! Rah ! Rah! Rah! Rah! Rah ! Rah ! STANFORD ! He returned to college late the next autumn, missing four weeks of his last winter in Stanford. How quickly the golden years had gone! Only eight months left. Prom the pine forests and rocky peaks of the Sierras his thoughts had leaped longingly toward that missed opening day. But the summer had given him a great opportunity, United States Geological Survey work under Waldemar Lindgren, a fine man, a big man in geology. The work has been fascinating; Lind gren had been inspiring. He had stayed until the survey closed for the winter. Now he summarized his assets and liabilities, getting ready for the last eight months he had left. Laurie Tatum s final payment, ninety dol lars, wiped out his inheritance. With his summer earnings he had just enough to get him through till spring, so that was off his mind. He had got an additional eight hours credits in geology for summer work. He registered light four hours in geology, two in chemistry, four in elementary German. Then he plunged into the real job. A multitude of details. A mass of incoherent activities, unrelated and conflicting. No accounts HEEBERT HOOVER 151 had been kept of receipts and expenditures, no policy formulated. The Pioneer Class had gone gaily through three years of pure individualism and 96 and 97 were following its lead, held to gether only by a spirit of loyalty to Stanford that had not been translated into any terms of action. He had in his hands the making of the student body as a compact unit. "I Ve got forty varieties of rows on my hands, " he said, running his hands through his hair before plunging them firmly into those pockets that were his refuge in moments of thought. Our athletics are in one holy mess. Worse than I imagined." His first move was to install a voucher system of accounting for expenditures, a system he had learned from the United States Geological Survey. It was simple, compact and leak-tight. Howls arose from captains, coaches, football heroes. The entire baseball team stormed him with pro tests. "What s all the row about! We re ath letes, not clerks. There s nothing wrong with our accounts. Receipts, so much; expenses, so much. They balance, don t they?" "Yes, but where s your surplus. That s no way to handle money. No use talking; you re only wasting time. After this the receipts come into the treasury, and if you get any of em out again you 11 get it on itemized expense accounts approved by the treasurer." 152 THE MAKING OF His popularity was not growing, but respect for him increased. He went down expense ac counts with a merciless pencil. Not friendship nor influence nor pleading stayed its ruthless point. He invaded training-quarters in the gym and overhauled supplies, checked them up, cut out waste. "No, you can t have moleskin pants to practise in. I know you re a special hero and all that. I yell for you as loud as anybody. But you don t need moleskin pants to wear out practising. Can vas trousers for you, old man. You can have moleskins to lick Berkeley in. But out here you wear the same kind of pants the others do." He was traveling back and forth between Stan ford and San Francisco, interviewing ball-park managers, meeting visiting athletes. Hinsdale went with him, but friends as they were, Hinsdale must pay his own expenses. "I Ve got to come. It s a business trip, with me. But you re just doing the social thing as student-body president. You ought to pay your own way, you can afford to give something for the honor of being president. I d pay mine if I had the money. I m going to pile up a surplus in the treasury. " The task absorbed him. The only class work that he still pursued with enthusiasm was geology, and there was an added reason now for that. His HERBERT HOOVER 153 first day in the laboratory that year had intro duced him to a young freshman, a genuine sort of girl with no nonsense about her, who seemed to have a real enthusiasm for the work. He had never cared much for girls ; Roble Hall had never heard the sound of his mandolin through the twi light, nor had he been seen wandering beneath the moonlit arches of the Quad with a white blouse beside him. He thought of girls as he did of men : they were citizens of Stanford as they had been citizens of the Quaker villages of his childhood. There had been times when he grinned at their bloomers, at their preposterously wide sleeves and tight-laced waists. He had watched with amuse ment their campaigns to capture the attention of football heroes and popular queeners, and he had longed to be able to help a few in a brave fight to get through Stanford against heavy odds. But he hadn t bothered about them much. Oh, a wandering fancy or two, too shy to make a win ning campaign for its object. But this girl was different. She seemed a thoroughly good sort, the kind of girl it would be mighty fine to know. "Who s the girl in the Lab this morning ? " he asked casually, adjusting his microscope. The man next him lifted a blank look that melted into amusement. "Which one!" Sure enough, there were several girls there! 154 THE MAKING OF "The new one, of course. I know the others. Big gray eyes soft hair over there by the win dow. "That & Lou Henry. From Monterey. I think her father s a banker down there. " "Oh! Thanks. " She walked easily, as gracefully unconscious of her body as an animal. Went in for athletics, probably. Something strong and courageous about her, like a young boy. But nothing bruskly masculine. Impossible to imagine her astride a bicycle, wearing bloomers, or standing with stringy hair arguing that she was as good as a man. Must have a real brain too, to go in for geology. Eemarkably soft white hands, with a good grip. Glad to meet you, Miss Henry, y he said. Her voice was pleasant, too, and she smiled in a friendly way, without making eyes at a fellow. Not that many girls did, at him. But she was n t the kind that would, anyway. The next Saturday, as senior in charge of the expedition, he took out a crowd for a geological survey of the hills. Usually the girls did not come; the pace was pretty strenuous for a girl. They came with parties especially arranged for them. But here was Lou Henry, matter-of-fact and pleasant, in sturdy walking-shoes, a short skirt, and a sweater. There was a red bow under HERBERT HOOVER 155 the broad white collar of her blouse, and a little cap on her head. Her presence made rather for constraint at first. A girl always did. Introduced an alien element, somehow, into the free-and-easy compan ionship of himself and men like Wilson and Mit chell, who forgot everything else in their absorp tion in rock formations. You had to think about a girl, be polite to her, help her over fences and pull her up steep places. She expected a certain amount of attention, of course. And you hadn t any to spare when you were after rocks. Well, it could n t be helped, and she was an extremely nice girl, at that. They crossed the wide waste spaces of the campus where the old paddocks had been, and came to the ranch fence. Should he climb to the top of it and help her from there, or get over on the other side and lift her down? Annoying busi ness, a girl s climbing a fence; they made such a fuss about it. But it was built too low for her to crawl under. "Miss Henry," said he politely, offering his hand. But she had not seen it. She had laid her own palm on the top hoard, and lightly, in a matter-of-course manner, had vaulted the fence. She was going on, blithely unconscious of the pro found sensation behind her. Never before had anyone vaulted fences on these expeditions. 156 THE MAKING OF Could he do it ? He had to do it. Let himself be beaten by a girl? Impossible! But what depths of chagrin if he tried and failed ! The thing was over in a moment. He put his hand on the fence, drew a deep breath, and went safely over. One by one, behind him, the others followed like sheep. Lou Henry, scanning the hillside, remained oblivious. It seemed that she always vaulted fences and expected others to do the same. What a girl ! The atmosphere of awed respect that sur rounded her became a friendly comradeship before the group turned homeward under the sunset- colored sky. She was so unaffected, so friendly, that she no longer seemed a girl on their hands. Yet she was not in the least masculine. Nothing rough-and-ready about her. Not a person to take liberties with. A self-respecting, clear-eyed, dauntless sort of comrade. A thoroughly good fellow. You could depend on a girl like that. "Lou Henry s all right, " they said in their rooms at Enema. He said nothing, but the thought ran on in his mind, paralleling the stream of his work, as manager of the student body and Stanford athletics. A swarm of details shot through with intrigue surrounded him. He was the center of a hundred radiating threads. His days went in figuring bills, making out accounts, signing vouchers and checks, being interviewed by HERBERT HOOVER 157 many men seeking favors. In the evenings he listened to complaints and pleas and rumors, and learned to probe the most enticing bait with a wary concern for concealed hooks. But he missed no geology classes, and Dr. Branner smiled at his enthusiasm for taking the freshmen on Saturday afternoon expeditions. She was a girl in a thousand, all right. A girl any man might be eager to win. It would be years before he was in a position to marry a girl like that. Even if he wanted to. A serious thing, this marrying business. Many a man had been crippled in his career by it. A man gave up a lot when he gave up his freedom and shouldered the responsibilities of being married. On the other hand, the right sort of girl sometimes made a man. She was the right sort, no question about that. Oh, what was the use f What chance did he stand, anyway, virtually penniless, with his living to make, while she could probably take her choice of a dozen men? In the midnight silence there came a voice at the foot of the bed. "Bert ! The baseball team s just voted to play Santa Rosa and pocket the receipts. " "Yeh? Tell me about it." Undeniable evidence. Another athletic scandal threatening Stanford. He pulled on his trousers, buttoned a coat around his collarless neck, and 158 THE MAKING OF hurried to Dr. Angell, the chairman of the faculty committee on athletics. His pebbles on the dark window-pane brought out a sleepy head. Who is it ? " Me Hoover. " "Come on up." He sat on the edge of the bed and told the story. Give me a letter to that bunch, will you ? I don t want to appear in it, you understand. Tell em you Ve heard a rumor, but you don t believe it, because if they do such a thing they 11 be barred as professionals from ever playing for Stanford again. They know it already, of course. But the letter will throw some sense into their two-by-four minds." He crawled back between the sheets at four in the morning, that disaster averted. What did it matter if his German grammar lay neglected on a table piled with letters and vouchers? He was doing something for Stanford. At the end of the semester he was conditioned in chemistry, and he had flunked in German. Eng lish 1 B still hung about his neck relentlessly. He registered for nineteen hours and faced them under the pressure of spring activities. The days went past like the rise and dip of tele phone wires beside an express train. There was so much to do, and so little time in which to do it. The weeks were hurling him forward to the HERBERT HOOVER 159 day when Stanford and all that it meant would be behind him. The last of his money was going, but he could not waste time in earning more. He could do that later. Now he wanted all of Stan ford that he could get friendly talks with Dr. Branner, hours with the boys he cared for, walks in the hills with Lou Henry, evenings at concerts in the old chapel. The hills around Stanford were green once more from the winter rains, the pastures gorgeous with poppies and lupin. Meadow-larks sang from the blossoming fields and towhees were nesting in the clumps of wild clematis and lilac through which he pushed, breaking a path for Lou Henry to fol low the dip of a limestone stratum. Her cheeks were flushed from climbing, her quick breath fluttered the red tie beneath her white collar, but she did not ask for help. When a slashing branch whipped out a red mark across her cheek she did not murmur. And she was genuinely interested in geology. They chipped off specimens of protruding rocks with their hammers and sat on ledges in the sun shine examining them, while he told her what they meant. There was so much meaning in a rock. It told of cataclysms that racked the world before man climbed from the slime to stand upright in a world of gigantic ferns and monster winged liz ards. It showed the slow erosion of centuries, the 160 THE MAKING OF ceaseless flux and change of the earth itself, that seems so changeless and solid. It led to wider thoughts. Life. The meaning and value of it. The purpose of existence. Ambitions. Ideals. Dreams. Lou Henry was not studying geology simply as a pastime. She meant to do something with it. She did not know exactly what it would be; she was only a freshman; there were three years of Stanford before her yet. But she meant to use her knowledge. That was the only reason for getting it, was n t it 1 She wanted her life to count for something. It was so easy for a girl to waste her life. So much idleness and careless squandering of time and energies. She liked a good time, too. But a life that was all good times would bore her awfully. Yes, of course, if one married, that was different. But she did not intend to be married, not for a long while yet, anyway. She was going to finish college first and then well, do something worth while with what she had learned. She was talking a lot about her self, was n t she ? What did he intend to do ? It was surprising how easy it was to talk to a girl like that. She was not like a girl, and yet she was all girl. Plans, hopes, ideals that he had hardly formed in himself, that certainly he had never expected to express in words, were not hard to tell her. Things like being kind, of being some HERBERT HOOVER 161 service in the world. A man like Senator Stan ford, now. That was a real success. Not because he had money, but because of the way he spent it. Of course it would be a hard pull at first. Lind- gren had been very kind, had praised him and his work. Friends like that helped a lot. He was n t afraid ; he d make a success somehow. It might take years, you know. You never can tell The last week was close upon the Pioneers. As by a miracle, the millstone of English 1 B had fallen from his neck. Professor Smith had had a sudden idea : "Here, Hoover, stop worrying about English. Take this paper you handed in to me last month, fix the spelling and get attention on the strength of it. It proves you can express yourself well in written English, if that s what they re after. " Now that pestiferous thing was behind him. Yet life was not unclouded these last sweet days of May. There were tears behind the gaiety of those final days under the old arches of the Quad. A double melancholy hung about them, sadness for those who were departing, and sadness for the loved university. The suit brought by the Gov ernment against the Stanford estate was reaching the end of their last hope; the life of their uni versity hung now upon the final decision soon to be given by the Supreme Court. It might be that the Pioneers, the first class to go out into the 162 THE MAKING OF world from those doors, would be the last. He had given his best to Stanford in return for all that it had given him. The student-body affairs were organized now, its activities coordi nated ; athletics had been given a new tradition of honorable ideals as well as glorious victories; there was a commendable balance to be left in the treasury. He had been a vital part of the strug gle to create his university, building toward a future which might never be, but building strongly nevertheless. His work was done, ready perhaps to pass on to other hands down through the years, doomed perhaps to be wiped out. At least he had done his best. "Men should make up their minds to be forgot ten, and look about them, or within them, for some higher motive in what they do than the approba tion of man, which is fame, namely, their duty. They should be constantly and quietly at work, each in his sphere, regardless of effects, and leav ing their fame to take care of itself. " He had found that, somewhere, in something Longfellow wrote; he liked it. There was in it an echo of the spirit of West Branch and Newberg; it was the kind of thing Grandmother Minthorn might have said, or Uncle John ; yet it included his new vision of a world where even mountains decayed through the centuries and the generations of men were like the waves of a sea. HERBERT HOOVER 163 It was good, though, to have the affectionate approval of men like Dr. Jordan and Dr. Branner and Mr. Lindgren, friends like Kimball and Col lins and Wilbur and Wilson. He had done a good job; it was something to remember when he was with Lou Henry. He might not be able to lend her a varsity sweater, honored by great deeds on an embattled field, but he was the man who man aged the man who did lend it to her. Lou Henry was linked in his mind with Stanford ; it was there he had met and grown to know her, and his fear for Stanford s threatened future was double- edged; he wished to think of her there when he was gone. Leaving Stanford so soon. Reaching the end of the long purpose to have a university education. Letting go finally the slender hold of his father s hand, stretched beyond the grave to help him. Absolutely on his own now. His pockets quite empty, and nothing in his hands but his A.B. degree in geology and the offer of a temporary job with Lindgren. Not that he was afraid; he would pull through somehow. He would not have sold the work of that last year in Stanford for any money. Still, there was the senior ball, and he wanted to go. Well, he could borrow the money he needed. His last dollar paid for his fare to San Fran cisco on the day of Mrs. Stanford s reception. He 164 THE MAKING OF could not miss the opening of the big house on California Street to the departing class that Sen ator Stanford had welcomed on that long-past day in the Quad. It was a rite, a service to the last of the Pioneers, perhaps to the last class of Stan ford. He moved through the large rooms, in the soft music and the murmur of low voices and silken trains, listened to Mrs. Stanford s talk to the boys and girls whom she and the senator had adopted in memory of the boy whose marble bust stood in the big hall. Then he hastened to meet a friend who might have some money. It was a close call, for the chosen rescuer had only fifteen dollars. 1 1 Give me seven and a half, will you ? I Ve got to go to the senior ball." "Well, I should say so, Hoover! Here you are." The fifteen half-dollars clinked into his palm. Not much, but his bills were paid; Lind- gren would advance his expenses to the Sierras. He was in the crowd that stood bareheaded around the old tree half-way between Encina and Eoble Hall, while the bronze tablet was unveiled that formally christened the Ninety-five Oak, a class legacy to sweethearts coming after them who would sit in the moonlight under those spreading branches. That was one thing he M missed in Stanford, he thought, smiling, while the last will and testament of 95 was solemnly read. Then, HERBERT HOOVER 165 all together, they sang the song of the early days they all remembered: "Dear chum of mine, do you recall When college had begun The gladness of that glorious fall And how we spent the mon? The days of scrapes, the days of grapes, The days of 91- "Dear Class of 95, when all The four years thread is spun, The freshman follies we recall We would not have undone; Those days when youth came seeking truth, The days of 91." Now for the senior ball! He had new shoes for the occasion; he carefully brushed his best suit and thought earnestly about his neckties, try ing one and then another with a critical eye to the effect, After he had settled the coat in place on his broad shoulders he stood a long time before the mirror, anxious and nervous. Lou Henry would no doubt wear some light, fluffy, collarless gown, and she was a girl besieged with partners. She danced well, too. After all, he had been stu dent-body treasurer and a power in college politics. Violin strings were already twanging under tuning thumbs, and the first thin crowd was shift ing about under the lights of Encina Gymnasium 166 THE MAKING OF when they arrived. An orchestra had been brought from San Francisco, and all day the girls and a few boys had been massing pepper boughs and bamboo about the gym apparatus against the walls. The large bare room was festive with the trailing leaves and scarlet berries. These unac customed decorations, the lights, the floor slippery with shaved candle-wax, gave a formal, dressed-up air to the occasion. A little awkward at first. And here and there a chap appeared proudly in evening dress. The grand march was forming. Then the music, and the dancing, and Lou Henry gay and sweet in his arms. Swirling couples all about them, kaleidoscope of color and light and motion. The waltz one, two, skip! one, two, skip! And the careful reverse, guarding Her from colliding couples with a stiff elbow. Laugh ing up at him, quite serene and sure that he danced well, following his lead perfectly and yet in some obscure way guiding him, too. And how charm ingly she did the gay prancing steps of the five- step polka! There were eyes upon them; all the world saw that they were dancing together, and wondered a bit about it. What ! Lou Henry and Bert Hoover? And then she was swept from him by clamoring partners, and he was left alone against the wall, his hands in his pockets. Oh, of course! He must do his duty and dance with some one else. But still their eyes met, now and HERBERT HOOVER 167 then, through the circling maze, and his next dance with her was coming soon. The gay, sweet, happy hours! Light-hearted Time going by on dancing feet ! Music and color and laughter and light beneath the drooping pep per boughs jeweled with berries. The senior ball of 95, gliding with the glamour of pomp and fash ion the last days of the Pioneers. This was the sunset glory over the end of the little world he had conquered ; for he was the man who had made the student-body, and he was the man for whom there was understanding and faith in Lou Henry s gray eyes. They met again the next evening in the old Quad, where for the last time the Pioneers were together. The Quad was rimmed with rosy lan terns under the deep-blue sky, little balloons of colored light swayed among the palms. To-mor row morning in the big gymnasium beneath the wilted pepper boughs he would stand up to take from Dr. Jordan s hand the honor of his A.B. degree. To-morrow he would go to fight for his place in the world outside. To-night was his fare well to Stanford. All the faces he knew were there, coming and going in the circling crowd whose feet sounded upon the asphalt. Upon a screen against the eastern tower a magic lantern cast colored pic tures. The music of the band, rising toward the 168 HERBERT HOOVER stars, shed upon them like dew a sensation of sadness, of immeasurable regrets and longing. The days of Auld Lang Syne, my dear, The days of Auld Lang Syne, We 11 tak a cup o kindness yet For the days of Auld Lang Syne. Lou Henry, the freshman, in her white dress, walked through the rosy-lighted arches, listening to a song that had little meaning for her heart. Life in Stanford was beginning for her. Three years were before her there, while he was going out to who knew what he could make of those three years 1 Views of the college buildings now appeared on the screen. The music had changed its key, the clear-throated horns were singing, "Then you 11 remember me." "Will you?" "Will I?" The words choked a little. "Will you remem ber me?" Her eyes were quite clear and frank, meeting his. i i Of course I shall remember you. It was all he could ask or she could promise. The untried years were before them both. CHAPTER IV ON a late summer evening three months after the memorable Commencement Day Herbert Hoover, sunburned and dusty, urged a weary pony on a road that curved among the slopes of the Sierras. Around him the green sea of pines swept downward into purple-shadowed valleys and surged upward again in waves against rocky peaks still bright with sunshine. The chill of approaching night had already conquered the warmth of the day when the pony, scenting on the crisp air the promise of a cozy stable and supper, pricked up his ears and went forward eagerly. A turn in the road disclosed a huddle of weathered barns and beyond it a large newly painted ranch- house where windows were oblongs of yellow lamplight. The pony, left beside the road, sniffed the air hungrily and gazed with appealing eyes after his rider, who walked stiff -muscled up the path and knocked at the front door. There was a sound of voices inside, a faint clatter of dishes, the scrape of a pushed-back chair. Footsteps approached the door and it opened grudgingly. In the aper- 169 170 THE MAKING OF ture a squarely built, hard-faced farmer s wife regarded him for a moment. "What do you want I He was tired, and the greeting was not encour aging. He explained briefly that he would like to get some supper and lodging for the night for himself and his "We don t keep tramps," she interrupted, and a closing door would have ended discussion. But five miles lay between him and the next farm house, and hunger, sharpened by the warm odor of food that poured through the narrowing crack, prodded the wayfarer to unsuspected powers of expression. "Madame," he said swiftly, "please give me a moment in which to explain. I assure you that I" "I don t want to buy anything, either," she said with finality. But his foot was on the threshold and his toe resisted the pressure of the door. He continued to talk: "I m not a tramp, and I m not a book agent or a sewing-machine agent. I have n t anything to sell. I only want something to eat and a place to sleep and I m willing to pay for them. I ve ridden twenty-five miles to-day over the moun tains and my pony is tired. I assure you I am a thoroughly respectable person, a geologist with the United States Geological Survey. Surely you HERBERT HOOVER 171 can give me and my pony some kind of shelter for the night. I 11 be glad to pay for it, he repeated. "We don t keep boarders, either, so far as that goes," she replied coldly, and added after a mo ment s reluctance: "Well, I guess we can give you something to eat in the kitchen, and you can sleep in the barn. "Thank you," he said and went furiously down the path. But he was young enough to grin at the situation while he led the pony around the house, unsaddled him, and let him drink at the watering-trough in the barn-yard. There was an empty stall in the barn, and hay in the mow. In vestigation revealed a sack of bran and a sheaf of unthreshed oats. He left the pony munching contentedly, washed his face and hands at the pump, and followed a path to the back porch. The fat cook in a soiled apron received him in the large kitchen and while she fried potatoes warmed on the wood-stove she put a loaf of bread, a dish of butter, and a pitcher of milk on the red-oilcloth covered table beside the oil lamp. "I guess you ve come a long ways," she observed. "Yes, I Ve been traveling some time. You Ve got a fine big house here, the largest I ve seen in the mountains," he answered. The cook warmed to his smile. She began to talk, and there was an element of self-interest in his genuinely 172 THE MAKING OF friendly encouragement of her conversation. She sliced another potato into the frying-pan, brought out some eggs from the pantry, and by the time the piles of food had disappeared before his onslaught she was fetching preserves and layer- cake to lay before him. Meanwhile she poured forth confidences, gossip, and opinion. The house was a new one, she said, and it sure was grand, but lots of work to take care of, especially since the girls had come home from school with all sorts of notions. They used to be as common every-day folks as anybody in the mountains, but since the old man had sold his water-rights and moved into this grand big house you d think sometimes the earth wasn t good enough for em. Silk dresses was nothing to them nowadays, and as for the ironing! And that woman that used to do the wash on Mondays like anybody else, now would n t so much as touch her hand to the rinse-water. The cook was in a good rnind to leave any minute, especially since the girls had come home. They d gone to Miss Nash s Seminary at Carson. " Folks say it s the finest seminary in the world west of the Carson River and east of Lake Tahoe, and they have come back much educated," she explained. He poured another glass of milk and attacked the preserves, speaking only enough to keep her happily talking. A grand opportunity to observe HERBERT HOOVER 173 the effect of sudden riches, he thought, his face sober and attentive while he grinned inwardly. And he perceived that he was not the only one in the house who thought so, for, while he ate, the kitchen door was opened gently by an unseen hand and from the parlor on the other side of the dining-room came the tones of a parlor organ on which some one played "Home, Sweet Home" with impressive technic. Obviously a benefit con cert intended for him. It ended in two long- drawn chords, and a moment later the musician appeared and crossed the dining-room with care fully trained grace. She was a pretty girl, who would have been prettier if she had not been so well taught to be conscious of her social position. She paused in the kitchen doorway and her eyes rested with hauteur upon the young man in his travel-stained clothes before she turned to the cook and gave orders for breakfast in a cool and modulated voice. Then she looked at him again with more kindliness and she spoke without lessening the social distance between them. "Has my cook given you a good supper ?" "Yes, thank you," he rose to reply. "Where are you from?" "From Sierra Valley, " he answered humbly. Her eyes became still more perfectly those of a Lady Bountiful. 174 THE MAKING OF " Would you like to see our house ?" "Oh, I should like it so much!" She led him through the dining-room, display ing to his gaze real cut-glass on the sideboard; she showed him the library with its red walls and carpet and a bookcase nearly filled with books, many of which, bound in half-leather, were the most expensive sold by book agents, and then she took him into the parlor to show him a picture that a friend of hers had painted by hand, in oils. He followed her dutifully, cap in hand, listening with out a twinkle in his eye, and he saw that she was probably a very jolly sort of girl that would not have been bad company for an evening if her father had not sold his water-rights. Despite his tramp-like appearance, she was beginning to treat him almost as a fellow human being. He stood before the hand-painted picture, gazing at it, and feeling that he must say something he remarked, Your house was painted brown then, I see." Our house? Brown?" " Is n t it your house that I see in the picture?" He knew at once that he had cast himself back into the depths. She looked at him a moment with cold eyes and said, "That is a picture of the Palisades of Tahoe." He could not reply. It had seemed to him that he saw quite distinctly on the canvas the house and the barn and a few trees. His hostess dismissed him with chilly HERBERT HOOVER 175 courtesy at the front door, and finding his way to the barn he rolled himself in his saddle-blanket and fell asleep in the hay, his last impression of the pale moonlight streaming through the hay mow door carrying the strains of the Moonlight Sonata through his dreams of Stanford. A warm, rasping sensation on his cheek awoke him in the first dawn. The family dog was lick ing his face. He sat up and seized the shaggy body, shaking it with rough friendliness while the dog barked with delight. "What do you think you re doing, you rascal? being sympathetic? Or do you take my red skin for a beefsteak? Chase yourself, you scamp! Don t you see I m ringing for my valet?" He took off his shoes to shake the hayseed from them, ran a hand through his hair and put on his cap. Being struck by a sudden thought, he rummaged the hay-mow for hens nests, finding six eggs, which he ate raw for breakfast. Then he went downstairs to saddle the pony, and with a final pat for the dog he swung into the saddle and rode away from the sleeping house. "It s all in the life of a geologist, " he said, whistling as he went, and his breath curled like smoke in the cold pine-scented air. The mountain peaks were black against the clear green sky ; light was spreading upward from the hidden west and a few stars still glimmered faintly over the eastern 176 THE MAKING OF forests. Altogether, it was a pretty good world to be alive in. That day he made the ascent of Slide Mountain, eleven thousand feet above the sea. From its summit he looked upon forty miles of rugged peaks standing in vast and noble simplicity above the waters of Lake Tahoe that reflected as in a mirror the gaunt precipices standing like but tresses from a wall, their gorges purple-shadowed and their granite summits lost in curling mists. A storm was gathering from the west and stand ing in the sunlight he watched the onslaught of the thunder-rolling clouds against the battlements and saw the white lightning strike and strike again, while in the upper air the mountains launched their eastern winds and tore the clouds into ragged masses and downward-fleeing columns. Again in the lower valleys they re-formed, heavy with snow, and rolling upward resistlessly they buried turret and pinnacle in a vast whorl of storm from which escaping shreds of mist circled the crags and clung trembling in the pine-tops below. Lightning and thunder and the desert winds fought in that turmoil and through the scat tered battalions of the clouds Lake Tahoe, its clear pictures blotted out by the shadow of the battle, looked upward like a dull gray eye. The granite peaks and the winds from the desert conquered, the clouds fell back, shattered and torn to mists, HERBERT HOOVER 177 leaving their snow behind them and from the spoils the mountains unfurled their banners of victory. Beneath the sunny sky each mighty peak gave to the winds a snowy streamer a mile in length, blowing like a flag from a mast-head. This was the country he knew and loved, this land of gigantic granite heights where the un leashed elements fought above the forests of hun dred-foot pines. The beauty of these wild and naked peaks struck from the hard practicality of his own nature a spark of poetry, and sitting on his saddle-bags beside a camp-fire he wrote letters which mingled with accurate figures of altitude and size descriptions of mountains and forests and clouds written with a power that surprised even himself. He could never have talked with such command of the picturesque phrase ; his heritage of repression would not have allowed him to ex press orally those emotions that lay within him as volcanic fires lay beneath the granite of the mountains. Two weeks later, in a bare hotel room in Ne vada City, he lay awake considering his plans for the winter. Through the open window came the scent of miles of forest wet with rain and the sound of the heavy boots and loud voices of miners crossing the muddy street and meeting on the hotel porch. The door of the bar-room slammed and slammed again ; snatches of song and laugh- 178 THE MAKING OF ter arose; at the hitching-post a weary pony pawed the mud and whickered restlessly. This was the Bret Harte country of the old California mining days, remembered now only by the names of the little towns scattered along the roads of the foot-hills You Bet, You be Dam, Bed Dog, and Alpha. Winter was approaching, the United States Geological Survey was ending for the sum mer, and he must look for work. It had been a profitable summer. He had had an interesting variety of work in the mountains, visiting mines, studying the succession of lavas in the great basin, tracing gravel channels and doing detailed stadia topography at disputed points by a species of stadia methods originated for the occasion. He had made a representative collection of Sierra igneous rocks for Stanford, and Lindgren had been so well pleased with his work that he had raised his salary. Lindgren would do everything possible to get him a good job in the mines when the survey ended. It would have to be a good job or none at all, for there were more common miners than there were jobs for them. Mining superintendents were in general college men, and disposed to help young fellows. Still, Stanford was a young university, and the University of California had the advantage in older prestige. Stanford s reputation in the min ing world was yet to be established by men like HERBERT HOOVER 179 himself, members of the Pioneer Class, and those who would follow them. It would be fine if he and Kimball could get jobs together in the mines. A riotous outburst from the bar-room below awak ened him as he was falling asleep, and he grinned in the darkness. "I Ve certainly had a fine chance to observe the relative wickedness of mountain whisky," he thought. "That r s one line in which I haven t carried on any original investigation. I can take the other fellows maps on that." The survey ended on October fifteenth and his hope of getting a job at something better than pushing an ore-car died abruptly, leaving a feeling of sick discouragement that he concealed under a cheerful manner. Mr. Lindgren s efforts to place him in the mines had failed, and he was left to face the implacable wall of filled jobs. Superintendent after superintendent was sorry, but there was no opening at present. He swallowed his college pride and tried to get work as a laborer. He stood in groups of jobless men on the scarred hill sides ; he interviewed brusk foremen in the board shacks that were the mine-offices. "Nothing do ing," they said. "We Ve got more men than jobs." He had no money. His father s legacy and all his own efforts for four years had gone into his college training. He must get a job somehow. 180 THE MAKING OF He must get a foothold in the world. There was a girl in Stanford who expected him to make good. "Buck up, old man!" said Kimball, noting that his friend was even more silent than usual. "You 11 land something all right. " * Sure I will, he answered cheerfully. * I sup pose, " he added, a satirical note creeping into his quiet level tones, "four years of college training is invaluable to turn the joshes of the Cornish miners if for nothing more." But three days later he greeted Kimball, jubi lant. "There was an unexpected opening at the Re ward and I fell into it. Pushing a car at two-fifty per day and experience. Not so bad, with two hundred men idle and everybody here prejudiced against college men." The nights became a delirium of aching muscles and of twitching nerves torn by neuralgia. At four forty-five in the morning the alarm-clock shrilled through the darkness and he rolled from the tumbled bed to light the oil-lamp. Lights glimmered from windows here and there, and the shadowy street was alive with denser shadows and glimmering lanterns when he came out into the frosty morning air. He was at the shaft while the dawn was still reddening above the jagged mountain tops. The dark, dripping walls of the tunnel were HERBERT HOOVER 181 lighted dimly by his candle. Hundreds of feet beneath the mountain Tommy Nennis was at work with drill and pick. He was a sturdy, begrimed miner with a rude wit and a hearty contempt for dudes with college educations ; pushing a car for a real miner was good enough for em, by Gosh ! It would learn them something useful before they got through. In the dank air, between the wet black walls, standing ankle deep in mud, Tommy Nennis worked mightily with skilful dredge and sledge, piling up the loosened ore, and up and down the long tunnel Bert Hoover pushed the loaded car on the slimy rails. At one end of the trip the dimly lighted shaft cage; at the other, twinkling like a firefly, Tommy Nennis light; be tween them blackness and the chill, damp breath of the sunless earth. Day after day, all alike. The life of an earthworm crawling in the dark ness, accomplishing nothing, learning nothing, pil ing up the ore for the mills. Two months of it and then one night he said to Kimball, "I Ve resigned my position as assistant to Tommy Nennis and I 11 accept the one you spoke of yesterday. I know it s a dollar less a day but there are compensations. " He tipped back his chair against the wall. "I wrote Dr. Branner last night, " he went on. "I told him that as nearly as I can determine from my two months experience in mining, the differ- 182 THE MAKING OF ence between mining and geology is like that be tween the old-time bear-hunters and the city man. When they came upon bear tracks the old hunter became excited and started to tear through the brush on a dead run after the bear. But the city man finally gasped out, What are you doing? Let s go back up the tracks and see where lie came from! There are some obligations in curred when you reach the bear which I do not thoroughly appreciate as yet, and I still believe there is more satisfaction in seeing where he came from." 44 That 11 please Branner," said Kimball. "He hates to see us promising geologists degenerate into mere money-making miners." Kimball and he, when they had cleaned up and changed at the mine, tramped homeward in the late afternoons to Mrs. Fleming s, where they roomed. They ate enormous quantities of Mrs. Barker s good cooking, across the street. Then in the dusk they went down to the Nevada City Ho tel, hoping to run across engineers or big mining men from the city. These men, brought into the mountains by business, kept there overnight, were bored by waiting and glad to talk to young college men. In the warm barroom, whose closed doors shut out the wild cold darkness of the Sierra night, they lounged against the rail and talked, ordering a drink occasionally. HERBERT HOOVER 183 "I 11 take a cigar, thanks, " said Bert, and smoking it he listened to talk of mines and min ing in Africa, Australia, Russia and Abyssinia. A large world, stimulating the imagination, spur ring a tethered ambition. "If my college education can t get me any thing better than pushing an ore-car for a living I d better quit mining, he said one night, in grim determination. George Hoffman, the min ing engineer to whom he said it, looked at him thoughtfully. "Why don t you go after a job with Louis Janin? He has a habit of picking up young men and placing them pretty well. It might be worth trying. "It s a good idea," he replied after considering it for a moment. That night he packed his clothes and some specimens for Stanford, and in the morning he was on the San Francisco train. Louis Janin s office was over the Anglo-Cali fornia Bank on the corner of Pine and Sansome streets. Determination restrained the young man s quivering excitement as he walked up the flight of stairs and opened the door marked JANIN. It was a small room, unoccupied at the moment. An open door, and beyond it, in the inner office, sat an elderly Frenchman, plump, kindly-looking, lost in concentrated attention to 184 THE MAKING OF some papers on the flat-topped desk before him. "Mr. Janin?" The famous mining expert looked up and smiled. "Good morning. What can I do for you?" "You can give me a job." Louis Janin leaned back, crossed his hands upon his waistcoat, and considered the applicant, a twinkle in his eye. "Perhaps. Sit down and we will talk about it." He spoke as earnestly as he could. A Stanford education in mineralogy and mining ; two summers with the United States Geological survey in the Sierras; three months experience in practical mining. He was eager to get any work that promised a future opportunity. He came to Janin because of Janin s reputation and experi ence. Could he get a foothold of any kind in that office? "Hm two summers in the Sierras? With Lindgren I Have you any references f * "I did not bring any, Mr. Janin. I can get them." "Do that, please. You understand that what I can give you to do will depend upon the confi dence I can place in your integrity, and you are unknown to me. Bring me some letters, by all means. In the meantime, stay around the office. HERBERT HOOVER 185 I can find something to keep you busy. Some thing may develop that will give you a good oppor tunity." He let loose his excitement as he went down the stairs. He was with Janin! He felt like flinging his hat into the air and whooping aloud. He thrust his hands deep into his pockets and strode quickly down the street toward a ferry car. Theodore and his sister May were living in Oak land; he hastened to tell them the news and to write to Dr. Branner at Stanford for a letter to Mr. Janin. The job carried thirty dollars a month, less than with Tommy Nennis, but it was an oppor tunity better than any money. When Dr. Bran ner s strong recommendation earned by his four years at Stanford was in Janin s hands, he was given a task upon which to focus all his expe rience. His quick decision to come to San Fran cisco had brought him into Janin s office at the moment when that expert was working on a case involving the geology of the Sierras, the very strata he had so recently tested and mapped. It was fresh in his mind, he knew every detail of it ; his knowledge was invaluable to Janin. He worked indefatigably on that case, drawing up reports, sketching maps, preparing geological demonstration slides. It was a good piece of work ; the North Star case was won with its help ; 186 THE MAKING OF he was asked to write an article for the "Mining and Scientific Press " about it. And six weeks later he was on his way to New Mexico at a salary of thirty dollars a week and expenses. A flat expanse of sand and sage-brush, quiver ing in white heat. Mexican huts, naked brown babies, sweating water-jugs hanging in the shade. Interminable miles of driving behind panting ponies. Mining-camps in full bloom; gamblers, prospectors, Mexicans, saloon-keepers, and smooth plausible promoters, hot-eyed with the gold fever, thronging the narrow streets between the raw lumber buildings, drinking at the bars, brawling on the sidewalks. Sixty-three mines to consider with sober judgment, to investigate, sample, make reports upon. The fortunes of many men and his own future hanging upon his decisions. He traveled with a six-shooter ready to his hand and a rifle-guard at his back, for part of his work was mapping the Lessees Carlisle Gold Mines, and there were prospectors who threatened to kill him if he appeared on their ground with a transit. The superintendent of the mines at Carlisle had been killed by his Mexicans. The towns were in full bloom, dance-halls, saloons, and gambling- joints wide open, and the law was represented by a justice of the peace who suffered from delirium HERBERT HOOVER 187 tremens and a blind-tunnel which was used as a jail by the sober citizens. With a big cow-boy named Connors he rode to the Mohollone Mountains, ninety miles across the shimmering desert, to investigate some prospects reported there. He slept at night beneath the stars, a saddle-blanket rolled into a pillow and a lariat coiled around the camp to discourage wan dering rattlesnakes. He rode by day under the hot sun, alkali dust on his lips and in his nostrils, and watched the mocking hills that seemed so near and took so long to reach. When the travelers reached them at last they found, as they rounded a curve of the land, a dozen swarthy, desperate- looking men with cartridge-belts and holsters at their hips, gathered around a camp fire. " Prospectors, " said Connors, taking in at a glance the camp and the pack-burros grazing in the sage-brush. "Gun loaded? You can t some times most always tell about what you re going to run against around here." They rode slowly forward, and one of the men rose and came to meet them. He was unshaven, haggard, his lined face and gnarled hands burned deep by years of sun on the desert. The long patience of deferred hope in his eyes was lighted by a moment s eagerness. "You men got any medicine with you? One of us is mighty sick, and we can t seem to do nothing for him." 188 THE MAKING OF They swung down from the saddles. The sick man lay on a blanket sheltered from the sun by a canvas fly. His comrades had given him whisky and quinine without effect ; there was nothing more that they could do ; the nearest doctor was a hun dred miles away and the man was dying. The new-comers had brought nothing that could help him. Herbert Hoover could only make him more comfortable, straightened his blanket, bathing his face and hands with cooling water. His com rades, relapsed into stolid hopelessness, stood or sat about the wisp of fire on which the coffee-pot boiled. At sunset the man opened his eyes and for some time regarded Herbert Hoover atten tively. Then he beckoned him to lean closer. 4 Can you write f " "Yes." 1 There *s a girl in Kentucky. Write to her and say- Crouched beside the blanket, his note-book on his knee, he took down the name and address of the girl in Kentucky and listened to the things that he must write her. He was there beside the blanket when the man died. The next morning Connors approached him awkwardly. " Those fellows want you to say something," he said. "You know at the funeral." HERBERT HOOVER 189 "Aw, Connors! I can t do anything like that. I would n t know how. "It ain t hardly decent to plant him without somebody saying something, and you re a darn sight nearer being a minister than the rest of us. These men, you know, they ve been traveling with him a long time. He s sort of a pardner of theirs, and they want things done right for him. They been talking it over, and they picked you." They had finished wrapping the body in a blanket, tied about with ropes. Their prospect or s shovels had dug the grave in the sand. Everything was as decently in order as they could make it, and now they stood helplessly, waiting. His eyes filled suddenly with tears. "I guess it s up to me," he said in a hard, practical voice. "I 11 do my best." He stood at the head of the grave with the ring of silent weather-worn men around it, and with painful effort, pausing between the sentences, he spoke to them of God who forgives all trans gressions and comforts all sorrows, and who holds the earth in His hands, so that it s all right, somehow. Awkwardly, with bowed heads and stumbling memories, they followed him in the Lord s Prayer, and then quietly they filled the grave, smoothed its top with their spades, and made a small mound of sticks and stones upon it. 190 THE MAKING OF One by one they wrung his hand, and he and Con nors rode away. The memory of that file of rough men, som breros in hand, silently carrying away the blan keted body to bury it in that desolate land, re mained vividly with him for a long time. He wrote as gently as possible to the girl in Ken tucky, and tried to put the memory away from him. But it persisted. He was only twenty-two, and every day death stood at his own shoulder. He learned then to face it without lowering his eyes, and in the test his untried youth was tem pered and hardened to the spirit of a man. There was for him no intoxication of excitement in the dangers he faced. His nature, so balanced and temperate, would no more become drunken with life than with liquor. At the root of his love of living lay not only the human sense-delights of sun and food and movement, but also that stern sense of moral duty that is the American religion. The value of life was not enjoyment but accom plishment; it lay not in emotional or spiritual values but in the concrete task completed. He faced death unwillingly but courageously because to face it was part of the day s work and work was life. " You boys better look out for rattlers, " he said one evening at a supper table where a group of young American mining men were hastily filling HERBERT HOOVER 191 empty stomachs with Mexican food. "I stepped on one in a shaft to-day. Their excited questions compelled details. "I was going down to examine an old shaft. You know those rotten rickety ladders that go down into black darkness. Well, I was going down backward, feeling with my feet to see that the rungs were solid, and all of a sudden in the dark I stepped on something soft. It was a big rattler coiled around the rung. The mines that have n t been worked lately are probably full of them." " What did you do 1" "What do you think I did? I went out of that shaft like forty-two winged acrobats and landed on top paler than a flour-mill, of course. Just the same, he got me three times, but luckily I was wearing thick corduroys, so his fangs didn t get through to the skin. "Well!" "That s all. I tied a lighted candle on a string next time I went down, you bet. He was still there, so I shot him with my revolver. "And went on down that shaft!" Naturally. He was dead. "You darned old idiot! Don t you know his mate was around there somewhere, waiting for you?" "Gee whiz! I never thought of that." He did not say that if he had thought of it his action 192 THE MAKING OF would have been the same. It was his job to examine that mine. It was his job, too, to make reports on the mines he examined. With Lindgren he had been an assistant, working on reports always subject to the supervision of an older and experienced man. Here he stood alone on his own responsibility, and his reports involved fortunes and all the human antagonisms that center about money. Not only his technical authority was at stake, but his repu tation for sound judgment and for an honesty that could not be bought. The strain upon him did not end with the making of minutely painstaking re ports ; he must stand by them, unswerved by crit icism, unchanged in his opinion by counter-reports of experts older than he. He went through days and nights of anxiety after his report that the Green Mountain Mine was salted. Experts dis agreed upon it, and the force of their authority was augmented by doubts of himself that crept through his own mind. He knew that he was young; he knew that even experienced experts sometimes made errors. But on this question of the Green Mountain Mine he was as sure as a man could be that he was right, and he stood firm. He held to his opinion even when it was so doubted that the Anglo-Calif ornian Bank of San Francisco sent its own experts to examine the mine and re port upon his. reports. But his hidden doubts of HERBERT HOOVER 193 himself became nightmare certainties during the long nights that were so hot he could not sleep. When at last the new expert opinion confirmed his own, his deep breath of relief was like the breaking of a constriction upon him ; he expanded, and felt himself an older and an abler man. He looked back with surprise upon himself as he had been only a few months earlier. A gulf widened be tween him and the boy who had pushed the ore- car for Tommy Nennis ; he was amazed by the re alization that he was the same person. He lay awake one night in a curtainless, uncar- peted room through whose warped board floor came sounds of riot from the saloon below. It was midnight, but he could not sleep. He had a decision to make. That day he had received a letter from Lindgren, intimating that he could now go back into the work of the United States Geological Survey. At the same time Janin had made him resident engineer in New Mexico, nom inally assistant superintendent. He stood at a fork in the road, compelled to decide his future. Geology, or mining? He wished to be a geologist. Dr. Branner s teaching and his own scientific mind inclined him to follow science for its own sake. Science that clear, selfless passion for knowledge that is the difference between man and the other animals, that endess search whose slowly accumulated 194 THE MAKING OF store is the real wealth of mankind. He could do good work in science; he knew it. On the other hand, mining the application of present scien tific knowledge to the practical affairs of men; getting out from the stubborn earth the metals that make civilization possible: steel for tall buildings, for railroads, for the machines of a world created by machinery; coal, whose posses sion makes and unmakes nations; gold, the life- blood of international commerce. It was a materialistic age, a pragmatic age. And he was a son of that young pioneer nation whose rewards went to men whose work showed immediate, practical results. There was the per sonal problem : could he make a living as a geolo gist! Could he make enough to support a wife and family, to lift them above the fear of want and crippling semi-poverty! The world did not reward its scientists; it did not even feed them. Yet he would have liked to be one. If he abandoned mining now and went to the work he loved in the Sierras he must face the probability of being forced some day to return to mining in order to live and provide for his future. He would come back as an older man ; he would be obliged to ask help of men who had forged ahead while he was standing still. They would know that he had once had a splendid opportunity as a young mining man and had given it up. His new HERBERT HOOVER 195 position in Janin s service reawakened half -terri fying doubts of his own ability; he was not sure that he could do the work. To leave it would be to quit an uncertain battle ; he would never know whether or not he could have won it, and that question, which he might have to meet in the eyes of other mining men, he would not be able easily to face in his own. Clearly in his own mind he set down the parallel columns of argument, for geology and for min ing. At the bottom he added figures: Salary, United States Geological Survey, twelve hundred dollars a year; with Janin, two thousand a year. The money made very little difference now. It all came down to the question, Could he succeed better as a mining man or as a geologist? It was a decision so important that he deter mined to ask advice. He pulled down the window- shade, shutting out the arch of stars above the wide dark plain, and lighting the lamp sat down to write to Dr. Branner, the good friend at Stan ford whose interest in his career had never failed. The answer came two weeks later. He rode into town and stood in the crowded post-office at mail-time to receive it, and on the edge of the side walk he tore open the envelope and read quickly three pages of sober discussion of the problem. On the typewritten page he saw lucidly set forth his prospects of great success in mining, and his 196 THE MAKING OF probable future as a geologist in which he must expect his reward to be largely in the honor he might win in his own small group. Dr. Branner and Dr. Jordan had considered his letter carefully, in the light of their greater knowledge of the world and their understanding of his own char acter and ability. The letter ended in nine words of the advice for which he had asked. He folded the letter and put it in his pocket. Stay where you are." That was the advice of his good friend who himself served pure science with all the passion of his fine mind and all the energy of his life ; it was the advice of a man who loved science and knew the life of a scientist. "It is a considerable risk for one who must have bread and butter." "Large interests . . . run like big machines. Promotion ... in the employ of such financiers, may lead to as good a position as there is in mining engineering." That meant success, power, great wealth. It meant, sometime, a secure future in which a man might be safe and free to do disinterested work. If he succeeded. Across the street the landlord beat on the din ner gong. Sleek, white-fingered gamblers, cow boys with handkerchiefs around their necks, a dusty engineer or two, crossed the hot road and went through the swinging screen door of the one- story restaurant. A ragged Mexican miner HERBERT HOOVER 197 slouched out of the post-office and went toward the nearest saloon, his feet raising little plops of white dust. At the end of the short street stretched the wide sterile land, parched and dead, giving birth to no green thing, feeding only, from its dark mines, these desolate bare towns. No. Doing more than that. Feeding the big machines of modern civilization, itself part of the big ma chine; its mines linked by a common ownership with the Anaconda of Butte, the Oneida of Cal ifornia, the Kimberley diamond-fields, the Rand and the Crown Reef in Africa, and scores of other great mines. All of them pouring their gold, jewels, copper, coal, into the hands of the big men at the center of the machine that covered the world. He, too, was part of that machine, that gigantic organization of human lives and material things thousands of Mexicans, black Africans, and Chinese; miners, engineers, promoters, bankers; laboratories, mills, railroads, ships; raw gold in the earth, minted gold in the vaults ; international credit, stock-markets, laws, diplomacy behind the thrones of Europe. A young man, barely twenty- two, standing in dust-grimed, sweat-stained clothes on the rickety porch of the post-office in an ugly little New Mexican mining town, he was al ready in the great game. Only a little way in, still unnoticed among the thousands on the outer 198 THE MAKING OF edge of the huge circle, but in it now for all he was worth ; in it to win ! 1 The man who looks after his employers inter ests is often promoted rapidly, while the one who does n t enter into the spirit of the work His mind was no longer divided. The spirit of the work was his, now, and would be. Mining, mine-development, mine-organization, gold, iron, steel they were his job. Some day he would be in the center of the big machine. Unconsciously he had thrust his hands deep into his pockets, leaning forward a little, tense. He relaxed, now, and grinned, remembering Kim- ball s rueful, half-serious complaint: "It isn t so much being young that handicaps us: it s not having a mustache !" He came into San Francisco that winter, sun burned brown, smiling confidently, with the record of a good summer s work behind him. Louis Janin received him with commendations. The big firm of Bewick, Moreing in London had asked Janin to recommend a young American mining man to send to Australia; salary, nine hundred and sixty pounds, almost five thousand dollars a year. Did Mr. Hoover want the job? His self-confidence melted within him, leaving him a hollow shell upheld by a desperate deter mination. The job was too big for him; he knew it. He had not the knowledge, the experience, HERBERT HOOVER 199 the ability, that could possibly be worth five thou sand dollars a year. But he wanted the oppor tunity, and the salary was a fortune. Do you think I can do the work, Mr. Janin ? "You can t tell until you try. I m willing to recommend you for it. Bewick, Moreing want something they cannot get, anyhow; they write that they must have a man not more than thirty years old, with seventy-five years 7 experience. A man over thirty can t stand the Australian climate and living conditions, they say, and it needs a man of seventy-five to handle their problems down there. " He chuckled. " Think it over, and let me know." He thought it over. The Australian mining- boom was on the wane ; English firms, with scores of mines bought in the days of feverish excite ment, were clamoring for American men to help them handle the difficulties of reorganization and management. It was a great opportunity, if he could make good. It was five thousand a year. It was a job too big for him. But if Janin was willing to recommend him he would be a coward to quit before he was beaten. He could at least go down fighting. Janin s recommendation of him went to London, and a sense of anxious waiting gnawed at the back of his mind. He made flying trips into Wyoming and Nevada for Janin, cleaning up little jobs. He 200 THE MAKING OF met and compared experiences with the old Stan ford crowd; G. B. Wilson, Kimball, Mitchell, Fol- som, Lester Hinsdale, and Sam Collins. There was a jolly Christmas celebration in the little Berkeley cottage where Cousin Harriette and Sis ter May were now keeping house for him and Theodore. There was a decorated Christmas tree, an enormous dinner, and an evening around the fire, where he and Sam Collins popped corn and teased the girls and he told mining tales. But all the while he was uneasy, with the thought of Australia alternately flushing and chilling him. Suddenly there was a flurry of cablegrams dis cussing terms and dates, a week when he haunted Janin s office and started at the peal of the tele phone, and it was settled. Five hundred dollars was cabled for his expenses; Bewick, Moreing engaged to deposit four hundred dollars a month to his credit in the Anglo-California Bank. He was to leave at once for Australia, by way of London. It was incredible as a fairy tale. New York! London! Italy, the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal, Ceylon and Australia ! Five thousand dol lars a year! His quiet self-control for once was flung away; he burst into the Berkeley cottage, whooping, waving the final cablegram. "Tad! Girls! It s settled! I m off for a trip around the world !" They fell on him with shrieks and HEBBEKT HOOVER 201 tears and laughter; they danced around the din ing-room table; they celebrated with the biggest dinner the girls had ever cooked, every light in the house ablaze, flowers on the table, every one interrupting everybody else. "You 11 have to have some new clothes "And a traveling-bag, and shoes. There s a sale down at " "Think of seeing Westminster Abbey! Oh, Bert, do you suppose "And the Alps, and the Mediterranean!" "You 11 be meeting all kinds of big people The thought of the job was like a cold wind blowing upon him at intervals. "See here, there s no guarantee that I m going to be able to make good, you know. Make good ! Of course you 11 make good ! There were serious consultations the next day, and the next, with Theodore and G. B. Wilson and Lester Hinsdale. What about clothes? What did one wear in London? "You will absolutely have to have a frock-coat and a tall hat, they decided. And a good busi ness suit, or maybe two." "A Scotch tweed, made with a cutaway coat, would be a good idea," Lester Hinsdale advised. "And see here, old man, you must have them made by a tailor. It s expensive, but everything de pends on making a good first impression." 202 THE MAKING OF They went with him to a tailor s, helped him choose materials, and stood by while he was measured. The suits cost forty-five dollars each. A lot of money, but it should be looked upon as a business investment. "And another thing, Bert: you d better raise a mustache, and possibly a beard. It will make you look older and more dig nified." "I Ve thought of that already, and decided to do it, he replied. He took Lester Hinsdale aside and talked to him about his business affairs. There would be four hundred a month deposited in the bank; he had promised to send three people through college, and surely there would be other Stanford undergrad uates in need of a little help. Hinsdale, doing graduate work in Stanford, and treasurer of the student body, would be in touch with the boys and girls there, and in a position to help wisely. Would he take a power of attorney and handle the money? "It s ambitious boys and girls I want to help, you understand. I have n t any use for the kind that thinks the world owes them a living. But there s a lot of men down there that are working hard, and just a little money now and then would pull them over the steep places. Just a loan that they won t have to pay back until they re able to do it. And I 11 give you a list of the amounts HEEBERT HOOVER 203 I want paid regularly every month. I 11 be tre mendously obliged if you 11 handle it for me. I 11 b glad to doit, Bert." The power of attorney was legally made out and recorded at the bank. The suits were delivered, tried on one by one for the girls to admire, and packed. There was a last talk with Janin, a last quick trip of farewell to Stanford. And in an April evening when the lights were beginning to twinkle along the misty shore-lines, he crossed San Francisco Bay for the last time, said good-by to Tad and the girls and Hinsdale at the Sixteenth- Street Oakland station, and began the long jour ney. A thousand miles, and a thousand miles, and another thousand miles, streaming backward past him. Over the Rocky Mountains again, down across the Colorado and Dakota deserts, past the level fertile plains of the Mississippi Valley that stirred dim memories of his childhood, roaring through the smoke of Pittsburgh, past steel-mills and factories and across discolored rivers and torn hillsides. The young April green of the Alleghanies, splashed with the snow of dogwood blossoms. Then the roar and ceaseless motion of the great machine that was New York. New York ! Stone and steel ; hard, implacable ; fed by endless streams of human traffic. The heart of the new America, where the backward- 204 THE MAKING OF turning currents of the energy that had conquered a contingent converged, were gathered together for the new pioneering adventure into the trade of the world. Wall Street. The House of J. P. Morgan. New giants, arisen to new gigantic battles. Something there to stir the blood, to quicken and fire the young ambition of twenty- three ! Already the old world called to the youngest nation for help. England, with her traditions, her centuries-old pride, her ivied universities, was not producing the men who could carry the whole bur den of her far-flung business battles ; it was Amer ican energy, American imagination and initiative, American organizing ability, that she needed to handle her Australian mines. That was the rea son Bewick, Moreing reached around the world to take him, fresh from America s youngest uni versity. Take care, England ! The young Amer icans are coming! Young America is rising on the crest of the great commercial centuries! There will yet be a day when the mines of the world, the trade of the world, the life of the world, will be dominated by New York. The kingdoms and the thrones are moving westward ! Only a glimpse of the Great Game came to him, a young man on the edge of it. The clashing of gigantic forces in terrific battle echoed faintly from those silent, implacable walls of stone, from HERBERT HOOVER 205 the heavy columns and powerful steel doors of the great banking-houses. He was unknown there, a youth lost in the floods of unregarded humanity. He was going out to be one of the thousand of small cogs in the big machine, and he was facing with doubt and trembling the work he would have to do in a job too big for him. He braced himself to meet it, fortifying himself with thoughts of the forty-five-dollar suits made by a tailor, and ten derly nursing the growing mustache and beard. The huge passenger liner moved out of the harbor past the Goddess of Liberty, upholding her light above the dwindling shore line of Amer ica. The wide gray seas took the ship and made her a speck floating in illimitable space. Seven days and nights in a tossing cabin with the miser ies of seasickness. Liverpool, seen dimly through air that still lifted and sank with the movement of a ship on the sea. A strange little train, with compartments, third class, second class, first class. London. An old city, a gray city, a bewildering city ; vast, chaotic. Hideous poverty huddled at the feet of heedless riches. Strange accents, strange baffling customs. An air of leisure, a flavor of the past, in the offices of the City. Afternoon tea. Stately old club-rooms paneled in wood. He was silent, observing it all, irritated, self-distrustful, strug gling with the unfamiliar. He had made a good 206 THE MAKING OF impression on Moreing; that ordeal was over. He felt that his new suits had failed him; he dis carded the tweed cutaway coat. But no doubt the beard had helped; he passed for twenty-eight or nine. Age counted too much with these people ; the past was a ball-and-chain on their feet. Youth was the conquering spirit. The new, the untried, was the path that led forward. America s feet were on it. With relief he began the last stage of the jour ney that circled three quarters of the earth. The steward on the luxurious P. and 0. boat explained that he could not enter the dining-saloon after six o clock unless he was wearing evening clothes. He did not possess any. He explained that he was an American and would dress as he pleased and eat when he was hungry. The steward capit ulated, and he dined uncomfortably in blue serge. But he resolved to buy a dress suit at the first opportunity. He had entered a new world. League after league stretched between him and home. Gibraltar. Brindisi, the heel of the Ital ian boot. The Mediterranean, blue as San Fran cisco Bay. Port Said and the Suez Canal, that had been marks on maps when he studied geog raphy in the Pacific Academy. Aden, strange- colored and foreign. Colombo in Ceylon, the edge of the world. Then over the edge of the world, and farther still, miles upon miles of the restless HERBERT HOOVER 207 sea sliding backward. And above the restless waters rode the low shore-line of Australia, the oldest continent on the earth, a land so old that the centuries had worn away its mountain ranges and lost its rivers. A basket swung on a cable carried him over the surf to his landing in the little white town of Albany. The railroad was not yet built to Cool- gardie ; a train would take him as far as Southern Cross, where he would be met with a team. The fringe of green farms about Albany vanished behind him; through the car windows he saw a desert danced upon by little devils of whirling dust. A barren, abandoned land, frozen in the terrible cold of the June winter ; a monster luring human beings to torture and death with its bared gold. An English cart met him at Southern Cross, with a "unicorn" team two horses running abreast and a third in front. The road was three ruts in the iron-like earth; only the center one smooth and packed by the soft padding of camels. On each side rose a six-foot wall of mulga bush, a fantastic tangle of black shrubs that shivered in the icy wind. Twenty miles to Coolgardie, through a cold like an Arctic night, and he drove into a little city of corrugated-iron shacks and houses walled with tin and burlap. As great business houses might build of marble 208 THE MAKING OF at home, they built here of the precious wood brought from Puget Sound. The office of Bewick, Moreing s London and West Australian company was a square box of lumber on the bleak main street. Beside a red-hot stove he listened to the talk of the manager he was relieving, glanced over reports, saw vaguely the chaos of disorgan ization he was inheriting. Then they drove to the house that was to be his. It was a large, low bungalow with a wide ver anda facing the endless miles of desert. A Lon don company, capitalizing the eagerness of young Englishmen to go to the colonies, had built the house for the manager of the Hampton Plains colonization scheme. The land was abandoned now to return to the grip of the desert; only the house remained, a perquisite of Bewick, More- ing s resident manager. Cook and valet went with it, and handsome furniture and rugs brought by ship from London. Here he was installed, and here for the succeed ing few weeks he lived, untangling by day the many details of his new work, embarrassed morn ing and evening by the obsequious "Yes, sir," "No, sir," of the English valet, a man older than he. Obviously he must buy a dress suit as soon as he could get to Perth; he must maintain his dignity. It was convenient to have his clothes HEEBEET HOOVEE 209 brushed, his shoes shined, his bath drawn, leaving his attention free for office problems, but the man s silent comment upon him was disquieting; it implied a suspicion that the new American man ager was very young. The effort to conceal his youth was a constant annoyance; a small detail amid the mass of diffi culties he encountered, but no more to be forgot ten than a pebble in the shoe. As resident man ager he found himself the superior of two Amer ican mining experts, graduates of Columbia, with whom he would have been glad to be friends. But the subject of college days was too dangerous ; he talked with them guardedly, watchful not to be tray that he was of the Pioneer Class at Stan ford and that he held an A.B. degree not two years old. In the presence of his surveyors and assayers and clerks he maintained a lofty and unnatural dignity that guarded the secret of his scant twenty-three years, and he was daily grate ful for the disguise of drooping mustache and lengthening beard that hid the boyishness of his mouth. He was maintaining precariously a posi tion of authority in a country filled with mining engineers older than himself who had been left stranded without work when the boom broke. A hundred eager eyes were upon his job, and there were hours when discouragement before his diffi- 210 THE MAKING OF culties would have made him willing to give it up if he could have done so without admitting to himself that he was a quitter. The tasks he had to do loomed in monumental and chaotic heaps before him. The collapse of the mining boom had left scores of London com panies with hastily purchased, undeveloped or badly equipped mines upon their hands. Over a .hundred and twenty million dollars had .been in vested by the British public in West Australian mining schemes, and of this enormojnis stor all but five millions had gone into the pockets of the promoters. The five millions left for working- capital had been spent lavishly and inefficiently in a country where legitimate mining-costs were al most prohibitive. Now the Bewick, Moreing Com pany was taking over the properties as actual mining operators, and the resident manager of the Coolgardie office was expected to produce real ore in paying quantities from the mines under his control. The cost of lumber for mine-timbers was $1.75 a running foot. Fresh water for milling proc esses was unobtainable anywhere on the West Australian desert ; six-hundred-foot wells were dry and one-thousand-foot diamond borings did not yield enough water by pumping to feed the pump s boilers. Salt water sold for $6.25 a thousand gallons, and the cost of distilling for drinking- HEEBERT HOOVER 211 purposes added $10.00. It was used undistilled for milling, at a cost of $2.00 for each ton of ore. And the British public was clamoring for a return on its investments. In his struggles to find a point at which the over-capitalization and enormous operating- costs would be met by the output of the mines the new manager encountered another condition startling and appalling to all the instincts of American individualism. The government of Australia owned all Australian railroads and mines. It was impossible to secure a freehold to mining property; mines could be held only on leases terminating in twenty years. Since the miners were a small minority of Australia s pop ulation, the government was in fact the fringe of farmers along the coasts, who naturally placed upon the miners as large a share of the taxation as was possible. Miners and farmers formed two rival factors in governmental affairs, and the effort of the miners to have new railroads built from the gold-fields to the nearest harbor was defeated by the farmers around Perth, who did not want a rival coast town established. Bewick, Moreing had been right when they wrote that they needed a man with seventy-five years experience to handle their problems in West Australia. It was the health of twenty-three, however, that resisted the fierce cold of the July and August 212 THE MAKING OF days when raging storms came down from the skies upon the flat desert country and flooded it with icy water that resisted freezing only because its contact with the alkaline earth made lakes of brine. The lumber walls of the office shook in the teeth of the winds and the iron roofs of Coolgardie wailed aloud. Trains of pack-camels brought from the Gobi desert to that reversed climate on the other side of the Equator lay huddled in the streets and moaned in their coats of thin summer hair. Herbert Hoover, when he rode out on his first trip of inspection, saw that the groom packed plenty of blankets beneath the seat of the trap. He inspected fourteen mines on that trip, and condemned ten of them. Fortunes in England and on the Continent hung on his decision; millions of dollars had been invested in those prospects. But his careful figuring brought the relentless facts : the costs of development were too high, the mines would not pay for it. "I ve been called in to mend the lame ducks/ he said. "The only way is to begin by killing the bad ones immediately." And the London of fice by cable confirmed his decisions. He came back to Coolgardie, sent in his reports by cable, and began a thorough reorganization of the office and the mines, cutting expenses, dis carding non-essentials, discharging men and re placing them with harder workers. As soon as HERBERT HOOVER 213 possible he was cabling home for American men, Stanford men, to help him. He made enemies, but he must take that as part of the day s work. He had undertaken a tremendous task; he had to do it and do it well ; the sooner it was accomplished the more quickly he would be free for a bigger job in a country where a man could ask a white woman to live. In the meantime he buried him self in work; he worked the night through more than once, and the midnights usually found him engrossed in plans and estimates or writing the letters that were his only link with home and Stanford. September brought the spring; the desert burst suddenly into bloom, thousands of unknown flow ers, red and gold and blue and purple, rioted among the mulga bush in an abrupt carnival of color that ended as swiftly as it had begun, and the summer took the desert. A summer without flowers or green things, a summer that focused the sun s rays as in a burning-glass, and played over a flat black land with dust-storms and shim mering mirages of lakes that were not there. He sat alone in the living-room of the bungalow late one night, writing the letters that carried back to his friends, in short hard phrases packed with facts, a sense of that curious and unfriendly land. The temperature was 110, but so dry that the heat was not as bad as it might be. There had 214 THE MAKING OF been another terrible dust-storm. Water had gone up in price again. There were of course no green vegetables. Eggs were twelve cents each. The land was so flat that there was no drainage, which made it unhealthful. There were four hun dred cases of typhoid in the hospitals at Cool- gardie. He was well. The office was in splendid shape. The junior partner in charge of all West Australia was certainly good to him. He had had a raise in salary. He sealed the last letter and leaned back in his chair, pushing his hands deep into his pockets and looking about him at the large neat living-room of the bungalow. The shining hardwood floor reflected the curtains stirring gently at the win dows. The rugs, the heavy comfortable furniture, the piano standing invitingly open, were all like home. Shut out the stars of the Southern Cross hanging over the flat black desert, silence the distant howl of dingos ranging the night, and he might be back in God s own country. He rose and walked up and down, his head bent, thinking thinking of the office, the men there, the cross currents of personalities and self-interests, the problems of mining with poor machinery and doubtful water-supply. The thoughts ran on, over the surface of his growing loneliness ; he held his mind to them grimly. But the silence of the HERBERT HOOVER 215 room, disturbed only by his own footfalls, was like a voice reminding him of his isolation. He stopped beside the piano, tapped a key, then an other. Still silence. The keys went down with a faint chug of the ivory on the velvet. He lifted the lid of the polished mahogany case. It was empty, a hollow shell holding only a tangle of wires and dust. "Did you call, sir?" The valet stood in the doorway. "What s the matter with this piano, do you know?" "It s the white ants, sir." "They ate the piano?" "Yes, sir. They eat everything, sir." His eye followed the man s glance along the lower edge of the walls. Sure enough, a faint trace of fine sawdust here and there. He prodded the baseboard with his finger. The solid-looking wood gave gently to the pressure. It was a mere shell, hollow, like the piano. The window-frames, the door-casings hollow, too. "Any way to get at them?" "No, sir. They stay inside the wood, sir. One only sees the sawdust, sir." "Well, it s a hell of a country, is n t it?" "Sol have heard remarked, sir. He put his hands into his pockets and stood 216 THE MAKING OF looking 1 at the man. Impossible to attempt a friendly human relationship with him yet. Lord, for one real American to talk to ! 1 Well, I >m going to bed. Good night. Oh, I ? m leaving to-morrow for a trip. Tell the cook I 11 be gone a couple of weeks, will you?" "Very well, sir. Good night, sir." The groom brought the English trap to the door in the early morning. The camping-outfit was in it, the water-casks were full, the bicycle strapped on behind. He had been warned not to travel without the bicycle ; in case of an accident a man might die of thirst before he could reach water on foot. They drove to Kalgoorlie through a heat like a blast from a furnace door. The road was fairly well traveled. They passed dusty prospectors, messengers on bicycles, a long caravan of lurch ing camels patiently padding through the hot thick dust on their way to the back country, attended by turbaned Mohammedans who had come with them from Afghanistan. But after visiting the Kalgoorlie mines he struck out into the bush, and was swallowed in the silence of the desert. An interminable land, baked by the fierce sun, its red soil matted with the black mulga bush that gave no shade. Intolerable heat, reflected be tween burning earth and blazing sky. Hot dust prickling parching skins and throats but one HERBERT HOOVER 217 must be sparing of the precious water. Hun dreds of miles of this yet to go ; and after that, hundreds of miles more to be traveled, as long as he stayed in West Australia. Well, one must pay for success. They stopped to eat at noon, washing dry throats with water, lying for shelter in the shade of the trap. The living leaves of the mulga bush, twisted and black, crackled into powder in the hand, like dried tea-leaves. A giant lizard, five feet long, moved sluggishly across the road a * bung-arrow, " prized by prospectors because it killed snakes. Ant-hills built like towers, eight feet high, rose through the tangled scrub. They were made of a strange fine earth cemented to gether ; an earth found nowhere but in those ant hills. "The only explanation is that the ants chew up the sand," he humorously decided, smiling through the wide-meshed net that strangely enough kept off the swarms of tiny black flies. "Well, let s be getting on." He traveled fast. The little ponies, with relays at each station, could make seventy-five miles a day, thirty miles more than camels. But for the longest stretches he must use camels, because they could live without water and eat the mulga. High on the humped backs he rode, in trappings of red and green and gold, his swaying body racked with 218 THE MAKING OF each lurching step, the sun-rays burning the hands that clutched the saddle. He learned, in camp at noon, not to pass between the turbaned Afghan Pathans and the sun ; if his shadow fell upon their food religion forbade them to eat it. He learned, too, not to carry bacon or ham or lard in a camel caravan; to touch a package containing it meant that the swarthy camel-men would lose their hopes of Paradise and kill the man responsible. In that far back country, too, he rode with scores of unseen eyes upon him. The little black men of the bush followed along the way, stealthy, invisible, passing through the thickets in which no white man could go. In camp in the evenings he looked up, startled, from his notebook to see a thin black leaping figure, rising above the five- foot bush, vanishing again instantly, leaving on the eyeballs a memory of outspread hair, bright eyes, and a great bone nose-ring. That was a wild man, curious to look at him; a boomerang- thrower, a spearsman whose darting weapon could kill at eighty yards. But the wild men were shy, and slow to make decisions. There was no danger if the caravan kept moving. They fol lowed it, considering an attack upon it, unable to make up their minds ; they were harmless if one camped each night in a new spot. Thankfully he ended the agonies of camel-riding and settled aching muscles again in the seat of a HERBERT HOOVER 219 trap. He drove back toward Coolgardie and a bath, crossing on the way great expanses of alkali marked "lakes" upon the map where the hard white surface reflected the horses and the whirl ing spokes like a mirror. As he went he watched with dust-inflamed eyes the cool blue waves upon a sandy beach bordered with palms, a beach that moved beside them across the white-hot land, a mirage upon a surface of the shimmering air. "We stop at Niagara to-night, you said. I hope there 11 be water enough there to wash off some of this alkali dust. "There will be," the groom promised. "It s a jolly good pub, Mr. Hoover. Biddy Malone s is known from here to t other side." In Niagara that night or in Biddy Malone s burlap-walled pub; for they were one he re joiced in the luxury of washing his face, and ate good Irish cooking. He was not too inquisitive about the sheets; it was not a country in which laundry could be often done. He sat on the steps after supper, watching the hot night fall like a blanket upon the interminable flat desert, and he thought of the cool, beautiful arches of the old Quad, and of the girl who had walked with him in the green folds of the hills where wild lilies bloomed. October in California. The rains would be coming down like a ground-glass screen between the road to Mayfield and the colored hills ; 220 THE MAKING OF the grass would be more green and the clearing skies more blue with every dawn that rose upon the Santa Clara Valley. And she was a junior now. In another year she would be leaving Stan ford. He finished the journey back to Coolgardie in record time, and plunged again into the perplex ities and anxieties that had been accumulating there for him. Deane Mitchell, coming out from California to help him with them, said that he looked ten years older. The question of his age no longer mattered to him; he had proved his value to the company, and he was too much harassed to trouble about the opinions of others. He found himself involved in more problems than those of mine-management ; his expert opinion was too valuable not to be bid for, and there were too many men with money in the gold-fields who said cynically that all men were for sale: "It s simply a matter of variable price. " He refused a bribe of eight thousand dollars for a false report upon a mine, and made more enemies. But it was a relief and a joy to have Deane Mitchell there with him, and though they were both overworked, they were delighted with the progress they made and with the compliments their work received from London. Already his introduction of American methods was increasing the output of the mines and threat- HERBERT HOOVER 221 ening trouble with the workmen. He had found the miners using the old double-jack, one man holding the drill while another struck it with the sledge. It was a method of working that had gone out of use in America fifty years before with the introduction of the more efficient single- jack. He sent to America for single-jacks, put them into the mines, and faced a rebellion of the miners. They refused to use the new tools ; they flung them into the machinery of the stamp-mills and they were found in the tunnels doggedly working in the old way. The managers reported increasing dis content. "Fire em if they won t follow orders after you Ve explained and given them a chance. We can get men that will." The single-jack was the efficient tool, used by American miners; the Aus tralians could learn to use it or get out of his mines. Engineers and foremen, too, felt the new driving force and initiative that were reconstruct ing a dozen mines from the bottom up. They worked tirelessly and intelligently, or they were replaced by men who would. He replaced every man on his original staff and refilled some posi tions several times. He was learning to handle the human factor, that inexplicable and erratic element in all modern business that in preventing all organizations from becoming perfect machines prevents them also from becoming static and holds 222 THE MAKING OF the door open to that endless change that is called progress. He made mistakes, corrected them quickly, experimented, tried new combinations; and under his hands grew a harmonious organiza tion of men animated by a common purpose who worked with him and for him with all the energy they possessed. He saw it with satisfaction and pride, and when he heard that he was known in West Australia as a hard and ruthless man he did not deny the indictment. There was an echo of his childhood in his grim acceptance of it; life was hard, facts were ruthless, and if he was im placable toward others he was not more sparing of himself. Bewick, Moreing recognized his ability, at first by letters and cables of congratulation on the results he was accomplishing, and later by swift promotion. There was a reorganization going on above his head ; Mr. Hooper, who had been his superior, left West Australia; Mr. Williams, a partner in the firm, came on from South Africa to take control, and the young manager of the Cool- gardie office was given a junior partnership in the local branches of the business. All the West Aus tralian offices were put under his control, and the position carried with it another increase in salary. Such rapid advancement was heady wine for a youth who still dared not shave his beard for fear of revealing his twenty-four years. His grasp of HERBERT HOOVER 223 hard, practical fact kept his feet steady and his mind cool, but there was more assurance in his gestures and more authority in his voice. He found it less necessary to explain the swift yet sure-footed reasoning by which he reached his conclusions, and Mr. Williams found his brusk rapidity disconcerting. They looked at each other with mutual respect across a chasm of un- comprehension ; the Englishman with his Euro pean education and traditions, and the young American with his instinct for brusk, immediate action. There was a discord between them, less of character or mind than of surface mannerism. But there was too much work before them both for them to allow personal idiosyncrasies to inter fere with it. Eight offices were now under the control of the former manager of the Coolgardie office. He worked every night until two or three o clock in the morning. His reputation for ruthlessness in creased as he went through the organizations, making them over to his own pattern. But there were incidents in his implacable progress that were unknown to West Australia. In the office at Cue he found the records in wretched disorder, and with the wrath that an overworked man feels for a negligent incompetence that hinders him he sent for the accountant. The summons was answered by an old man who 224 THE MAKING OF faced him with eyes that tried to conceal an ex tremity of terror. His white head, his bent shoul ders, the decent patches on the meager threads of an ancient alpaca coat, and the withered hands whose trembling he could not restrain, said that he was a failure, a human being defeated in the struggle to live and tortured by an existence pro longed when his life had gone into the irrevocable past. The new manager, after one glance at him, put his hands deep into his pockets and stared at the desk piled with papers. There was no ques tion that the man must go. The big business ma chine could not keep in its mechanism this useless cog. Great-grandfather Eli, master of his pump- factory in West Branch, would not have dreamed of breaking the grip by which those old fingers desperately clung to food and shelter; Herbert Hoover himself could not have done it if the choice had been his to make, but the vast impersonal organization that ruled the Cue office from the other side of the world, must be served imperson ally and efficiently. "How old are you?" he asked. " Seventy -two, said a voice that still held steady. "Well don t you think this work will be a little too hard for you after the office is reorganized ? He had a sense of the vast egotism and cruelty of youth that seizes so relentlessly, because it HERBERT HOOVER 225 must, the tasks that fall from older hands, but he had no choice. He must go through with it. There is plenty of time for you to look for some thing easier to do, but I need a younger man to " He was stopped by the old man s sobbing. There was, after all, no gentle way of putting the fact, and before it the last remnant of pride had gone. The old man wept, the wrinkled face ex posed like a child s, and in short strangling gasps he begged for mercy, not for himself, but for his wife in Perth. She was old, too. She had no one but him. She would starve. He sent her his whole salary. He had tried hard to keep the books right. Nobody wanted him, because he was old; he could not get another job. They had never, never in all their lives been forced to accept char ity, even when they were hungry. The salary was not so very large, and he would work harder. He had sent it all to her; he had washed his own clothes and done his own cooking so that she might have it all. He could not tell her Herbert Hoover, whose ruthlessness was known from Perth to the farthest reaches of the back country, spent an hour comforting him with gen tleness and tact. His words, brief and steadying, quieted the old man, got him on his feet again, and covered the memory of that exposure of his agony. He went out of the office reassured and hopeful and Herbert Hoover, before going on with 226 THE MAKING OF his work, expressed his resentment against fate in one angry phrase: "That thing upsets me hor ribly. 7 He explained the situation that night to two of the American boys, and together they made up a purse of three hundred dollars, which he gave the old man as a parting gift from the company. Then he found an easy job for him in Perth and bruskly sent him away to spend the rest of his days in comfort with his wife, while a younger man took the job of accountant at Cue. The new junior partner was too busy for brood ing over his own affairs; work was a good shield against a growing inner loneliness. But his first inquiry when he reached an office was, "Any mail?" And at night in the deserted offices or in the big living-room of the bungalow, where now part of the old crowd from Stanford was usually with him, he sat writing long letters, trying to bridge with words the thousands of miles between him and California. The other boys would get out their letters, too, and the long silences would be disturbed only by the faint scratching of pens and the lonesome-sounding howls of the wild white dogs of the desert. A year since he had seen Lou Henry. And she was always a popular girl. She was walking now, perhaps, in the cool shadows of the old Quad, under the sandstone arches and the red-tiled roof HERBERT HOOVER 227 glowing against the blue California sky. Walk ing there in her corduroy skirt and brown sweater, with the bright-colored tie beneath the white collar of her blouse, her throat and cheeks sun- warmed, her gay, brave eyes shining. The green hills of California, the poppies golden in the grass, and Lou Henry putting one slim hand on a fence and vaulting it, lightly as a bird! And three hundred other fellows walking the same paths, asked to the same dances, seeing her, meeting her, talking to her, if they liked, a dozen times a day. Well, a man has to be a man, and stand the gaff. He has to make good for a woman, if he deserves to have her. 1 I m going out again to-morrow morning to the Sons of Gwalia, boys," he said. The Sons of Gwalia was a new, almost unknown mine, two hundred miles back in the bush. His expert eye had found in it signs that promised another Kalgoorlie ; the cabled report in code had reached London; the big men in the City were busy. Meantime the development of the mine threatened to let out the secret; already three rival syndicates in the field had wind that some where a new discovery had been made. When he climbed into the shining English trap now a cas ual side glance showed him a bicyclist lounging on the other side of the street. Eighty miles out in the sweltering bush country the same man 228 THE MAKING OF would pass him, pedaling through the red dust, and at the next station another man with the same bicycle would be sitting in the shade of a tent and curiously enough would happen to follow the road he took. It was a game of hide-and-go-seek, back and forth across a thousand miles of burning desert, where mirages of rippling water and palm-trees mocked blistering skins and dusty throats and the sky was a white-hot brazen lid to a tortured earth. Slipping noiselessly as lizards through the shrub, the starveling wild men watched it, and marveled. On the other side of the world, in cool club-rooms and dim offices paneled in old oak, the other end of the game was being played. Eaw gold in the ore, minted gold in the vaults ; half -naked miners in Australian mines, shrewd men in London stock- markets the Great Game ! Leading the gasping bicyclists fifty miles astray, losing them on the road to Mount Margaret, doubling back to the cables, he was part of the big machine; no longer on its outer edge, but close, now, to the big men at the center. He played out his part and twenty men in Lou- don saw his cleverness. The Sons of Gwalia was purchased by Bewick, Moreing s London and West Australian Exploration Company for $200,- 000.00; it was capitalized at $300,000.00, leaving a margin of 200,000 shares in the hands of the HERBERT HOOVER 229 company. Then the secret broke; the script leaped upward and upward again on the market, doubling, trebling in price, and the company un loaded. It was a clean profit of nearly $1,500,- 000.00 for the big men, and they did not forget the young Australian manager who had made it for them. The Sons of Gwalia was still in their control; they turned it over to him to develop and manage, with two hundred acres of adjacent desert which he had wisely taken the precaution to lease for them. His office was now a tent on Mount Leonora, a commanding height of seventy-eight feet above two hundred miles of desert bush. Around the Sons of Gwalia a mushroom mining-camp sprang up overnight ; over all the trails converging there hung the smoky dust of travel miners, engineers, gamblers, and dance-hall men with their women hastening to the new field. When riding down from his office in the mornings he saw the dusty carts, the tents going up, scores of new faces ; fat men smoking gold-banded cigars, lean sharp-eyed gentlemen; tired-eyed girls with red cheeks and lips. < What s going up here! Dance-hall? You can t stay on my ground. Get off, and do it quick !" "No, I will not give you room for a saloon. 230 THE MAKING OF There s two hundred acres of land around here where you can t stay overnight. Don t talk to me. I m busy." " Chase those fellows out of here," he said im patiently to his manager. " There s going to be one clean mining-camp in the world. Our men are n t here to carouse, they re here to get out the ore." They got out the ore; they dug out, too, some thing else. Making out reports ; traveling behind his unicorn team, the fastest in West Australia, over a territory larger than the Pacific states, wrestling with poor machinery, importing camels from the Gobi desert to reduce freight costs ; meet ing delegations of rebellious miners he found time one morning to notice something new in the dump heap beyond the crusher. He picked it up, examined it. "Clay, hm? We 11 put up a brick kiln and have some cool houses in this eternal desert." He ordered fire-brick, cement, machinery for making ice; he put the men to work, drew the plans, put in a manager to superintend the job. Six brick houses arose, double-walled, double- roofed, with wide verandas ; built of red brick with neat white-brick trimmings, for there were two kinds of clay in the mine. One of the buildings was a club-house, fan-cooled, supplied with cold water, furnished with big chairs, long tables HEEBEET HOOVEE 231 and book-shelves. "G. B." Wilson, Deane Mit chell, all the boys in the fields, drove fifty miles out of their way to bring in magazines and books. "Encourage the miners to use the place, " he told his managers. "It s built for them. I want to get them interested in their jobs; there are all kinds of technical mining-journals there. Or they can sit around where it s cool and play cards if they want to, if they don t turn it into a gam bling-house." He was buying a fifth-interest in a new mine, highly recommended to him by two men in whom he had confidence. The ore specimens looked good; he did not have time to examine the mine himself. He was building cyanide mills for the company; getting in machinery for a new fifty- stamp mill to replace the old ten-stamp one at Sons of Gwalia; firing men, taking on new ones, fighting the sly selling of whisky on his properties. He bought the mine and sent a man to manage it. If it paid as it promised he would be able to get out of Australia, back to God s country, back to Cal ifornia and the girl. But the mill-run was not as good as the sam ples. The work went on, and it hardly paid ex penses. Then it was showing a deficit. Eunning across Wilson down in Kalgoorlie, he asked him to run up and take a look at the property; some thing seemed to be wrong. 232 THE MAKING OF He was sitting at his desk late one evening, fig uring up running-costs in percentages, when the sound of wheels came through the open door and Wilson, travel-stained and dusty, appeared in the doorway. " Lo,H. C.l" Hello ! Glad to see you. You know where the water is. Help yourself. If you want towels yell for em." His figures showed that he had made a record in low running-costs. Sons of Gwalia was making a clear profit of twenty thousand dollars a month ; with the new mill it would run one hundred and twenty thousand. He looked up at the sound of returning steps. ^Feeling better, G. B.f" "Fine. Lord ! people at home don t know what a bath is! Toss me a cigar. Thanks." Wilson settled comfortably into a chair and struck a match. "How s everything?" "Pretty good." Hoover lighted his own cigar and leaned back. "Any news down your way?" "Been up to see our mine." "Yes?" "Salted." Hoover blew a smoke ring at the ceiling. A fortune, the green hills of California, and some other hopes dissolved into nothingness with it. HERBERT HOOVER 233 1 Well, the sons of guns ! And I d have trusted those boys with my bank-account. Why, G. B., they were friends of mine ! There is n t any doubt about it?" Wilson laid two specimens on the desk. "This one s from the crusher up there; see the chryso- calla? It s the same stuff they showed us. I Ve been clear through the mine, sampled it every where; not another trace of chrysocalla in it. That second specimen s taken from the Morning- glory, the other mine those chaps owned, you re member. I went down there and asked if there d ever been a shipment of that ore sent out ; manager told me there was one consignment shipped, just before the boys sold. He didn t know where it went, but you can draw your own conclusions. "Well, there certainly are some scoundrels in the world! I guess the joke s on us." A little desultory talk. Figures. Operating- costs. News of the field, of the stock-market at Perth. Cigar smoke floating in motionless layers in the breathless air ; the hot dark desert brooding outside the windows. A wild man from the bush slipping past the doorway like a shadow, thin limbs no larger than a monkey s, bright peering eyes, bushy hair, a bleached white bone through the nostrils, all seen for a second and vanishing. "The beggars are getting tamer." 234 THE MAKING OF "Yes. Quite a lot hanging around. They try out their boomerangs on the ducks at the tailings dump. "Got another match ?" Silence again, and the smoke curling. Good to have a moment s rest. Eotten feeling, that about the mine, and the men he had trusted. "Say, H. C., you know the Associated, down at Kalgoorlie? They re getting out a lot of good ore lately. Working full blast. I m wonder ing" The legs of his chair came down abruptly. He leaned forward, alert. "Associated? That lies between two blocks of our Aroya. Which way are they working?" Well, if their lode runs north or south- Back in the game again, the Great Game ! The matching of wits ; quick mind against quick mind ; watching the other fellow; seizing unguarded openings, down there in the farthest outlands, and moving with his movements the kings of the City and the thousands of pawns behind them. "If they Ve struck something big, it means that Aroya 11 boom when the secret s out. Get after it, G. B. Find out what they re doing." Six weeks later, swinging around the desert circuit again on his job as consulting engineer, he came into the Coolgardie office late at night, tired, looking for mail. The box-like room, hot as an HERBERT HOOVER 235 oven, was deserted. He sat reading for the second time the letter he had wanted, when Wil son came in, bringing an air of controlled excite ment. 6 < They told me I d catch you here. Well, H. C., I Ve got it ! Been working as shift-boss for the Associated. They re following a three-foot lode straight into Aroya. I Ve been surveying all night; they re within twenty-five feet of the Aroya line." Where s the code-book?" He worked out the cablegram in pencil, Wilson slipping a fresh sheet of carbon between two blanks and typing it out as he read it aloud. A cablegram telling the London office to get control of Aroya, quickly. They caught the telegraph man just before he closed the office, and it was on its way to the daylighted side of the world. Four hours later the big men in the City would be quietly gathering up Aroya on the London stock-market, preparing for another big flotation. 4 That s a good piece of work," he said. His reward came quickly. Mr. Hoover was offered a choice; he could take over the entire management of their West Australian interests, or he could go to China. He did not wait for a letter from California. He cabled. White women could live comfortably 236 THE MAKING OF in China, in Peking or Tien-Tsin. There were modern hotels there, shade, water. There were shops and theaters and companions to fill in the times, that could not be avoided, when a mining engineer must go alone into hardships and danger. He had made good; for a long time he had been able to support a wife, now he could take her to a country in which she could live. Still, it was a great deal to ask her to face the life of an engi neer s wife half a world away from her home and friends. Ah, but she had never lacked grit, that girl! The cablegram would reach her at ten o clock in Monterey. She would be playing tennis, per haps, short white skirt and white middy and flung- back head vivid against green palms and pepper-.- trees. Two years since he had seen her. Noth ing but her gay, fine letters between them for twenty-four long months. If she answered the cable at once he could know that night. Perhaps she would want to think about it. Cable offices at home closed at six o clock. If she waited until after six But the cablegram came that night. The company s business was all in order. Ten days would gather up the last new detail into compact shape, ready for the new manager. His own personal affairs but he had been paying no HERBERT HOOVER 237 attention to them; he had been too busy. Hotel bills, livery bills, laundry, small sums of money he had lent, were scattered over half the continent. Brokers in Perth had buying and selling orders of his ; small blocks of stock in this mine and that. A dozen banks held the remnants of little checking- accounts ; he did not know exactly how much. He could estimate approximately his balance in the San Francisco bank; Lester Hinsdale still held a power of attorney there and seven boys and girls were now paying their way through college from that account, while others drew against it for loans now and then. A hopeless muddle, his own affairs. Never mind. There was no time to give them. Wilson could attend to that. Memorandum books, check stubs, I U s, brokers 7 statements all of them in one pile. i Straighten it out for me, will you? Good-by. See you in China. " He was off for London, on the journey that would circle the world again. The world was after all a small place Stanford on a larger scale. The big business offices were only the Oregon Land Company s office gigantically magnified; the same conflicting desires, the same visions of build ing, the same greeds, the same principles. A man s power is in proportion to the width of his horizon; a small man is a small man because his vision ends within the little circle of his fancied 238 THE MAKING OF limitations. He knew, now, that nothing smaller than the wide curve of the earth restrained him. Ceylon again; Port Said; the shores of Italy; Marseilles; London. He walked with confidence into the offices that had awed him once. He had made good; he was going on to a bigger job where again he would make good. " Chief Engineer for the Director-General of Mines for the Chinese Empire !" A title to make a young Ameri can mining engineer grin. To make him thought ful, too. There was something bigger in it than merely mining engineering. There was the awakening, the stirring of the yellow races, prodded from slumber by the goad of West ern commercial greed, the arousing of long- quiescent, unmeasured forces in the East. The stripling Emperor of China had been taught Western ideas by missionaries. Kwang-Hsu was a Chinese radical, determined to overthrow the old civilization of China, to replace it with a new, modern state. The old empress, his aunt, op posed him. But she had given charge of the im perial mines to a favorite, Chang Yen Mao, and Chang Yen Mao desired to import Western min ing methods. He had applied for help to Bewick, Moreing, the great London firm that developed and managed mines ; they had agreed to lend him two young mining engineers from their staff. HERBERT HOOVER 239 Hoover was to be in charge, representing Bewick, Moreing, and working for Chang Yen Mao. Two weeks in London, learning these things and others. Then away once more on the long flight home, to California and the girl. Three thousand miles of water, three thousand miles of land the green spring hills of California again ! Then the palms, the sleeping old Spanish Missions, the white curving sandy beaches about the blue Bay of Monterey and Lou Henry. Lou Henry a little breathless, wide-eyed, but very glad, presenting him proudly to the family in the serene old house among the aged pepper- trees and roses of old Monterey. Lou Henry s father and mother, the dignified banker and his smiling, tranquil wife, confronting with what com posure they might this youth of twenty-four who had stopped for a moment on his race around the world to snatch away their daughter. Quiet talks with the father on the shaded porch ; moments of swift, warm emotion with the mother. They liked him. But his eyes were for Lou Henry. Ten days among the dreamy memories of days when California was young. White moonlight on the old tiled roofs ; sun-steeped afternoons on the quiet streets. A sense of rest, of peace, of the slow, unceasing flow of time into eternity. Only ten days. The job in China waiting. Passage en- 240 THE MAKING OF gaged on the boat. Cables to Wilson for money. Lou Henry, why need it take so long? Ten days is, after all, a very short time in which to take a girl away from all that she has ever known. The old friends must be there to see her go; there must be roses and music and the loved old Mission priest performing a modified service for this daughter of old Monterey who was not of the faith and whose lover was a Quaker. Ten days? Impetuous young man, in the golden years that Monterey remembers, the wedding-feast alone made merry the hours of thirty days and nights ! But he had been working through three years to ward this day, the day of sunshine and laughter and tears. Soft stately music. The old priest in his robes. Lou Henry in white, with fresh-gath ered orange-blossoms in her hair. The ring on her finger at last, and a look in her eyes like his mother s. Before God, as his father was good to his mother, he will be good and brave and strong for her sake. Three years of dreaming, and now the reality itself is like a dream. Incredible that he had won so much! Laughter, pretty speeches, colored gowns, sunshine on the lawn, whirling about him, dream-like. Pepper-trees and old Mission walls, blue waters beyond the curving beach, palms and roses and green hills. Ah, the sharp, hard reality again a train ! The familiar clang of engine HERBERT HOOVER 241 bells, the quiver running through the cars and settling into the steady vibration of speed. Mont erey fallen behind him like the dream it was. San Francisco ahead and the big gray ship waiting at the pier to take him out to his job in China. To take them out to his job in China ; for here is Lou Henry beside him, going out with him to stand beside him now, forever. CHAPTER V AFTERNOON on Race-course Road in the foreign quarter of Tien-Tsin. A wide elm- bordered road edged with high brick walls. Rick shaws drawn by trotting yellow men, carrying English ladies to tea at the Astor House. Sleek horses cantering past, ridden by jockeys in red and green jackets on their way to exercise their mounts at the race-course. A serene, suave at mosphere faintly flavored with the spice of the Orient. A little island of foreigners set haughtily in the vast swarming yellow land of China. Observing these things, Herbert Hoover, aged twenty-four, mining engineer for the Chinese Em pire, rode in state to his first ceremonious inter view with Chang Yen Mao, Director General of Mines and Railways. He sat uncomfortably, arms clasping blue serge knees, on the silken carpeted floor of a Peking cart drawn by a mule. Above his head stretched a ceiling of heavy silk embroidered in colors and gold; win dows of sheerest silk gauze concealed his august person from the vulgar gaze, yet were transpar ent to his eyes. The mule trotted with a jingle of 242 HERBERT HOOVER 243 silver harness; a fringed silken canopy shaded him; before him ran an escort of ten Chinese soldiers. They turned a corner, and before them stately towers of red brick rising above the high wall of a compound proclaimed a mandarin s residence. At a decorous distance from the curved great gates the Peking cart stopped, waiting while due notice of their arrival was carried to Chang Yen Mao. "Strange ideas of business these people have, G. B.," he said to Wilson, who sat beside him on a dragon-embroidered cushion. "Comes of being an old, old race : they remember so many centuries. Ever notice that it y s old people who care about customs and forms? We 11 have a lot of preju dice to overcome here. And delays! We mustn t say a word about business this visit or we 11 break the Chinese what-do-you-call-it. " "Chinese kuei chu," said Wilson, struggling with the quicksilver vowels. "What does that mean, exactly, in English?" "Kuei-chii," repeated the interpreter. "It means how do you say? ceremony. In English it is these words exactly square and com passes. " "Square and compasses? What s that got to ido with ceremony?" "It is very, very old Chinese word," said the 244 THE MAKING OF interpreter and shrugged the question from his sloping shoulders. " Masonry, by all that s ancient! It must be that, H. C. How else would you account for it? Masonry came down from fche North with the builders of King Solomon s temple; why should n t it have come out of China ? If I find a high-up Chinese mandarin who s my Masonic brother, then will you admit we ought to learn Chinese to do business here?" "I m not taking any bets on that," Hoover re plied in the same jocular tone. "I don t care how long they Ve been Masons, if they 11 let us de velop their mines. No, we can get along well enough with interpreters. We re going to be too busy to take on a language like Chinese." The messenger returned ; Chang Yen Mao would await their coming at his gates. They dismounted and approached the pagoda- roofed gateway on foot, between the drawn-up lines of their soldier escort. Before the tall screen carved with dragons that shut off the view of the compound beyond, Chang Yen Mao stood grave and stately, his silken-robed servants bow ing on either hand. The interpreter uttered the proper words of greeting ; he replied with solemn courtesy. A tall, impassive Chinese was Chang Yen Mao. The quick American eye took in his six feet of live HERBERT HOOVER 245^ muscle, his strong shoulders, his straight carriage. For all his fifty years and his suavely folded hands, not a man to be easily handled in a scrap. Nor in business, either; not with that lidless eye that saw everything and nothing at once. He had known many things in his time, that man. A coolie lad born in a starving village on the banks of the Pei-ho River, he had in his childhood watched the great silken-canopied boat of the empress go slowly over the yellow water, pro pelled by long sweeps of red-lacquered oars; he had gazed at the two eyes of lacquer and pearl on its prow, the teak-wood cabins carved and inlaid and shuttered with painted gauzes, the gold- embroidered robes and jeweled fingers and proud two-eyed peacock feathers of the courtiers who sat on the deck drinking tea from tiny priceless cups, while servants stirred the scented air with slow movements of great fans and musicians wove a silver thread of harmony through their medita tions. Ten years passed before the boat of the empress passed that way again, but when it came the coolie lad was ready. On the low muddy bank in the sunshine he stood, a slim youth erect and steel-muscled, two huge two-edged swords making rings of silver fire around him. All that skilled Chinese swordsmen and famous jugglers had ever done he did, and more, sending a voiceless prayer across the yellow water to the power behind the 246 THE MAKING OF silken gauzes. His prayer was answered; the empress summoned him. He bowed low to the polished deck before her cabin, in the midst of the court, and her voice came from it, making him Master of the Imperial Stables. He taught the young emperor, Tung-chili, how to ride. Who shall say how the accident occurred that would have left empty the Dragon Throne had not Chang Yen Mao been quick and ready to save the Heaven-Born? In the great palaces of the Forbidden City the wise courtiers said nothing; nothing could be proved. Chang Yen Mao had saved the boy. And he had been made Chamber lain of the Court. He was Chamberlain of the Court when the young emperor died, and China had no ruler. It was night, and the great gates of Peking were closed. Without the walls, at his palace in the country, was the little three-year-old Kwang-Hsu, nephew of the empress. Eight hours before the gates could be opened. Much may be done in eight hours, in the whispering walls of an imperial palace where an emperor lies dead and only a woman stands alone against fierce ambitions. The empress sent in haste for Chang Yen Mao. He listened, and bowed, and withdrew. In the clothing of a servant he slipped through the Peking streets, over the wall, then across the fields to the country place of Kwang-Hsu, and HEEBEET HOOVEE 247 raced back through the night with the boy in his arms. A trusted servant watching from the top of the towering wall let down a rope, and some how, in the darkness, with the heir to all China bound on his back, Chang Yen Mao did what had never been done he scaled the city wall of Peking. Dawn found the court decorous and calm, the little Kwang-Hsu proclaimed the emperor, the Di vinely Appointed, the Son of Heaven, and the empress dowager began her undisputed reign. These were the tales rumor whispered of the devious years through which the coolie lad of the river village had come to hold in his hands all the wealth of China s mines. Decidedly, he was a man of power and purpose, not to be lightly re garded by a young American mining engineer as he stood calm in his palace gates replying in slid ing, elusive Chinese to the interpreter s greeting. In honor of his distinguished guests he wore his garments of state; the gown of peacock-blue brocaded silk edged with wave-ripples of rose and emerald and purple that fell over white-soled black velvet boots so tall as almost to hide the silken trousers bound with gold-embroidered ribbon. From his neck hung the long chain of a hundred and one flawless amber beads. His hands were folded in the wide sleeves of a coat of heavy brown silk edged with deep bands of sable, and the high crown-shaped winter hat was of sable also, topped 248 THE MAKING OF with emerald silk and a red fringe. Above it glowed the large ruby-colored crystal ball of a Number One Mandarin holding the green jade tube from which depended the two-eyed peacock feather. The new engineer said hastily to the inter preter: "Tell him that if we don t do the proper thing it s because we don t know the Chinese customs, not because we are discourte ous. " Chang Yen Mao smiled gravely. Then with dignity he unfolded his hands and held out the right one, making ceremonious the strange Amer ican hand-shake. So far as he could he would meet half-way the new thing he had brought to China the ugly, barbarous but efficient West. On his thumb gleamed the large ring of three- colored jade ; symbol that he belonged to that high and honorable rank privileged to draw against the right thumb the twanging bowstring of an archer. "May the honorable guest deign to enter my humble abode," he said, stepping aside that the Americans might pass around the tall carved screen. This was not to be done at once ; so much Herbert Hoover had been forewarned. "No, I can t do anything like that. I will go after you," he protested. And all this had to be gone through not only to-day, but to-morrow and HERBERT HOOVER 249 the next day, before he could even begin to talk about mining! He allowed himself at last to be pushed gently around the edge of the screen, only to confront a second, more richly ornamented than the first, and again to protest, to urge that he must follow his host, to yield gracefully and to face a third screen ! And he saw that the obstacles to mining in China were harder to conquer than the Aus tralian desert, being so yielding, so suave, so in tricately baffling. A maze, in which one could exhaust all his energy in furiously pressing for ward, only to find himself where he had started. He crossed the wide, cool compound, shaded by aged trees whose every bough was formed to fit a pattern, ornamented by lotus pools where huge goldfish trailed rainbow-colored gauzes through the clear water. Square bowls of old blue pottery held cunningly chosen pebbles and lily bulbs. Strange dog-like creatures of bronze sat beneath the trees. Through the open doors of the many low Chinese houses that closed in the compound he caught glimpses of rich embroideries, filagreed teak-wood screens inset with mother-of-pearl, and curiously wrought bronze bowls from which the delicate smoke of incense curled. Many Chinese servants moved silently among them on padded slippers. But the state palace of Chang Yen Mao was all European, from its tall red-brick walls to 250 THE MAKING OF the white marble floor and fireplaces of the huge reception room that opened on a complete Euro pean theater with velvet-curtained stage, Brus sels-carpeted aisles, and stiff rows of varnished wooden seats. The drawing-room, too, boasted lace curtains, shining hardwood floor, and papered walls against which the imported, plush-uphol stered chairs were drawn up in Chinese fashion, the largest in the center of the eastern wall and the others ranged in order of size entirely around the room. Another interval of polite protestation. The guest must be offered the seat of honor ; he must refuse to take it, indicating his proper place to be the smaller chair beside it ; Chang must avow that he himself should sit in the lowest place. The polite controversy must end at last in a gentle scuffle, the American allowing himself to be pushed into the large chair. Then, after a decor ous pause, conversation. Courteous nothings, cer emoniously uttered ; above all things, no mention of business. Servants noiselessly placed before them high teak-wood tables and brought lacquered trays set with rice-patterned tea-bowls and dishes of lichi nuts, preserved ginger, and poppy-seed cakes, From large copper kettles the freshly boiling water was poured on the fragrant tea-leaves, and over each bowl was placed the fragile china lid HERBERT HOOVER 251 intended to preserve the aroma a bit of China which uncouth Danish traders of the sixteenth century, ignorant of the niceties of life, had been unable to explain at home, so that Danish house wives had put it beneath the cup and created the ugly European saucer. "Will the guest deign to taste my unworthy tea?" Chang urged. But the guest would not; he could not, for when he tasted the tea he would end the interview. He must courteously refuse, and be urged again, and again refuse, while across the teak-wood tables the two men measured each other, storing away impressions to be meditated upon before the interview at which they would discuss business. "Why make haste ?" said the calm face of Chang, immobile behind the drooping gray mus taches and round pencil of beard that touched his lower lip with an accent of dignity. "The river of the centuries passes slowly. There have been ten thousand times ten thousand years, and there will be ten thousand times that number. One man is a snowflake on an ocean of time ; his affairs are of no moment. We live ; we shall die ; others will come after us, living and dying. Let us be calm." "No wonder twenty centuries haven t devel oped China s mines!" the American thought. Clever man, though, this Chinese. The empress had given him the management of the empire s 252 THE MAKING OF mining, a mark of personal favor which meant that the mines were virtually Chang s as long as he stood in the good graces of the court. Chang had been wise enough to know that energetic Western management would multiply his income many times, and he had been shrewd enough to ask Bewick, Moreing Company to lend him the services of a good engineer. A delicate situation for a young man of twenty-four, standing as a link between the stock-markets of London and the mazes of Oriental intrigue that surrounded the Dragon Throne. Imperialistic trade of England, wanting a foothold in China ; wily Oriental, grasp ing at the advantages of the crude Western indus trialism, yet vainly hoping to hold in the same hand the old traditions, the arts and culture and beauty of China s autocracy. They drank the pale, subtly flavored tea. The interview was ended, with bows, with flowery, evasive, ceremonious speeches. He passed through the compound, past the lotus pools, the swarming Chinese houses, the silently watching garden gods. The Peking cart and the escort of soldiers were waiting. "Well, we go through this again, and then the next time we 11 be able to get down to cases. At least we can arrange a trip to look at the mines. Ask that coachman out there on the shafts if he can t hurry up that mule, will you?" HERBERT HOOVER 253 Back through the crowded streets of shops, the narrow ways crowded with palanquins, rickshaws, trotting Chinese coolies, flat paper parasols ; past the gold-beaters shops and the basket-makers and the windows glowing with jewels, embroider ies, ancient carved ivories, and many colored silks. Back to the Astor House -and the girl who was no longer a dream in faraway California. Mrs. Her bert C. Hoover, now, with him on their honeymoon in China. Moments of moonlight on the balconies of the Astor House, snatched hours of walking together through the lantern-lighted streets of old Tien- Tsin, in the pungent incense-heavy air, listening to strange wailing, crashing music among the lilies of the Chinese New Year, while the great Dragon- Parade went by. Moments and emotions never to be forgotten, building a new foundation for ambi tions and for work. Lou Henry had her own industrious plans. Let it not be forgotten, sir, that she herself was a geol ogist of no small ability! She was fascinated by the problems of mining in China; eager to be at them herself ; poring over books and reports with him or while he was away. She intended to trace and map the geology of a most interesting part of China. And she would fain set out with her hus band and Wilson on their first trip to see the mines. But alas for the scientific impulse! Travel in 254 THE MAKING OF China would be too embarrassing for the engi neer s bride, for she could never be free from the curious gaze of the people ; night and day it would follow her, for the houses had paper windows and the people would punch holes through these win dows and watch the lying down of the strangers and the rising of the same. So Lou Henry, torn by the conflict of being a geologist and a woman, remained at Tien-Tsin. The party rode in imperial state, a huge caravan of servants, soldiers, palanquins, and baggage- mules, following the deep-worn square-angled roads cut by centuries of travel far below the sur face of the land, or emerging on embankments raised above the flooded millet-fields, passing hud dled villages of huts with straw-thatched roofs, seeing a country swarming with yellow millions living in squalor, contented, disease-ridden, pa tient, clinging without complaint to the crumbling edge of starvation. They journeyed northward, making for the mines at Niu Shin Shan, and word of the caravan s coming raced before them like wind over a wheat-field. Outside the village they halted while a detach ment of soldiers went forward to announce their arrival. Then they approached with military ceremony, two lines of Chinese cavalry before them, two more behind, with their servants and baggage train bringing up the rear. But a quar- HERBERT HOOVER 255 ter of a mile from the village etiquette flung aside all decorum. The soldiers stood up in their stir rups, lashed their mounts, and dashed forward with yells, and they raced like conquering foes into the village, cheering, shouting, and clashing swords together while firecrackers exploded from every roof and a three-cannon salute roared above the turmoil. Then the mine officials came forth in state robes, and there were ceremonies: tea- drinking; an interminable Chinese banquet that wore away the night with music that tortured the ear-drums; endless courses of fish, sweetmeats, spiced meat-balls, chocolate pastes, and delicate small bowls of rice wine. In the morning they were led to see the mines. At last! Australia had made him declare that he wanted to cry; China struck him dumb. He had been prepared for primitive methods ; here he saw the prehistoric. The mine officials, in their robes of heavy silk, blue and green, bounded with narrow brocaded ribbon, naively displayed to him the shallow cuts in the hills, the mills of hand-hewn stone, the toiling coolies, the system. The mines were divided into measured portions, each leased to a group of ten or twelve coolies .who worked it cooperatively, independent of any control by the company. Some of them chipped away the rock-face with iron moils ; while others 256 THE MAKING OF sat on the hillsides breaking the ore with ham mers, cracking it carefully into pebbles no larger than hazelnuts. By many little fires other coolies squatted, stirring and drying these pebbles on squares of sheet iron laid over the flames, and up and down the paths trotted lines of men carrying the dried and cooled ore to the mill in double baskets* tied to poles over the shoulders. The mill was a flat rock four feet across, with a pole through the center. A round stone roller with a long wooden handle was lashed to this cen ter-piece, and around and around in a circle the yellow men trotted, wearing the ore down to pow der that was swept up with little hand-made brooms. "And what," he said, standing at gaze with his hands in his pockets, "do they call that thing V 9 It was a slanting table on which the powdered ore was dumped. Water from the river, brought in willow baskets, washed down its length, and be side it stood the coolies in their flat hats, raking the ore upward with wooden rakes. The interpreter translated the question to a brocaded official whose impassive face was faintly rippled by a strange expression as he stared at the Chief Engineer of Mines. "It s a hand-buddle, " he said, in some excite ment. "They used it in Saxony in sometime early in the fifteenth century. Well, I never HERBERT HOOVER 257 thought I d see one! And they re panning the dust in flat willow baskets, down there at the river. What do they do next?" What they did next was to extract the iron sand from the gold dust with patient manipulation of natural lodestones found in the mountains. " There is.n t one American miner in the Sierras who couldn t teach these people five centuries of mining ! At night each group of coolies brought their gold to the company s office, where it was weighed and bought. The scales, of course, were arranged to give false weight; that, it was explained, was the "squeeze" of the local manager, who super vised the smelting, done in clay crucibles in a brick furnace. The solid gold bars, weighing five taels, went through many hands, leaving toll by the way, until it reached Chang s banks. The whole system needed thorough reorganiza tion from top to bottom. Leasing must be abol ished; the coolies must work on wages for the company. Drills must be brought in, and dyna mite; modern crushers and mills and smelting- plants. Graft must be wiped out ; a rigid account ing system established ; American methods, Amer ican enterprise and energy and standards of busi ness honesty! Yes, and opposed to them the si lent, unresisting, unconquerable inertia of China : four hundred millions of patient yellow men plod- 258 THE MAKING OF ding in the honored ways of their fathers and looking with inscrutable eyes on the Western civ ilizations rising and falling and leaving old China unchanged. He rode across the length and breadth of north ern China. He examined mines, figured esti mates, drew up plans of reorganization. At Chin Chang Kiu Liang, outside the Great Wall in Mon golia, he found one mine sunk to a six-hundred- foot level, managed by a Chinese who had been a miner in California and had come back to attach steam-engines to the old stone mills. Wilson was put in charge there ; it was the most promising of the mines. Agnew, the New Zealander, his underground boss from the Sons of Gwalia, had been brought on, and Jack Means of Stanford, and Newberry, the Australian. "I m going to plant another American colony here, as I did in Westralia," he said. He estab lished the American Engineers Club on Kace- course Eoad in Tien-Tsin; assayers offices and laboratories on the first floor, living- and sleeping- quarters upstairs. Lou Henry took a blue-brick house on the same street, furnished it, gathered together a household of Chinese servants. They were settling down to the long fight. It was not only a matter of reorganizing mines ; the intricate labyrinths of China, twisting and doubling, were one maze of lines leading from HERBERT HOOVER 259 V hovel to court, from sweating coolie to the empress dowager and from her through all the diplomacy of Europe. He must have railroads to get out his coal and iron; Russia wished to build a railway from Baikal to Urga to Kalgan, giving her an out let to the Pacific at Peking; England and France blocked that move of Europe s terror, the North ern Bear. But there are no frontiers in interna tional finance. Why not a combination of English and French and Russian capital to build a common railway over the old caravan route from China, to connect with the Trans-Siberian railroad? And there was the treacherous Yellow River, "China s Sorrow," creeping like a serpent over the fertile flat fields, lazily placid for the moment. But at short intervals through all the centuries it had aroused itself, changed its course, swept away towns and villages and swallowed the rice-fields, leaving famine where harvest had been. He would conquer it ; confine it with dikes, dredge out its channels, and make it a watercourse for loaded ships. This could be done; his figures showed that it could be done. Chang Yen Mao, sedate in his silken robes, a carved fan in his fingers, listened without com ment to these plans. Conquer "China s Sor row"! This young, quick-speaking American with estimates and contracts in his blue-serge pockets was attacking the oldest tradition of the 260 THE MAKING OF empire. Since time began the Yellow Kiver had been; for centuries past the emperor who wished to punish a powerful mandarin had made the un favored one "The Keeper of the Yellow Kiver." A little time a year, two years, perhaps and the great serpent of water would rise again; its official keeper would then be beheaded. Chang s own friend and ally, Li Hung Chang, was now The Keeper of the Yellow River. Three years before, the empress dowager had sent him on a painted scroll of silk that fatal appointment, and ever since, because the gods were kind, the river had slept between its banks. Who knew? Perhaps this young American- Chang Yen Mao slowly unfolded the fan and swayed it to and fro with the slim yellow hand on which shone the thumb-ring of three-colored jade. He liked the young American; he trusted him. Herbert Hoover was received now in the Chinese rooms of the compound where Chang lived among his ivories and dragon-carved screens and old pic tures painted on silk. The young American was wise, and he was honest. But these plans would need much consideration. The dowager empress feared the grasping hands of Europe. Heads had fallen for less than the rumor of such enterprises. A narrow and careful path must be trod in the labyrinths of the Forbidden City. Patience. Have patience. A long and serene life is not lived HERBERT HOOVER 261 in haste, O young American ! There must be time for contemplation. Meanwhile, where is the flood of gold that should be pouring forth at the magic touch of the Westerner! " Mining in China is like trying to fight a feather-bed ! " he said in the sitting-room of the Engineers Club. But he had little time to spend there. His task was the rebuilding of an empire that had resisted change for twenty centuries. At the top was feudal ownership ; at the bottom, the primitive communism in which human society be gan. Somehow he must insert between them the individualism of pioneer America, building toward the industrial capitalism that would absorb them both. The whole system of China s mining laws must be altered. For the work he organized the Mining Bureau of Chihli Province. A staff was put at work collecting, translating, and summarizing all Chinese mining literature and all that had been written in other languages concerning Chinese mines. The mines themselves must be examined, tested, and reported upon. Corps of geologists, surveyors, and assayers were put at work on that. The mines already working must be reorganized, equipped with modern machinery, and forced to increase production immediately. He made esti mates, cabled to America for bids on mining ma- 262 THE MAKING OF chinery, figured transportation costs, mapped his hoped-for railroads. And kept a watchful eye on the network of political and economic wires cover ing the world. Tien-Tsin and Peking were filled with white men English, French, German, and American; army officers, bankers, diplomats all bent upon their own designs of seizing part of the great rich, unresisting yellow land. In the Forbidden City sat Kwang-Hsu, the imprisoned young emperor who had tried too rashly to rebuild his country upon Western lines, to make it a modern nation of the Chinese, created by the Chinese for the Chinese, and on the Dragon Throne again was the empress dowager, angered and fearful. The For bidden City and the foreign quarters were two enemy forces confronting each other with the China of the coolies between them. In the one patriotism and pride stood at bay; in the other imperialistic ambitions and greed pressed for ward. Germany had Kiao-chau ; Eussia had Port Arthur and Ta-lien-wan ; France clutched Kwang- Chau Wan, and England had seized Wei-hai-wei and four hundred miles of territory around Hong kong. The custom-houses of the empire were in pawn to these voracious Western nations; they collected tolls at China s ports, and Allied war ships lay at anchor in her harbors. Echoes from the courts and counting-houses of HERBERT HOOVER 263 all Europe were heard faintly among the click of teaspoons and the rattle of sabers in the drawing- rooms of the blue-brick house on Race-course Road, where Lou Henry poured tea on summer afternoons. On the verandas of the Astor House, while the orchestra played and dancers whirled in a >rustle of silks and whispering feet, there were snatches of talk, non-committal, oblique; signifi cant glances above the sputter of a match at a cigar-end. Herbert Hoover wore evening clothes easily now. His horses raced with the others at the spring and autumn events at the race-course. These were details, troublesome to a man whose whole desire was to develop China s mines, but they were too important to be neglected. Lou Henry helped him there ; Lou Henry who was still cherishing her project of mapping the geology of this region as soon as it should be possible. He was missing nothing. He did not miss, either, the slow stirring of China s vast peoples; a rest lessness like that of a disturbed beehive. Veiled glances, met here and there on his long trips through the interior; a sullenness, an antagonism too subtle to be met and overcome. Danger! Of course not ! Not after the lesson of the Japanese War ; not with Allied guns in the harbors. June of his second year in China, and little ac complished yet. But all his preliminary work 264 THE MAKING OF was done. He knew China s mines from Chin Chang Kou Liang to Chao Yang. He knew as much as a white man could know of affairs in the Forbidden City. His plans were finished, ready to be carried out. He rode southward from Kalgan, and he saw a land suddenly alive, menacing, buzzing with the hum of an angry swarm. Rumors of rioting here and there. Chinese servants suddenly disappear ing from the caravan in the night, gone no one would say where. The majordomo, suave, bow ing, urging detours, suggesting humbly yet insist ently that certain villages be avoided. Fresh heads swinging in the bamboo baskets outside walled towns. And terraced hillsides and flat fields strangely deserted by the coolies. Lou Henry alone ! The journey became a race, foot-servants left behind, too-heavy baggage discarded, the horses lashed forward long into the night. At Peking he caught the first train southward. The little foreign settlement outside the walls of Tien-Tsin was as usual, undisturbed and tranquil. At the Engineers 7 Club he heard that Wilson had come down from Mongolia; had had a " scrap" in a Chinese town where the mad villagers had suddenly risen and mobbed him as he rode in, but nothing serious. Wilson and Newberry were staying at the country house of Detring, the Grer- HERBERT HOOVER 265 man Commissioner of Customs. Oh, there were rumors, but there were always rumors in China. Nothing could really break loose, with Allied troops right on the ground. But from army head quarters a detachment was being hurriedly sent to Peking. Nothing serious, of course, but it did look as though there might be a bit of a row up there. Then like a thunderclap the news that the lega tions at Peking were besieged. The troops had arrived and been surrounded; the wires flashed a cry for help, and were silent. Another detach ment of troops marched through Tien-Tsin s streets, going to the rescue, and vanished into the silence that hung over the North. "The folks at home will be worried," Hoover said. "We d better cable that we are safe." The cable offices were crowded; hundreds of mes sages were going home. It might be a good idea to get Lou Henry down the river to Tong Ku, under the protection of the Allied war-ships. But Lou Henry scouted the idea; she was per fectly safe where she was, and in any case she would not go without him. Of course he could not leave. Power brings its own obligations; there were not only his American staff to consider, but the hundreds of Chinese employees who were gathering in Chang s compound. TYom the roof of the Engineers Club that night 266 THE MAKING OF the Americans watched the fires that blazed be yond the walls of old Tien-Tsin. The missions were burning. "But they won t attack us. They wouldn t dare!" "I don t know about that. But we can handle them if they do." There were about five thousand Allied troops in Tien-Tsin ; they and the imperial Chinese Army would be able to subdue the mobs. The imperial army was with them, obviously; the empress dowager would not dare to defy all Europe. The following night there was a flurry of an attack from the southwest. The old artillery of the English troops was quickly rushed through the streets; trenches were hastily being dug for the infantry. Lou Henry was red- cheeked and bright-eyed with excitement. A mob of angry coolies had boldly entered the blue-brick house and smashed some of her best china, jerking the cloth from the luncheon-table before her eyes. She had driven them out of the house with a bread-knife. Army officers were serious but con fident. They could repulse the mob if it attacked again. Chang Yen Mao sat grave and composed in his European palace. He did not know the orders given the imperial army ; doubtless it would soon act to protect the foreigners. But who could know the decrees of inscrutable Fate? These HERBERT HOOVER 267 things would pass, as all things passed. Mean while he sipped his delicately flavored tea from bowls of old porcelain, while hourly his compound grew more crowded with terrified Chinese. The Boxer attack was nothing. It lasted per haps half an hour. A spattering of rifle fire flashing in the darkness, the answering boom of English guns. The mob went down before artil lery like grain before a scythe. Army officers smiled. Those ignorant yellow beggars had thought that their secret magic calisthenics would make their bodies proof against foreign bullets. My word! one English gun could handle a thou sand Boxers ! No, absolutely no real danger, my dear fellow! The American flag floated over the Engineers Club. Lou Henry gave another to the breeze above the blue-brick house. Gallant Lou Henry, gay as ever, tucking a revolver into her belt. Just in case. Nonsense! Of course I won t leave! Only, one never knows about the serv ants ; some of them have left already. I m going down to see what s happening at Mrs. Drew s. Listen promise me." Hands holding his coat lapels. "You won t get into the fighting without letting me know! Then that s all right. Good- by, dear. I 11 see you at dinner. Wilson and Newberry had come in, circling the fighting, arriving too late to take a hand in it them- 268 THE MAKING OF selves. News came that the reinforcements sent to Peking had been driven back and now lay ten miles to the northward, surrounded and unable to come farther. That morning another attack from the north, quickly silenced. Fighting on the other side of the river, but nothing important. Apparently the flurry was over now; the Boxers were beaten. Sunday was one long breath of relief. One felt the tension a little, after it was ended. Madden ing, the way this had happened, just at the time that it would most cripple his work ! It would be months, perhaps, before the international tangle was straightened out so that he could get on with his job. He sat long at the Sunday luncheon, relaxed, smiling at Lou Henry across the white table. Through the open windows, with the breeze that stirred the curtains, came a distant boom, fol lowed by a vibration that lightly chattered the cups in their saucers. He sat up, met Lou Henry s eyes, and rose quickly. She was on her feet, too, and they stared at each other. "Bert!" 4 Sounds like it. That s artillery/ Another boom came, and another. From a roof-top, with field-glasses, they gazed over the town at the wide plain. There was no doubt about it. The empress dowager was defy- HERBERT HOOVER 269 ing the world. Foreigners in China were doomed. The advance center of the imperial army was at tacking, ringed around them. Bursts of smoke fromihe field-artillery; the long drawn scream of shells overhead ; brick walls crashing in clouds of dust where they struck. He must get Lou Henry into the center of town, where the danger would be less. He must go out and fight. Hardly five thousand men against a quarter of a million. Every man would count. How many rifles were there in the house? He must have one. He must give one to Lou Henry. She packed a few things, hurriedly, in the de serted rooms. One Chinese boy waited stolidly in the hallway, asking for orders. He was sent to the Engineers Club to get a rifle and send a cart for Lou Henry. The three-pound guns of the English were answering now. Five thousand men against the imperial army. The boy returned, bringing a useless Marlin rifle with a hastily whittled wooden plug stuck rakishly in the place of a missing sight, and a note from the boys at the club. It was a pencil- scrawled parody of a letter from an English director to a distant mining engineer saying that complaints about insufficient equipment were un precedented and should not occur again. He grinned while he read it, Lou Henry chuckling be side him. Good old game scouts, those American 270 THE MAKING OF boys! And Lou Henry, standing straight beside him, brave and sweet as ever, with death at yellow hands coming closer with every boom of the guns. A man feels some emotions that remake his soul. He went with her to Mrs. Drew s house near the center of town. Drew, from the customs of fice, was there, and Detring, the German Commis sioner of Customs. Detring s country house had been burned and his faithful servants killed. The Chinese were using flat trajectory field-pieces; most of the shots were going wild over the town or striking the brick buildings on the outskirts. Drew s house would probably be safest for the women on that account. Not that there was any real danger, of course : one must at least keep up that fiction before the women ; they must not be alarmed. He left Lou Henry among them, tran quil and smiling, giving him across the crowd just one long look to carry with him. Well, if the Chinese did not bring up more effi cient guns or make an attack in force, there might still be a slender chance. Five thousand men could hold off scattering attacks for a while ; help would get to them as soon as possible. What about food for a siege? Was there enough to last how long? How was it being handled? At army headquarters no one minimized the danger now. When the imperial army attacked in force there would be nothing for it but hand- HERBERT HOOVER 271 to-hand fighting through the streets until the end. Food! No one had done anything about that. Certainly he could take charge of it. Already stores and warehouses were being opened and the scanty supply of food was scatter ing. He stopped that. He commandeered wag ons, bulldozed dealers, put his men in charge here and there, gathered up the loose ends, got things in rough order. Enough food for ten days. He organized a rationing system. The Cossacks were doing splendid work ; two hundred Russians, alone, unsupported, charging and charging again the whole imperial army. Fighting again across the river, and the river front unprotected. Tinned goods, cases of milk, sacks of flour, grad ually being gathered into one big warehouse. A rumor that the blue-brick house had been struck by a shell. A rumor that the Chinese in Chang s palace were sniping from the roofs. Some one must look after that. Wilson would do it. At any rate, there was plenty of rice. Twenty-four hours, and the food supply was taken care of. Hot sun on the roofs, hot dust in the streets where the smell of cordite hung in the breathless air. He reached Drew s house at din ner-time. There were the softly shaded lights gleaming on white linen, silver and thin glass sparkling, Lou Henry s vivid face and smooth shoulders above an evening gown. Other women 272 THE MAKING OF in evening dress. He was seized upon by a laugh ing hostess and urged into an empty chair. " Never mind about your clothes. Everything s so upset! Wang, a plate of soup for Mr. Hoo ver. Chatter. Some one had lost her silver spoons, stolen by a fleeing servant, no doubt. And Chinese servants had always been so dependable, too; really the perfect servants. "As I Ve often said, I don t know what I could do without " That was the woman s way of playing the game, no doubt. A line of barricades should be thrown up along the river bank. The stream was only eighty feet wide. In case the attack came from that direction the warehouses could not be held long. The sound of the guns had lulled, which perhaps meant that the attack was coming now. Mrs. Drew leaned forward, catching his atten tion with a gesture of a jeweled hand. "Mr. Hoover, do tell us ! It surely is n t true, what the army officers say that we are really in danger! That the whole imperial army is against us I 9 y She did not know ! None of them knew, except Lou Henry. The silence had the quality of the instant after a lightning flash when sky and earth in breathless suspense await the thunder. Around the white circle of the table bare shoul ders bent forward, lips were slightly parted, widening eyes were fixed on him. He sat exposed, HERBERT HOOVER 273 defenseless, in the gaze of those questioning eyes while his overstrained young nerves, caught un aware in a moment of relaxation, failed him. Then, like a slender arm thrust between him and the intolerable moment, Lou Henry s voice res cued him. i Real danger ? When our men are here ! she said quickly. "Why it s absurd!" Her mouth crinkled with mischief. "Except that Bert s probably planning to starve us to death with our groceries tied up in red-tape! Is it true you Ve had all the vegetable man s potatoes locked up like criminals V 7 He got away under cover of the laughter. Never a woman like her in all the world. Game to the core of her, standing up to the last with a smile in her eyes. And he had promised her that when the end came he would kill her himself. Well, what was to be done now! Barricade the river front, he was told by Captain Bailey at headquarters. The Chinese were building a pon toon-bridge up the river, intending to float it down and cross on it. All day Tuesday in the sun on the deserted Bund. Running six coolies back and forth from the warehouses with sacks of rice. Keeping them covered by his rifle every second. Trotting be side them, back and forth. Bullets singing past his ears, striking spatters of brick-dust from the 274 THE MAKING OF warehouse wall. Booming of artillery on the other side of the town. Working on in the dusk up to the last moment of twilight. Eifles spitting fire now through the gathering darkness. Dust rising in sudden spurts about his feet. In the shadows, coming serenely toward him, Lou Henry in walking-clothes, with an English express-rifle in a sling strap swung from her shoulder. "What are you doing here?" "I came to see what you are doing, and to help!" And bullets coming like bees across the river ! "Go back where you 11 be safe!" "Let me handle the coolies while you rest a while. You can t keep this up all night." "We re almost done. We re using the last of the rice-sacks. Go back. Please get out of this fire." Then two days in which he hardly saw her. She was working in the big building of the Tien- Tsin Club, now become a hospital. The wounded were coming in now, carried in litters through the choking streets, laid in packed rows in the club corridors, on the steps, on the sidewalk. There were no trained nurses and only one doctor. Lou Henry was in charge of half the hospital ; without anaesthetics or medicines, untrained and helped only by women more helpless than herself, she HERBERT HOOVER 275 was improvising beds and operating-tables, cut ting blood-soaked garments from torn bodies, washing wounds, working without pause in the heat and stench. Over the roofs the shells still whined and shrieked. The German Club had been struck, and the Astor House. Here and there buildings crumbled into shattered heaps of brick; the air was full of mortar-dust. Chang Yen Mao was in trouble, brought up before a court martial charged with sending messages to the enemy. Carrier- pigeons flying with messages from one side of the besieging army to the other passed above the roofs of Chang s palace, and to w r atchers outside the compound walls it seemed that the birds came from the palace itself. A thousand terrified Chinese, the family and servants of Chang and the Chinese staff of the mining companies, were huddled together in the compound, praying to their gods and to the Director-General s American engineer. It had been wise forethought that put Wilson inside the palace walls and kept him there. Wil son had learned Chinese, and day and night he had been with Chang, watching all that occurred in the compound. He was able to testify posi tively that the pigeons had not come from Chang Yen Mao s household. He and Herbert Hoover stood sponsor for it before the authorities and 276 THE MAKING OF saved the life of the imperturbable Chang. There was a sudden hot attack from the south east; the American engineers fought in the trenches with British, Japanese, and Eussian troops. Two nights they fought behind the barri cades on the river front. The pontoon-bridge, too hastily built, went to pieces in the river, and the Bund was held. The east arsenal was taken by storm ; recovered again. Still the carrier-pigeons flew across the town, and still there was no gen eral attack. The remnant of the Cossacks was still charging at intervals the whole imperial Chinese Army ; racing across the plain upright in their stirrups, slashing downward with their sabers, falling, but demoralizing thousands of the enemy. Then the incredible attack of General Nieh. Hoover stood with a field-glass and watched it. General Nieh, commander of the imperial army, with his body-guard of fifteen hundred cavalry men, charging into the English artillery fire. This, undoubtedly, was the beginning of the big attack, the beginning of the end. He saw in the eyes of his American boys the unspoken thought, i * Thank God I have no wife here." The Chinese cavalry charged, General Nieh leading them on his white horse straight into the screaming shells of the British guns. They went down in a bloody welter on the plain. No artil- HERBERT HOOVER 277 lery followed; no infantry. Nothing happened. The smoking guns rested, and quiet fell over the encircling yellow army. General Nieh had committed suicide. Why? with the whole advance center of China s military forces at his command, and only five thousand white men to kill in an unfortified town. There was only one reason possible to a great Chinese mandarin. He had found that he could not carry out the orders of the empress, and he had killed himself. There was dissension among the Chinese generals; too many feared the reprisals of the European powers that would follow the slaughter. That explained the delayed attack; it explained General Nieh s suicide ; it explained the desultory fighting that went on through three more days. Hope revived. The emotional ten sion relaxed a little. The food-supply was run ning low, but it still held out under the rationing system. Shells still fell into the town, but one gets used to those. He had leisure in the Engi neers Club to figure on the back of an envelope that it took three tons of shrapnel to kill one man. "At that rate we 11 live for a long time yet!" he grinned. "I wonder what my mother is thinking now," said Norman Magee. "It seems a year since I cabled her, Safe. I wish the wires were n t cut. I d give anything if I could cable her again. 278 THE MAKING OF The words released thoughts that were better kept chained down. There was a stillness in the group. So, stretching his legs and thrusting his hands deep into his pockets, Hoover asked cas ually, "Well, suppose you could? What would you say?" "I guess I d have to cable, Not so safe, " Ma- gee replied. One felt better after that laugh. The sound of new guns was heard on the sixth day; reinforcements fighting on the other side of the besieging circle. That night from the roof of the Engineers Club field-glasses picked up the bursts of fire from those friendly guns. They did not get through, but they were there. Twelve hours later the yellow ring was broken and the troops came Americans, British, Japanese, Ital ians, Germans, and Russians marching through the streets, cheered by laughing, weeping, praying crowds. The siege was ended. Such are the amazing ways of women that then, when the real danger was over, Lou Henry soaked his blue-serge shoulder with unrestrained tears. God bless her. "You mustn t mind me," she said. "I I guess I m a little tired. And you know I m so disappointed because now they 11 never let me do any geological work in China. The imperial Chinese Army withdrew a little and hung on the horizon like a cloud, from which HERBERT HOOVER 279 still came lightning flashes at intervals. But the river running down to Tong Ku was open. He would take Lou Henry down there, out of the range of a chance bullet, away from a town filled with looting troops. He lingered only long enough to discuss with Dr. Drake, of the Chinese University, his plan for organizing a building-and- loan company to help rebuild the shell-wrecked buildings, and to see Chang Yen Mao. That dignified mandarin sat in profound med itation amid the chaos of China. The death of two German missionaries at the hands of a chance mob had cost the Empire Kiao-chau ; Port Arthur and Ta-lien-wan; Kwang-chau-Wan, WeiJiai-wei and four hundred miles of territory around Hongkong. What vengeance would the hungry powers now exact! Yesterday he had possessed all the wealth of the mines of China; to-morrow into what European pockets would it go? There was no doubt that Chang s fears were j well founded. No one questioned that the powers would now divide the richest parts of China into " zones of influence" in which a Chinese could have small hope of developing mines. The prob lem was to find a method of guarding Chang s interests through all the delicate complications of international politics and business. Detring, the German Commissioner of Customs, in whom Chang had long reposed confidence, advised an 280 THE MAKING OF attempt to form a mining company in England under the British laws, the stock to be held jointly by Europeans and Chinese. Chang Yen Mao con trolled the Kai Ping coal mines, rich and unex- ploited fields. Let him put these into the hands of his Western friends as the basis of a company protected by British laws and British armies. A holding company could then be organized to take the mines at their present valuation and resell them to a mining company at such an increased figure as to make Chang s part-interest in the mining company equal to the entire present value of the mines. In this manner did Western finance make four dollars grow where one had grown be fore. Chang could lose nothing by this plan, while on the other hand if he hesitated he would lose all. The angered Western nations, demand ing revenge for the attack on their flags and cit izens, would seize the mines outright, and Euro pean financiers, multiplying their value by West ern methods of capitalization and development, would own the whole. The situation was as sim ple as that; a situation eminently concrete and practical. Yet Chang Yen Mao, sitting among his old bronzes and painted silks, let the hours go by in long and devious thoughts. He considered the dignity of the Chinese Empire and the long cen turies in which, proud and aloof, his people had HERBERT HOOVER 281 ignored the little clutching fingers of the West. Chinese jewelers had wrought marvelously the soft pure gold from Chinese mines in those old times when the barbarian English and Germans were wild men hunting with clubs through the forests. Since the memory of man began China had been mistress of herself, wise, sophisticated, learned in the arts of life, gazing with indifference too profound for scorn upon the childish follies and furies of the little evanescent peoples beyond her borders. Now her soil was desecrated, her silken reticences torn from her by brutal hands, and she stood defenseless with the guns of the barbarians at her heart. Expediency counseled a facile surrender, but expediency is the vpice of the passing moment, fleeting as time, leaving not even an echo. Chang Yen Mao was concerned for the immemorial dignity and honor of China, a small part of which was in his keeping. The compound of his palace was in an uproar. Feet clattered on the graveled paths, voices chat tered everywhere. The thousand Chinese impris oned there during the siege were struggling each with his own indecisions. Foreign troops con trolled the town ; fighting was still going on to the northward, but the river was open to Tong Ku. Chang s sharp-voiced Number One wife with all her servants and retainers clamored to be taken to Japan, and Wilson was contending with a hun- THE MAKING OF dred details of the journey. Chang Yen Mao was appealed to from every side. Meditation was im possible, and a decision could not be reached. The days passed in turmoil, and the foreigners departed. A week later Herbert Hoover was waiting with Lou Henry in the custom-house at Tong Ku for the steamer that would take them back to Amer- \ica. The Boxer rebellion had ended his useful ness in China and he was going away with failure behind him and uncertainty ahead. Bewick, Moreing would place him somewhere in the world that was covered by their mining interests, but it might be in a place to which no man could ask a white woman to go. The big compound of the Chinese Engineering and Coaling Company was crowded with refugees. Military beds had been crowded into the offices of the two-story custom-house and men were sleep ing in the warehouses. Outside the bar a steamer lay, unable to get away, and the days dragged aimlessly. Then down the river in a little boat came Chang Yen Mao with Detring. Chang Yen Mao had decided to accept the ad vice of his German friend. They had come to ask Herbert Hoover to take to London Chang s pro posal that an English company take over the mines and develop them under the protection of the Allies. Already the Russians and Japanese HERBERT HOOVER 283 were marching upon the mines with the intention of seizing them. There was need for haste. But the interests of China must be guarded. Chinese must share with foreigners the ownership and con trol of the mines. They discussed the project in a bare room in the custom-house, overlooking the godown of the coaling company and the masts of idle ships. The silken robes of Chang Yen Mao concealed the small straight chair in which he sat, his hands folded in his wide sleeves. Detring, the genial bearded German, rested an elbow on the office desk and smoked ceaselessly, lighting one cigar from the stump of another, while Bert Hoover, young and inexperienced in finance, but alert, sat on the edge of the hard narrow bed and listened. He knew the mines, Detring explained, and al ready he had his connections in London. Chang Yen Mao and Detring believed he could put the deal through. Upon his doing so depended the only hope of saving any part of the mines for Chang or for China. It was a last hope, a desper ate attempt, but if the effort succeeded it would mean millions for the London company and for the Chinese. " All right. Put the proposition in writing," Herbert Hoover said. The papers were prepared; the contracts, the power of attorney to Herbert Hoover, signed in 284 THE MAKING OF India ink by Chang s brush. They were stowed in an inside pocket of the blue-serge coat, and Detring and Chang Yen returned to Tien-Tsin. The kaleidoscope in the hands of Chance had turned again ; the future had a new pattern. Her bert Hoover sailed for London, not as a young mining engineer whose work had been ended by the Boxer troubles, but as a fledgling financier with valuable mining properties in his breast pocket. Mr. Moreing received him with respect and heard him with growing enthusiasm. Bewick, Moreing was not an exploiting company, but a company that handled and developed actual min ing properties; however, its connected and subsi diary companies were in the heart of international finance. Chang Yen Mao s option and memoran dum were the center of conferences in offices and banks. A holding company was organized to buy it, capitalize, and resell it. A second company sprang into existence to purchase it and float the stock on the market. The Chinese Engineering and Mining Company, Ltd., took over the actual development of the mines, and Herbert Hoover returned to China as its general manager, with a crumb from the financial feast fifty thousand dollars worth of stock in the company. With him went two men to see Chang Yen Mao and complete the financial arrangements trans ferring the property. At the last moment new HERBERT HOOVER 285 complications developed. Chang Yen Mao stood firm in his insistence that the company should be controlled equally by Chinese and foreigners, that Chinese must be on the board of directors, and that the central offices of the company should be in China. His doubts had come back upon him. Days went past in conversations that came to no conclusion. Then the new general manager inter vened; he became a mediator between the oppos ing interests, he persuaded the white men to yield to Chang s conditions. A memorandum was drawn, signed by Chang Yen Mao and by Herbert Hoover as representative of the company; it was ratified by cable from London. The final arrange ments were completed, and the transfer was made. Now for the real job of developing the mines ! He began his work confidently and happily. At last he had a free hand in the carrying out of the plans so long delayed by the baffling web of Chinese evasions. He was working for Euro peans, and it was the period in mining develop ment when American engineers were coming into their own. London, the center of the world s mining, was depending on proved American enter prise, initiative, and resourcefulness in all the corners of the earth ; the energy of the white man, intensified by its conflict with the American wilder ness, was giving new force to the currents of 286 THE MAKING OF world commercialism. American qualities of mind and character, the qualities that were Her bert Hoover s, had won recognition and respect. The Kai Ping mines were his to direct and develop. The old mines leaped into new life. American methods and machinery were installed; tunnels driven, railway tracks laid. The coal poured from the earth into long trains of box-cars and roared down chutes into the maws of waiting ships. The American wage system and bookkeep ing wiped out the ancient customs of coolie com munism and official graft. And all this was but the beginning; larger plans, and larger, grew in the imagination of the new general manager of the Chinese Engineering and Mining Company, Lim ited. But Chang Yen Mao was perturbed. He con sulted anxiously with his young friend. The directors of the company were meeting in Brus sels, on the other side of the world. The Chinese \directors had no voice in their decisions. When were the terms of the memorandum to be carried out? When were the central offices to be in China? The foreign powers had not held territory in China, as had been feared. The dowager empress still ruled the empire from the labyrinths of the HERBERT HOOVER 287 Forbidden City, and her eyes rested coldly on her former favorite, Chang Yen Mao. Had he sold to the hated foreigners the mines she had given into his care? It was true that Chang Yen Mao and his Chinese friends were making profits from the mines. It was true that they had gained greatly in money by the organization of the new company. But there was more than money involved in this matter; there were Chinese honor and Chinese pride, and the career of the coolie boy who had won to a high place by the Dragon Throne. Al ready a year had gone by since he had listened to Detring s advice, and as he thought of that long period, he thought, too, when were the promises made to him then to be carried out? Chang Yen Mao was calm, but in his eyes a failing hope begged reassurance. It was not difficult to give. The terms of the memorandum would undoubtedly be carried out; these things took time. The memorandum had been included in the agreement made; Chang s condition had been made thoroughly clear in Lon don. The general manager of the mines had noth ing to do with these matters ; his responsibility had ended with the forming of the company, in which Chang s wishes had been scrupulously carried out. In the meantime the mines were daily pouring out 288 THE MAKING OF more coal, and it was in them that his interest lay. His thoughts ran far into the future, busy with widening plans for Chinese mining. The blow fell suddenly, with the arrival of two young Belgians sent out from London in response to Chang s protests. Belgian and German inter ests had bought out English and Chinese stock holders in the Chinese Engineering and Mining \\Company; Belgians and Germans now held con- utrol, and the terms of the memorandum would not De carried out. The board of directors repudi ated the original agreement which the former own ers of the company had made with Herbert Hoov er. The memorandum would not hold in law, be cause the paper on which it was written was not attached to the paper on which the option was written. Therefore, legally, the memorandum was not part of the option. The control of the mines rested entirely in foreign hands; the Chinese who still held their stock could draw their dividends, but they had no authority in the man agement of the property. Chang Yen Mao heard this statement in silence, sitting upright on a plush-upholstered arm-chair in the drawing-room of the great palace that he had made European because he was a progressive Chinese eager to help in the modernizing of China. Then he rose in his robes of heavy silk edged with wave-borders of color and dismissed his Western HERBERT HOOVER 289 visitors. He had seen in their faces that they spoke the truth; he had betrayed China, and it is not becoming that a man, like a rat, should scurry into corners seeking escape from the consequences of his deeds. He sat quietly in the Chinese rooms of his com pound, a fan of carved ivory and painted silk in his fingers, when his young American friend came hurriedly to see him. The young American was angry, burning with a sense of outraged justice and with scorn of men who seize on legal quibbles to cover broken faith. He came to assure Chang Yen Mao that he had had no part in this calamity ; that he would not be a party to it ; that he would leave China before he would consent to it. These protestations were unnecessary. Chang Yen Mao had long known that the young American was honest and his trust in him was unshaken. Herbert Hoover went out to struggle in the Western way with an implacable fact. Nothing could be done. The board of directors persisted in its refusal to carry out^the terms of the mem orandum and stood on its legal rights. It was a lesson in differing national points of view for a young man of twenty-five; English and Amer icans, he found, worked together in amity on the basis of the spirit of an agreement; Continental financiers followed an agreement to the letter. He resigned the managership of the Chinese En- 290 THE MAKING OF gineering and Mining Company and arranged to go home. His brother Theodore was a mining en gineer now ; they could open offices together in San Francisco and handle American mines. Chang Yen Mao remained quietly behind his screens of teak-wood and silk, arranging his af fairs, and awaiting the fatal command from Peking. It came at last, a scroll of parchment rolled on an ivory wand and wrapped in silk tied with golden cords, a formal request from the empress to come to Peking and be beheaded. Chang Yen Mao, having read it with proper rev erence, rolled it again in its imperial wrappings and gave orders that a cart be brought and that his servants make him ready for the journey. It was evening before the preparations were completed and his farewells said. The lanterns were glowing in the compound above the lotus pools and the silently watching garden gods. The cart was at the gate, waiting beyond the three screens of dragon-carved teak-wood inlaid with mother-of-pearl. A silent-footed servant, bowing low and hiding his face behind crossed wide sleeves, brought the word to Chang, who rose and walked slowly across the courtyard, looking at it for the last time. The red brick walls of the palace rose before him ; he passed its doorway, and then turned again and entered the great hall with its marble floor and huge Western fireplaces. He HERBERT HOOVER 291 stopped for a moment to look at the European theater, at its velvet-curtained stage, its machine- made carpets and stiff rows of varnished wooden chairs with upward-folded seats. He passed noiselessly into the drawing-room and stood for some time looking about him, examining with his eyes the upholstered chairs, the patterned, shining hardwood floor, the Wilton rugs, the lace cur tains. Then he turned to go and saw in the door way a young American who spoke quickly in Chinese, with a rapid breath catching at the words: "Good evening, Chang Yen Mao." "Good evening, Mr. Wilson, " he replied cour teously, and made excuses for seeming incivility. The cart was at the gate ; he was about to depart on an urgent journey; he regretted the necessity that made it impossible for him to entertain an honored guest. Wilson answered with equal courtesy that there was an error; no cart was at the gate. Your servants have been mistaken, Chang Yen Mao. If you will send one to inquire f " They sat, and talked politely. The servant re turned, perplexed. There was no cart at the gate. "Send for it, at once," Chang commanded. There was another interval of conversation, unspoken questions and indecisions hidden by irrelevant words. Then Wilson broke through their reticence: "There was no cart, Chang Yen 292 THE MAKING OF Mao, because as I came through the gates I sent it away. Chang Yen Mao, it will be better for you to remain in your own palace to-night. Chang rose quickly, with a movement startling in its swiftness. He stood straight to his full six feet, master in his own house and surrounded by servants, but his rising was hardly more swift than the appearance of Wilson s revolver. "Sit down, Chang Yen Mao," he said. "You are not going to Peking to-night. " Chang Yen Mao, standing quite still and look ing into those alien eyes above the little spark of light that glittered on the revolver barrel, said nothing. "If you take one step toward that door or call just once, I will shoot. Sit down, Chang Yen Mao, and listen to me." So Chang Yen Mao, perceiving the futility of being killed by a mad American while on a journey to be beheaded, sat down, and Wilson also settled comfortably into a chair, the revolver upon his knee, and explained the situation with lucid Western logic. A Chinese friend of Chang Yen Mao had sent Wilson the news of the death sen tence, begging him to keep the victim from Peking at any cost. He himself had hastened to set in motion wheels within wheels in the Forbidden City. It might yet be possible to prevail upon the empress to withdraw the imperial command. HERBERT HOOVER 293 Until it was withdrawn Chang was in honor bound to hasten to obey it. But how could he while a determined young man held him covered with a gun? "So we might as well make the best of it, Chang Yen Mao, and spend the night in pleasant conversation/ Wilson added cheerfully. "I m not going to let you out of my sight, for I know if I do you 11 give me the slip somehow. Chang Yen Mao sat motionless. His hands were hidden in the wide sleeves, and no twitch of eyelid or lip revealed what thoughts moved slowly behind his veiled eyes or what repressed desire for life stirred within him. He spoke at last of irrelevant things, a courteous man mak ing conversation with a guest. So they sat through the night in the lighted European draw ing-room, Wilson s watchful eyes struggling with sleepiness, Chang Yen Mao talking of ancient poets, the revolver between them. Morning brought a situation that hourly grew more complicated. Chang Yen Mao could not be kept indefinitely a prisoner in his own drawing- room. The cart still waited at the gate, and both men knew that when Wilson s vigilance for a mo ment relaxed Chang Yen Mao would step into it and set out toward Peking and the headsman s block. But at noon a second messenger arrived, bringing the tidings of a commuted sentence. Chang Yen Mao might live, disgraced. His pea- 294 THE MAKING OF cock feather was taken from him ; the red translu cent jewel of a Number Two mandarin was shorn from his cap. No longer might he wear the thumb-ring of three-colored jade, and never again could he enter the presence of the empress. The coal-mines of Kai Ping were in the hands of the foreign barbarians and not all the money scrupu lously paid him in dividends on his stock could restore his honor among his own people or lift him again to the high place he had won by thirty years of service to the Dragon Throne. A broken man, still erect amid the ruin of his life, he said farewell to Herbert Hoover on the day before the sailing of the ship that would take the young American home. Their friendship had withstood the calamity in which their association ended, but the memory of it was bitter to the younger man.* "I shall never return to China," he said. Twenty-seven years old, a successful mining engineer well known to mining men of all the world. Bewick, Moreing had offered him a junior partnership, and a little later Lou Henry was searching London for a small house that could be made a home center for his journeys. Two years of work as junior partner took him twice again around the whole curve of the earth. He knew now the mines of Burma, of Siberia, of Africa. Back in Stanford the undergraduates in HERBERT HOOVER 295 the class rooms he had known thrilled to the knowl edge that Herbert Hoover, a Stanford man, was the highest salaried mining engineer of his years in the world. At twenty-seven he was honored in his profession, rich enough for his moderate needs, and looking forward to the time when he would be free to leave the game of money-making for ever. He was surrounded by men to whom mil lions of dollars were the counters with which they played the gigantic game of the world s finance, but he had no ambition to become a millionaire. His interest was still in his work of actual mining, in the development of mines, their organization and efficient production. Four hundred thousand dollars was the mark at which he would stop making money. That sum, which five years earlier would have dazzled him, appeared moderate enough now; it was in deed a small sum compared to the amounts he handled in his work. But it would insure the safety and ample comfort of himself and his family, and to accumulate more would be foolish. His tastes and Lou Henry s were simple, com pared to those of the people they knew. They cared for friends, but not for society. Their home was a pleasant place through which flowed most of the drift of Americans passing through London, but their English friends protested that they did not cultivate the right people in the social world. 296 THE MAKING OF Bert Hoover was indeed, as Lou Henry said play fully, a perfect bear to people he did not like. They agreed that living was too full of real inter est to be wasted on any one who did not give them something real in interest or friendship. Altogether he was a happy man, vigorously alive in a happy world, when he went as usual to his office that morning after Boxing Day in 1902. The flavor of the holiday mood was still in his spirit. The afternoon before, he had gone with Lou Henry and Mr. and Mrs. Eowe, with their children, to a Christmas pantomime, and there had been a supper later in the warmth of a crack ling fire and the glow of the candles on the Christmas tree. Howe had been a genial host, and the children, rosy with the excitement of such late hours, had wakened in Bert Hoover the emo tion that children always touched. It was a buried memory of his own lonely childhood, and an aching pity for it, perhaps, that made him wish to give other children all that he had missed. Or perhaps it was the appeal of their funny ways and their ignorance of harsh things. He did not analyze it ; he only felt tenderness toward children. He thought of Kowe s family as he went up in the lift to Bewick, Moreing s offices, and behind that thought was an image of Bowe himself. An able man, respected in the City and relied upon by Moreing, the senior partner. Bewick had long HERBERT HOOVER 297 been only a name to the company ; after Moreing, Rowe was the man longest in the firm s service. He had been in the office for ten years, and he had been taken into partnership at the same time Herbert Hoover entered the firm, Rowe as an office man handling financial matters and Hoover as actual manager of mining properties. Their busi ness activities had hardly touched, but both in the office and out of it they respected and liked each other. The lingering impression left by the pleasant holiday together took him through Rowe s office for a morning greeting and a moment s chat. The office was empty, and passing through it he said to Rowe s secretary, " Where s Mr. Rowe this morning!" She looked up in surprise. "Mr. Rowe has left town, sir. To be gone some time, I under stood." He went on into his own office, slightly puzzled. Odd that Rowe had not mentioned the trip to him. A family matter, no doubt. Some one suddenly taken ill. He would call Mrs. Rowe and ask if he could offer any help. He gave his secretary the number and began opening letters. But when the connection was made he found himself trying to talk to a sobbing, incoherent voice that sent over the wire only a sensation of intolerable anguish and tragedy. Mrs. Rowe seemed unable to under- 298 THE MAKING OF stand his eagerness to help her, or his sympathy. "I 11 send Mrs. Hoover over at once," he told her, and called his own home. * Something seems to be terribly wrong over at the Eowes . Mrs. Eowe wants you, I think. " " I 11 go over right away, Bert. "If there s anything I can do, call me. I 11 be here until I hear from you." When Lou Henry s voice reached him again over the wire it was shaken and mystified. "I can t understand Mrs. Eowe at all, Bert. She is in some frightful trouble, hysterical, and she could n t talk to me. She gave me a sealed letter for you. She was crying so terribly that I don t know what she meant to say, but it was something about Mr. Eowe s leaving the letter for you, and that she ought not to give it to you so soon, but she just couldn t stand it, not to." "Send it down at once by messenger." An hour later he finished reading the incredible letter. Then he pressed the button under the edge of his desk, rose, and put his hands deep into his pockets. He found that his secretary had entered and that he was looking at her without seeing her. He told her to send for the chief of the accountants that audited Bewick, Moreing s books, and then he walked to the window and stood gazing out. The Bewick, Moreing Company, that had seemed as solid as the Bank of England, was HERBERT HOOVER 299 ruined. Rowe had looted it and fled. He had been looting it for years. Seven hundred thou sand dollars had vanished into thin air with him. Rowe in his confession had made the point that the firm was not legally responsible ; he had bor rowed money on securities intrusted to it, he had forged its name to documents, but the law could not hold the company responsible for his acts. Nevertheless the company was morally responsi ble for money obtained on its credit and by one of its own partners. Seven hundred thousand dollars. The other partners, older men than he, richer men, could per haps stand their share of the loss. His own share of it would wipe out everything he had. All that he had earned and saved in six years hard work. The home he had planned in California, the secur ity for the future that he had been building around himself and Lou Henry, the leisure he had thought so near, were gone. It gave a man a hollow, nauseating sensation at the solar plexus. He was almost jocular when he turned from the window to greet the chief accountant. It was rather a joke on the man, to tell him that the books he had audited for years would show on inspection a def icit of seven hundred thousand dollars. It was humorous, too, in a way, to feel the sen sation at the other end of the telephone wire when he called up the president of a bank to tell him 300 HERBERT HOOVER that the securities in his vaults were forged, and valueless. He spent the afternoon doing that, calling firm after firm as the white-faced account ants dug their names from their investigations and reported them. Rowe had been devilishly clever about the job ; it would be weeks before the last turn and twist of his trail could be uncovered. But enough was already apparent to show that the failure would be one of the worst in the City for many years. It showed certainly that if the firm met its moral obligations instead of saving itself by legal technicalities, not only his savings must go into the ruin but years of future work as well. But there was no question that Lou Henry would see the matter as he did. There was only one course to follow : the company must pay the debts it hon estly owed, regardless of the law s loopholes. And the decision was in his hands, for he, the youngest partner, was the only one in London at the moment. The responsibility w r as on his shoul ders, and he must carry it. Later, when the worst pressure on mind and nerves was over, he could think of his personal catastrophe. After all, he was only twenty-eight. He could begin again. CHAPTER VI THE basis of American morality is a practical attitude toward concrete facts. God came with the pioneers to a new continent as He went from Egypt into the wilderness with the revolting slaves, a Leader and a Lawgiver in the immediate emergencies of a hard life. The Ten Command ments were necessary principles of daily conduct in those small communities driven to mutual aid by common dangers and difficulties. It is neither right nor wise to anger, rob, or murder the neigh bor upon whose life and well-being your own safety depends, and it is essential that a man speak the truth in a country where life depends upon a knowledge of facts. The early American grasp of these truths were expressed by that hard- headed and successful man Benjamin Franklin, whose career and writings were one reiterated statement that morality is the best policy. When the diffusion of scientific knowledge brought with it an increasing practical-mindedness, and religion as a mystic spiritual force faded into even dimmer outlines, a simple and definite morality remained still the basis of the American point of view. 301 302 THE MAKING OF mean," Herbert Hoover had said in Stanford, "to make an honest success." It was his task now, within the tottering struct ure of one of the world s greatest mining com panies, to convince his associates that the only way to save the building was to let it fall. The firm might be kept from failure by repudiating its responsibility for the money and securities Rowe had taken. But morally that responsibility was upon it. It must choose between financial and moral ruin. Financial losses could be recovered, but a moral integrity once shattered could not be rebuilt. Honesty in this crisis was not only the one course that self-respecting men could pursue, it was also the wisest of business policies ; scrup ulous honesty would in the end bring its reward. It was a hectic month, filled with conferences, debates, interviews with financiers and journal ists. The failure was said to be the worst that had occurred in London for a century. Moreing was hastening from China, preceded by frantic cablegrams. The quiet security and happiness of Herbert Hoover s busy days were gone as though they had never been ; the present was a mass of harassing details and the future so doubtful that he could only postpone its problems until time brought them to him. His only refuge was the home to which he returned exhausted in the de pressing hours of the early morning, to find Lou HEEBEET HOOVEE 303 Henry as gallant as ever, discussing and under standing the whole situation with him and in complete accord with his decisions. The failure of Bewick, Moreing was a three- weeks sensation in the City. Newspapers gave columns to it ; it was the gossip of offices and clubs. Hoover was praised for his attitude through it all, for his ability and his quickness in handling a sit uation so unprecedented and so serious. But the praise was dearly bought by the sacrifice of the earnings of six years hard work. The flurry of. comment and compliment ended in a month and then he settled down to the four years labor of rebuilding the company. The reorganization of its affairs gave him a larger part of the responsibility and a promise of an increased share in the profits yet to be made. The firm s assets consisted of the skill of its members and the prestige its financial integrity had gained by his quick decision. Against these stood a large indebtedness still to be cleared off, and his personal bank-account was empty. Lou Henry was cheerfully making her own hats and he was working far into the nights as he had done years earlier in Australia, when the old Chinese trouble slowly rose again, like a myste rious cloud on the horizon. Little rumors ran be fore it as puffs of dusty wind before a storm. It was whispered that there had been something 304 THE MAKING OF shady, something tricky, in his connection with that old affair of the memorandum. To-day one heard that he had betrayed Chinese who trusted him ; to-morrow, that he had refused to save Chang Yen Mao s life at the hands of a firing squad until the old Chinese had bought his help with an offer of fabulously rich mines. It was reported that Bewick, Moreing had sent him to China to get the mining concession and that, having cleverly got it in his own name, he had held out for a junior partnership before he would surrender it. These rumors, that vanished when a hand was stretched to grasp them, that appeared again impervious to reason and careless of consistency, were too vague to be combated and too annoying to be en tirely ignored. It was impossible to find their source. They had arisen out of nothing, out of the air, created themselves between a smile and a glance, over tea-cups on hotel verandas in China and Japan, where life is so wearisome for the foreigner that the dullest become imaginative. They had risen like a swarm of gnats and circled half the world to reach London far in advance of the ship that brought Chang Yen Mao and his Chinese associates to fight their case in an Eng lish court. That dignified mandarin and his friends in their garments of colored silk and the caps of silk and jewels below which hung their long plaits of HERBERT HOOVER 305 hair braided with vermilion cords, appeared placid and fantastic in the gray streets of the City. They moved through it, like figures in a romance, gazing with aloof and non-committal eyes upon the strangeness of London, and a widen ing circle of excitement spread around them. Wherever English newspapers sent their closely printed pages English people read with interest and amazement this story of the mandarins who had come out of the East to demand from English law redress for an injury done them by Belgians and Germans. Many aspects of the case were without precedent in legal annals, and for the mo ment the picturesque spectacle of Chang Yen Mao before a Lord Chief Justice had no rival in pop ular sensation. Rumors clustering about it ob scured it like a fog and in its center with the Chinese Herbert Hoover was seen vaguely through the shifting mists. It was a relief when the routine of the case called him to testify to his part in the affair, to establish clearly the validity of the memorandum he had drawn so long ago as mediator between the two contesting factions. In short decisive sen tences, hard and square as bricks piled upon bricks, he told the plain, unassailable facts. He had taken the original agreement to London upon the authority and at the request of Chang Yen Mao. He had signed the memorandum with full 306 THE MAKING OF authority from Bewick, Moreing. He had con sistently and continually maintained that the terms of the memorandum should be carried out. He had protested at every opportunity against the action of the board of directors in repudiating it. The success of the Chinese suit hung upon his testimony, and his testimony stood unshaken and incontrovertible by any other evidence. The case dragged on through days and weeks, but it was impossible to challenge successfully the facts as he had stated them, and judgment was given in favor of the Chinese. Out of the conflict of inter ests and passions he emerged with the respect and confidence of all the antagonists; the Chinese en trusted to him the care of their interest in Europe; the principal member of the Hamburg group appointed him its representative in London mining companies; and the Belgians remembered him many years later as a man of great ability and unimpeachable honesty. Four years of work, four years of anxieties and hardships, paid for that decision to make good Kowe s defalcation. There was to him little of the dramatic or the picturesque about his labors, in Australia, in America, in Burma and China. The old routes around the world were familiar to him; the days brought him only the old problems stated in fresh terms or new problems to be met with hard thought and quick action. The firm HERBERT HOOVER 307 was getting on its feet again ; in helping to put it there he was learning the coils and tangles of in ternational finance, the problems of national and international affairs, the whole intricate web of human affairs. He was always working just a little too hard ; he was always just a little behind the thing he wished to know to-morrow. There was not time enough in the day for its difficulties, nor hours enough of night before sleep overpow ered him to get all that he wanted of history, poli tics, or economics from the books and reports that he always carried with him. It was a life so full that it had no space for introspection ; each experi ence, following swiftly upon the one before it, did not so much strike upon a fresh surface as com press itself quickly into the mass of experience that imperceptibly made him older, more able, more sophisticated. He was an organizer, a man whose life was the molding of men and materials into organizations that functioned swiftly and smoothly, without waste, producing efficiently the metals that make mankind master of the earth, and he saw a world unorganized, chaotic, wasteful; a mass of men tumultuous with conflicting desires, without order, reason, or definite purpose. He was a man whose mind worked logically and precisely, and he saw whole nations swayed by emotions into acts of folly, seizing like children the glittering things 308 THE MAKING OF closest to them without thought for to-morrow. The secrets of European courts, of republican pol itics, the intrigues and betrayals and sordid bar gainings concealed by great names, were known to him ; he had crossed the horizons beyond which others imagined wisdom and nobility to be, and he knew that life was everywhere the same, a chaos of stupidities and greeds and futile ideal isms. But his love for humanity and his faith in it were not shaken. He was made of the blood of democrats, and a belief in democracy is essentially a belief in the intelligence and honor of humanity. He loved mankind because he loved it; the source of his faith was deeper than the roots of the logic with which he defended it.- There was no flavor of world-weary cynicism in the minds of the men and women who, in helping to create the young, vigorous, hopeful America, had created him. And he was happy. Despite discouragements, deferred hopes, and exhausting labor, he was happy. He was surrounded by loyal friends who had known him in those crises of danger or temp tation that test men and friendships, and the basis of his life was an increasing content and satisfac tion created by those intimate personal emotions which, given so little time for expression, still colored all the hours of his days. He was away HERBERT HOOVER 309 from Ms home for months together ; when he was in London his time was crowded with other things ; but it was there that his own life centered, in a companionship that never ceased to be a fresh joy, and in plans and hopes for the children. He was a father now ; father of Herbert, whose com ing had been a long anxiety and a burst of song in the troubled months of 1904, and of Allan, two years younger, whose name remembered the Uncle Allan who had taken the orphaned Bertie on his knee in the desolate house at West Branch. All his free time was given to those chubby boys, with their wondering eyes and clutching fingers, and to the older Lou Henry in whose presence no one could cast one wistful backward glance at the memory of the girl who had leaped the fences at Stanford. It had always been hard to leave her; it was now impossible. With a decision that listened to no warning advice they picked up their home and carried it wherever his work took him. Before they celebrated the infant Herbert s first birthday he had traveled in his mother s arms twice around the world. Home moved with them, on passenger liners and trains, in stage-coaches and automo biles. The surroundings did not matter: home was where they were together. Sometime when they could afford it they would have their house in 310 THE MAKING OF California and collect there all the books, pictures, furniture and clothing scattered from Shanghai to New York. Four years, and the Bewick, Moreing com pany was on its feet once more, clear of debt, prosperous, with a prestige of honesty and ac complishment greater than before the failure. He remained with it four years longer, organizing mining companies in London and mines in Aus tralia, Korea, Siberia, and Burma, and looking forward to the time when his resources would justify his starting in business for himself as a consulting engineer. At last he opened his own offices in the mining center of the world, Lou Henry and the children were settled in the Red House, and in the imper ceptible relaxing of anxieties he became more ex pressive of the geniality that had been hidden at first by the inhibitions of his childhood and later by the demands of his work. The Eed House be came a place remembered by Americans as a bit of home in London; a house of sunshine or fire light, children and dogs, where one informally dropped in to meet interesting Americans just arrived from Siberia, Peru, Egypt, or Persia. Herbert Hoover, quietly one of the changing group around the fire, listened with enjoyment to the talk full of news and anecdote and repartee, watched Lou Henry s deft and graceful HERBERT HOOVEE 311 handling of a social situation, and spoke when he had something to say. Those laconic sentences packed with meaning or the long tales of his ad ventures in far places, told with restraint and humor, were his expression of the pleasure he found in simply friendly contacts with people. His humor was the humor of America, young as that nation is young, filled with a boy s sense of the ridiculous and delight in abrupt surprise, but Jiis thought was the carefully reached conclusion of a man who knew the peoples and governments of the earth. It was in 1910 that Dr. Jordan, returning to Stanford from peace conferences at The Hague, stopped at the Bed House for a visit with the Bert Hoover whose friend he had been since the days at Adalante Villa. He told of the new Hague rulings, of the growth of international under standing, of the hope that the world would at last begin that era of sanity and intelligent self-inter est that would make wars impossible. That vision of a human society in order, functioning for the welfare of human beings, was a dream to arouse the enthusiasm of a Quaker boy who had become a great engineer with interests crossing every frontier between nations. Hoover listened with out comment to the talk circling the dinner-table, and when he spoke at last he said only a few half- humorous words: "The world was never so full 312 THE MAKING OF of peace talk or so busy putting on its side- weapons. " It was two years, then, since he had given at Stanford the lectures that he collected and pub lished as "Practical Mining," the book that he had intended to be his valedictory to his profession. Two years earlier he had had money enough to safeguard the future of his family ; he had reached the point at which he had dreamed of leaving money-making and devoting his intelligence and energy to other tasks. But the eight years that had passed since the morning he received Bowe s letter had involved him too deeply in his work. After all, the possession of money did not make him free. The master of the many organizations he had created was their slave. He had begun tasks, organized companies, formulated plans, that he could not abandon, and each venture he undertook committed him to others that led still further into the future. Young engineers in all the corners of the earth depended on him as he had depended on Bewick, Moreing in the old days. Stock-holders looked to him for dividends, miners drew their living from his pay-rolls. He was entangled in the web of a world commercialism and he could not escape without breaking threads. The outward compulsions upon him were aided, too, by changes within himself. The Great Game he had thought to play and quit had captured him. HERBERT HOOVER 313 He had been outside it once; lie had considered himself always essentially outside it, always mas ter of himself, able to resist its temptations and to leave it when he chose. The lures by which it enticed others had been meaningless to him: he did not want money for its own sake, he did not care for high social position, for luxuries, for the purchased respect of other men. But no one can resist the age in which he lives. Its spirit controls all men s lives, making them either sub servient to it or rebels against it. The Great Game had captured him by the opportunity it offered for concrete accomplishment. He did not want money or fame or ease, but he did want power, the power to do the things he thought worth doing. There was, for instance, the matter of the lead and silver mines in Burma. He had explored those ancient abandoned workings of the Chinese on outcroppings long ago exhausted. He had studied the geology of the hills, the direction of strata and streams, under the heat of the Burmese sun in the breath of miasmatic swamps. He had lain for six delirious weeks in the grip of malarial fever to pay for his knowledge of those mines. And he was convinced that proper exploration and development would uncover there a wealth of lead and silver. He had returned to London to organize the com- 314 THE MAKING OF pany to do the work. It had been difficult to do; his personal word and his authority as an expert stood as guarantee that the men who had listened to him and invested in the project would not lose. Yet there were troubles upon troubles within the company; he had to hold directors in line, smooth down disputes, reconcile antagonistic personali ties. He was convinced that if with one hand he could hold the company together and with the other develop the Burmese properties, he could produce enormously rich lead and silver mines in those abandoned fields. It meant more wealth for the world ; it meant new employment for thou sands of men; it meant above all a big job well done. But it would take years to accomplish. There was, too, his interest in the handling of low-grade ores. That had become, in a way, his special field, taking the management of worked- out mines and reviving fresh values in them. He had done it first with the tailings-dumps of old Australian mines. No one had believed that the i^tals in them could ever be extracted in paying quantities. They had been dug from the earth <mly to lie unused in wind and weather, returning :o the earth. He had believed that they could be utilized, and he had held to that belief through three years of fruitless experiment, fighting a ceaseless battle for more faith and more capital while his chemists struggled with the technical HERBERT HOOVER 315 problems. He had won : a whole district of Aus tralia had leaped into new life, and the refuse of the mines was producing lead and silver and zinc. The whole surface of the earth was covered with opportunity for such reorganization the unexploited wealth of Siberia, where he had taken charge of an entire district, a small principality of 175,000 people, feeding, clothing and giving new energy to them all by the working of its mines ; the back country of Korea, where he had taught the little brown men American methods of production ; the veldt of South Africa ; the moun tains of California. There was room enough in the work he was doing for all a man could have of constructive imagination and practical intelli gence. He had gone into the game of money- making because he needed money ; he stayed in it now because there was more than money in it. All that the world could offer of opportunity for usefulness, for self -development, for satisfaction, was in the game of money-making, because all the world was there. And in his hours of recreation he and Lou Henry finished the fascinating work of translat ing that old Latin work, "Des Res Metallica," and published it, as the first complete translation of the first book on mining deserved to be published, in all the luxury of parchment and vellum, as their gift to the literature of mining. 316 THE MAKING OF The one part of his dream that he did not re linquish was the home in California. As soon as he could get away from his most pressing work in the big mining center he was going home. Ever since he left China he had maintained his offices in San Francisco, and his hotel rooms were always waiting for him there, as other rooms waited in Shanghai, Melbourne, and New York. He was a trustee of Stanford University, busy with plans for it, building there the students club-house that he hoped would help to keep Stanford s democracy secure against the influence of fraternities, plan ning to make the old Quad again what it had been when he was a boy there, a gathering-place for all the students in the intervals of class-room work. In the spring of 1914, as usual, he was in San Francisco. He knew it as he knew all the cities of the world, those knots in the network of in dustry, finance, and politics woven around the earth. He knew its tangled affairs, its connec tions with the Orient and with New York and Lon don, its internal conflicts that still expressed in violent emotion and melodramatic event the spirit of the days of Forty-nine. It was perhaps that spirit, bold and brusk and free despite increas ing wealth and poverty, that flavor of the pio neer that persisted among banks and factories and labor unions, that held him more than the beauty of Paris or the picturesqueness of Bombay. HERBERT HOOVER 317 There was the breath of freedom in the salt winds driving the white fog over Twin Peaks at the top of Market Street; there were dauntlessness and daring in the gray buildings that climbed toward the sky on every hillside. When from the deck of the ferry-boat he saw before him the blue dis tances of San Francisco Bay, the sea-gulls crying in the sparkling air, the spreading miles of docks and shipping and beyond them the triumphant jagged sky-line of the city that had rebuilt itself on its own ruins, he knew that he was coming home. San Francisco was happy in that spring of 1914. She was once more the city, gay and debonair, that eight years earlier had crumbled in one ter rible dawn into heaps of flaming ruins. The banks stood once more on their old sites, renewed in walls of fresh marble; the shops were more resplendent than before along the wide walks of Grant Avenue. If there were still piles of melted bricks in the vacant spaces, cracks in the side walks, and ruins where the City Hall had been, still the old flower stands at Market and Kearney scented the sea-winds with perfume once more and the new Chinatown was awake at night with colored lanterns and crashing music. There was still anxiety in the counting-houses; many a gal lant facade concealed empty vaults and unpaid debts; but San Francisco was rebuilt, and San 318 THE MAKING OF Francisco was celebrating. She planned the greatest fair the world had ever known, the most fantastically beautiful city of magic, to be built by artists for lovers of beauty and mirth. No true son of San Francisco could fail to help her make her dream come true. Herbert Hoover had planned to spend a summer at Stanford, whose own walls were being rebuilt on new and larger plans ; he had planned to rest on the white sand beaches of Monterey and to visit again the mountains of Santa Cruz. But San Francisco had encountered in Europe an inexplicable reluct ance to join in her holiday. Germany, France, England, Spain, invited to send their treasures of art and triumphs of manufacture to the fair, hesi tated and delayed their replies. Was this a slight put upon San Francisco, this threatened failure to do for her what had been done for Chicago? Some one must be sent unofficially to inquire, to press the point, to bring the nations of Europe to San Francisco s fete in 1915. Herbert Hoover was the man to do it. He left in June for the quick journey across the Atlantic and back. He understood the fears at work in England and on the Continent ; but who believed, until the fact was there, that in some way, at the last moment, the monstrous folly of a world war would not be prevented once more? The mounting armaments of the nations, the tre- HERBERT HOOVER 319 mendous military forces, the growing tension on the meeting frontiers of imperialistic commerciaL isms, had so long kept the thought of war before all Europe that one had grown accustomed to it as to a chronic illness, and when the end came it brought all the shock of the unexpected. War! Herbert Hoover s business interests were in all parts of the world. Stockholders of every nation were in his companies. His wide, interweaving affairs were part of the whole web of international credits that makes modern civilization possible and that crosses every national frontier. That web was abruptly torn across, and everything that depended upon it fell into chaos. Credits disappeared, stock certificates became pieces of paper, currency itself lost its value in the sudden instinctive attempts to readjust a complex civil ization to the primitive barbarism of war. Checks, drafts, letters of credit, even bank-notes, were of no more use than they would have been to a man who had suddenly found himself in the Middle Ages with his pockets full of them. Gold disappeared. This was the result of the first shock. It was necessary only to hold firm and let it pass. The whole machinery of human living could not be destroyed in a moment. It was broken in two; each half would continue to function, crippled, but with wheels flying faster and carrying heavier 320 THE MAKING OF loads. Readjustment was necessary, repairs, hastily improvised makeshifts for lost parts. But the machine would continue to run, because it must. Had he been a financier, a promoter and spec ulator only, he might have been ruined. But he had dealt with actual properties and he held real values, values increased by war s insatiable need for metals. In this the most serious crisis his business affairs had encountered he would need to use every energy and every resource of initia tive and intelligence, but he would be able to handle it, to protect stock-holders and employees and keep the mines going. The greatest strain upon his immediate per sonal finances came from the friends and acquaint ances who, escaping penniless across the Channel, fell upon him with brief recitals of adventures and requests for loans. Dozens, scores, hundreds of them, poured through his offices and crowded the Bed House, bringing their friends and their friends friends, sure of his help. Strangers waylaid him with the simple statement, "I m an American." With the same simplicity he gave them money as he had given it to unknown Stan ford students through Lester Hinsdale s hands, "just a loan to help them over the hard places." Fifty thousand dollars was taken from his hands during that first week of panic in London; his HERBERT HOOVER 321 pockets were full of scrawled I IPs signed by strange names, and the necessity of organizing first aid to stranded Americans was evident. In the American Embassy, where the corridors were jammed with distraught citizens and the overworked staff could not handle the situation, Dr. Page threw up his hands and gave his secre tary Herbert Hoover s telephone number. Some thing must be done ; Hoover was the man to do it. All right, I will. See you at six o clock. It was a trifling matter or organization, the work he had been doing for years. As he had paused for a moment in the siege of Tien-Tsin to organize a building-and-loan company, so he now created time in the midst of his work to organize the American relief funds. He and his business friends contributed two hundred thousand dollars immediately; the United States Government sent another quarter of a million in gold; a floor was rented in the Hotel Savoy, a staff was assembled and organized. After that it was merely a matter of supervision, of keeping the wheels running swiftly and smoothly and getting the Americans home without red-tape delays. Drafts, letters of credit, and checks were cashed, train and steamer passages secured, and one hundred thousand Americans were moved with precision and des patch through the chaos of London. It was a simple matter, hardly more than a detail among 322 THE MAKING OF the many crises he was meeting. For the war was not a matter of newspaper head-lines and personal emotion to him; a world was going to pieces be neath his feet and all that had made his business life was breaking up with it. He had built upon organization and order, and the great commercial organizations of the earth were destroying themselves. He felt the common anguish of those terrible days when the stupend ous engines of murder first began their work on living human bodies ; he felt, too, the suffering of a man who knew that the iron wheels were destroy ing civilization. The energies of Europe were turned to destruction, and he knew by what a nar row margin those energies had fed and clothed the European peoples from year to year. No vic tory could come from the war, though the Central Empires or the Allies imposed the barren peace. And in this suffering, while London recovered from its first dumb shock to grow hysterical around him, he must get together the broken pieces of his own work for the clamoring stock holders and anxious employees who depended upon him. A certain momentum carried him on with the job ; the habit of a lifetime is not changed in a moment. There was a relief in concentrating on immediate hard work, for a busy mind deadens the emotions. On the other side of the Channel the march of the Germans was stopped by the HERBERT HOOVER desperate battle that sent a wave of black across England, and the long struggle began. Belgium was doomed ; the little nation that he knew so well would die, either under the harshness of the Ger man armies or within the iron ring of the English blockade. And from Belgium came a cry to him for help. That appeal from a nation sentenced to starva tion came to him during the most serious crisis he had known in his own affairs. The Belgian mining engineers who had known him since the days in China sent Millard Shaler, an American mining engineer, through the enemy lines to beg him to save Belgium. It was a question of food for seven million persons, men, women and chil dren. A tremendous job. A job that must be done quickly and well. Only a mining engineer could do it, the Belgians urged, and of mining engi neers Herbert Hoover was the man. It was a matter, of course, for diplomatic negotiation. He sent Millard Shaler to Dr. Page. He understood the situation in Belgium without explanation. That nation of towns and factories was like a city ; cut off from communication with agricultural countries it would starve in two months. Under normal conditions it imported seventy-five per cent, of its grains and fifty per cent, of its other foods. Now the march of the German armies had brought it within the block- 324 THE MAKING OF ade; Germany, herself in a state of siege, and hoarding food, would not share her supplies with the angry people who had prevented her trium phal entry into Paris. Neither would she let them import gold to pay for food from neutral coun tries, even though the Allies would relax the block ade on food for Belgians. Seven million persons. Peaceful, hard-working civilians caught between the armies. To feed them under normal conditions would be the big gest commissary job in history, a task greater than feeding the armies of the Allies. To do it now would involve all the tangle of diplomacy be-i tween England and Germany and neutral Amer ica. It seemed impossible. But the starvation of seven million hostages in conquered territory also was impossible. A Bel-> gian delegation was passed through the German lines to carry Germany s offer to England. The Germans held Antwerp and the whole of Belgium with all her food. Germany was blockaded. She would feed the Belgians if England would lift the blockade. England replied that she would not lift the blockade. Under The Hague Conference rules Germany was bound to feed the Belgians. Let her do it. Germany offered an alternative. She would permit America to send food to Belgium through HERBERT HOOVER 325 Holland with the Allies consent, provided that the work was done entirely by Americans under German surveillance. The Allies gave their per mission, and Dr. Page sent for Herbert Hoover. He was asked to give up the work of his lifetime. He was asked to give it up in a crisis that would mean the loss of nearly the whole of his fortune. It is not so easy to begin again at forty. All that the years had taught him of self-interest and per sonal ambition was against his accepting the re sponsibility for feeding Belgium. After all, there were other engineers. Dr. Page insisted that he was the one American with the ability and the knowledge of Europe that the work demanded. The Belgian delegation en dorsed the opinion, converging upon him the in tensity of their reliance on him and the despair of a dying nation. "Gentlemen, you are asking me to give up not only my own fortune but a responsibility to my stock-holders. I must have time to think it oven Give me two days." He went home to the Red House to talk it over with Lou Henry. It was not a decision to be easily made. He knew the difficulties of the work, the endless heartbreaking complications that he would have to meet day after day in handling a task of such delicacy between Germany and Eng land. He knew what he must give up, both for 326 THE MAKING OF himself and for wife and sons. The fruits of twenty years hard work, all that he had striven toward since the old days at Stanford. The lead and silver mines of Burma, that had only that sum mer justified his belief by revealing ore of almost incredible richness, and that were still to be de veloped. And all the other plans and projects he had formulated or begun to carry out. Lou Henry met the question seriously and with understanding. He was offered an opportunity to do a big humanitarian task. An entire nation with all its women and little children was starv ing; no personal consideration could enter into the question of trying to save them. If he could do the work, if he could arrange to leave his business without ruining others, he ought to do it. He walked the length of his room and back all that night, his hands in his pockets, his head bent, thinking; ranging methodically in order all the arguments on each side, as he had done long before in choosing between geology and mining. The seven million human beings that he might be able to save were a factor that nothing could balance.* It was after all the kind of work that he had wished to do, and he must take it when it came. There was no need for melodrama about the thing. It was a big job, that was all; and in its essentials, aside from its diplomatic aspects, it was the kind of work he had been doing for fifteen HERBERT HOOVER 327 years. The thing to do was to get at it. He saw Dr. Page at the American Embassy and announced his decision: "Well, I guess I Ve got to let the fortune go to blazes. I m going to take the Bel gian job." Then he resigned from all his mining companies and went to work. The sensation in the City was lost in the storm of greater emotions sweeping England. Presidents, directors, and managers, in a panic, begged him to reconsider, urged him as a neutral American to stay out of the war and help them with their difficulties, called him mad to wreck himself in that fashion. He stood smil ing, his hands gripped hard in his pockets, friendly and immovable. They could carry on without him. If they wanted his opinion at any time they could come around for it; he would do anything he could. But he had taken the Belgian job and he would have time for nothing else. He was through with mining. " I m going in for the world s biggest wholesale grocery job," he said. The Commission for the Relief of Belgium was exactly that. But food, as a factor in organiza tion, is only a commodity, so much material to be purchased, transported, and delivered. He had been buying and handling not only food but ma chinery, lumber, fuel, all the innumerable mate rials necessary for building mining camps, rail ways, and mills in the far places of the earth. He 328 THE MAKING OF understood organization, both as a technical prob lem and as an intricate interlacing of human rela tionships. Men liked him and liked one another when they worked together for him. He stood in a position unique in history, an individual with no authority but his own, dealing with all the nations of a world at war. As an individual, he was able to act quickly and deci sively. When he became chairman of the C. E. B. just fourteen days stood between Belgium and starvation and every obstacle bureaucracy could oppose to him stood in the way of his getting food into trains, into ships, out of harbors, and across the patrolled and mine-infested Channel. He overcame the obstacles by ignoring them, and the Belgians had the food before he had all the neces sary permissions to send it. It was his way of working, for like his pioneer ancestors he saw no use for an organization that destroyed individual ism and had no respect for the attitude of mind in which the means to an end become an end in themselves. The basis of his organizations was that combination of authority and democracy that was the Quaker village spread around the earth as a commercial machine. As the controlling head of the men who were feeding an entire nation, he expected them also to apply individual initiative and intelligence to their immediate problems and he gave them room in which to do it. He had HERBERT HOOVER 329 become the king of an unofficial government that extended itself around the earth ; he was in abso lute control of it and carried the responsibility for all its acts, and he decentralized the authority so completely that no man in it was entangled in red- tape. The freedom they felt and the obligation upon them to produce results, enlisted for him the energy and enthusiasm of men who work for themselves and the efficiency of men who work together for a common purpose. The group of able and loyal men who gathered around him was one of the few joys he knew in those days so harassed by anxieties. White, Hunsiker, Rickard, Lucey, Graff, Honnald, Shaler, and Polland, the biggest American mining engineers, gave them selves as wholeheartedly to the work he directed as he did, and in two months the C. R. B. was pouring food through Holland into Belgium. The work divided itself into five parts, all si multaneously presenting innumerable difficulties of detail, buying, transporting, and delivering the food, financing the work, and keeping open the diplomatic channels all along the way. He was a trained buyer and he knew the world s markets; his buyers were in America, Argentine, India, and China, and a mind schooled for years in stock- exchanges directed their adventurous careers. The markets had gone mad ; the stability of food prices had vanished with the international com- 330 THE MAKING OF merce that made it; wheat, no longer dependent on Liverpool quotations and caught in harbors without ships, was a rolling ball on a gambler s roulette table ; sugar in Hawaii and pork in Kan sas and beans in Manchuria leaped and fell with the breath of rumor in Chicago. Buying for the C. E. B. was a juggler s game, needing a shrewd eye and a quick hand, and at his desk in London he played it for the life of Belgium. When wheat was high in Argentine he was buying rice in Ran goon ; just before it rained in Havana he got sugar in the Philippines. He never bought on a falling market, and he caught it before it turned. Mak ing the C. R. B. s amazing record for shrewd buy ing would have been an hilarious game if he had not been too busy for jubilation and too weary for excitement. There was the constant question of getting ships, charters, convoys, barges. The food came overseas from South America and through the Suez Canal for China, then across the Channel infested with floating mines into the harbor at Rotterdam, where it was unloaded into a flock of barges that moved through the canals of Holland into Belgium. Seventy ships sailed the seas under the flag of the C. R. B., and five hundred barges met them at Rotterdam and had their own renewed troubles in getting through the German lines at the Dutch frontier. They were the barges HERBERT HOOVER 331 of the C. R. B., and who was the C. R. B.? Her- bert Hoover, one man in no official position with any government. Germany looked on him and his men with sus picion, as possible spies and quite probably Allied sympathizers. German military officers opposed the soft-hearted charity of feeding Belgium. Let the Belgian civilians suffer with Germany inside an unbroken blockade and they would take up the German cause and help defeat the Allies. Eng lish naval officers believed that the C. R. B. was prolonging the war that had brought death into nearly every English family. Maintain the blockade unbroken, they urged. Let Belgium starve. Either the Belgians would rise in last desperate revolts that would cripple the work of the German Army, or Germany would feed them and thus bring more quickly her own starvation and collapse. He was feeding the Belgians, and he did it against a hundred conflicting currents of opposi tion. Every day was a crisis. The Germans would not let the barges out of Belgium into Hol land unless five thousand dollars was deposited for each one, to guarantee its return. He crossed the mined Channel at night, in a boat darkened to escape submarines, and settled that point without yielding it. His men were arrested here, hindered there, working under the constant watchfulness 332 THE MAKING OF of enemies. A dozen times the Germans threat ened to end the whole thing by driving the C. E. B. out of Belgium. He came and went between London, Brussels, and Paris, the one man passing through the lines from French to German to -Eng lish headquarters, never betraying confidences, trusted even while he was hated. In the center of the melee of changing policies in governments at war he fought an endless series of fights, with the Germans, the English, the French, even with the Belgians. First and last and constantly he kept his self-control. He did not let his temper loose; he did not speak a word not considered carefully before he uttered it; he kept his emo tions under guard. His brain was in charge, hard and efficient as a machine. And he was terribly tired. The work must be financed. Northern France had been swallowed by the German armies. Two million, five hundred thousand more mouths to feed. The C. E. B. was selling its supplies to those able to pay for them, turning the profits into its charity fund for those who had nothing. Every week that leveling-down process brought more thousands into the bread-lines. In the most highly industrialized country of Europe hardly a wheel was turning; the factories stood empty; no one had work or wages, and their only food came through the C. E. B. The business had grown to HERBERT HOOVER 333 a total of twelve million dollars a month, sup ported by charity and by unofficial contributions from governments. The money was sent simply to him, Herbert C. Hoover. Those hundreds of millions passing constantly through his personal bank-account were guarded by nothing but his own integrity, which to all the governments of Europe was a security as sound as a government bond. In accs&tmg that money he accepted the entire responsibility for its honest and efficient handling. It was a point at which the slightest error would have left him open to the attacks of his enemies. He guarded against that danger by having his accounts double-audited and certified by both English and French accountants, and to prevent a single penny of that money from com ing to him he not only accepted no salary but paid even his traveling expenses himself. But the care of the C. R. B. funds was on his shoulders, and as the cost of feeding Belgium grew greater than his resources he was in the position of the head of an enormous business that every day faced bankruptcy. It became at last a question of raising money on Belgian assets from sources outside that imprisoned country. He encountered the refusal of Germany to give up the riches she had taken by force of arms, the declaration of the Belgians that they would rather starve than ac cept any concessions from their conquerors, and 334 THE MAKING OF the financial panics of the rest of the war-ravaged world. The greatest financiers in the City told him that he was attempting the impossible. But it must be done. Through a succession of plans that were broken and thwarted and altered, re assembling his resources, meeting objections, arguing, fighting with tenacity and desperation., he did it. The achievement in ordinary times would have made him a king of financiers ; it was accomplished in the turmoil when the efforts of giants were overshadowed by more gigantic forces. He had the money to keep the C. R. B. going ; it was one fight finished to make room for another, without time between them for rest or breathing space. Verdun, and the French Government in that terrific strain upon all her strength contemplated abandoning the C. E. B. Officially the French had never contributed to the feeding of her two and a half million people beyond the German lines ; offi cially she stood firm on The Hague Conference rules and demanded that Germany feed them. Secretly, however, the French treasury sent Her bert C. Hoover twelve and a half million francs every month, receiving in return merely his per sonal receipts. Now a faction in the government demanded that those payments cease. All France was hungry; all France was suffering, straining with her last energies against the enemy at Ver- HERBERT HOOVER 335 dun. Beyond the lines two and a half million French people were fed and quiet under the polic ing of German soldiers. Let them starve, and they would revolt inside the enemy territory; their ultimate futile desperation might shake Ger many s grip just sufficient to enable France to hold Verdun. Herbert Hoover hastened for the hundredth time across the Channel to Paris. He knew that such reasoning was false ; he knew the true situa tion in Germany. The things he knew could not be told ; he was a neutral given the freedom of both camps, bound in honor to betray neither by one unwary word or glance. The French must ac cept much on his unsupported statement; they must be made to accept it, for the lives of two and a half million of their own people hung on its acceptance. He came back to London with that point won; he had defeated the efforts of the French military party and France would continue to help the C. R. B. Another crisis had arisen within Germany ; again the German militarists were about to end their vexations by sending the C. R. B. out of their conquered territory. German General Headquarters was enraged by the false reports of atrocities sweeping the neutral countries. Guarded as the C. R. B. men were in every word and gesture, every one knew where their sympa- 336 THE MAKING OF thies lay. Throw them out, the generals insisted ; let Germans handle the Belgians. They would teach them submission behind barbed-wire fences in concentration camps. Germany was starving; why should Belgium be fed? Hoover raced again across the Channel in a darkened torpedo boat and rushed to Brussels. i i Mark Twain said that life was just one damn thing after another. Maybe he was right then; nowadays life is all of em at once, they said in C. E. B. headquarters in London. And for the twentieth time they gave the English proofs that none of the C. E. B. food was falling into German hands. The distribution of the food was one of the simplest parts of the work, thanks to the chief s democratic theories of organization. Down to the smallest village, the actual problems of distribu tion were in the hands of local Belgian agents working under the Belgian Comite Nationale. It was their task to meet at first hand the suffering of their people ; that was one thing that the chief could not do. He had seen the children of Ant werp in the bread-lines, and never again was he present at such scenes. These were emotions that he could not endure and continue to do his work. He repulsed bruskly the sympathetic women who wished to thank him for the noble work he was doing for those poor women and children who HEEBEET HOOVEE 337 were suffering so terribly ; he would not talk about it. "I remember the whole thing as one long fight without rounds," he said when it ended in the spring of 1917, and Lou Henry found one glimpse of sunshine for him in the gloom: "Perhaps now you will be able to meet your family again. It s really a very nice family, you know. The ends of the C. E. B. work were neatly gath ered up. A business turning over billions of dollars in two years, with an overhead of one half of one per cent. It was finished now, cleared away, all accounts rendered. Herbert Hoover and his family sailed at once for America. Presi dent Wilson, urged by Dr. Page to make Herbert Hoover Director of Munitions, had sent for him to take the food control of the United States. Washington, again, in the springtime, with the green trees bursting into leaf in all the parks and squares, magnolias on the White House lawn, and the placid Potomac mirroring the woods upon her banks. Washington roused like an angry beehive, its streets crowded with strangers, its air rever berating to the sound of hammers and saws ; aero planes roaring above the Washington Monument ; wireless towers sputtering their crackling electric messages. Government departments expanding, multiplying, spreading into scores of new wooden and concrete buildings, crowding into hotels and 338 THE MAKING OF old apartment houses where typewriters and filing- cases stood beside fireplaces and bath-tubs. Washington, an old political organization, sud denly becoming a conglomeration of enormous economic machinery, centralized as the old poli tics had been and trying to carry efficiently the heaviest economic load in history. In two hundred years America had grown like Topsy. On the simple individualistic democracy of the pioneer the coming of the machines had imposed the inevitable industrial autocracies of corporations and labor unions. The era of organ ization had evolved with them; an organization that, founded on the undisputed autocratic right of a man over his own property, had developed on autocratic lines and become an increasing dele gation of power from individuals to a superior. Stockholders delegated authority to directors and presidents; organized workers gave their power to ele cted representatives. Capital and Labor were two tremendous autocratic organizations, meeting only at the point of greatest antagonism. Agriculture, still in the hands of farmers who cherished the old individualistic democracy, was the victim of both. It remained far behind its possibilities of development, hampered by loss of labor to the cities, by lack of any adequate machin ery of capitalization, by the efforts of labor to raise wages which resulted in mounting costs of HERBERT HOOVER 339 manufactured articles, and by the efforts of cap ital to make profits which resulted in low prices for farm products. Politics, founded on the idea of a democracy of individuals, and confronted by the facts of autocratic economic and political or ganization, struggled hopelessly to reconcile the two and was lost in a brawl of conflicting interests. America had now entered the war and Herbert Hoover was in charge of her food-production and export. A product of the pioneer forces that had made the nation, he had gone out into the wide world twenty years earlier carrying with him the essential qualities of Americanism. Now the na tion itself was following the footsteps of those world pioneers of whom he had been one. Amer ica had conquered a continent and become a na tion ; now she was giving her strength to the world conflict. Herbert Hoover inherited a chaos. The agri culture of the United States had continued to feed its people only because of the tremendous natural resources of a new country; for fifty years its farming had been slowly deteriorating, unchecked by any but the feeblest political efforts. Tenant farming was increasing; farm mortgages were bleeding the producers with high rates of interest ; the cost of farm machinery had steadily risen and the supply of farm labor steadily decreased. The war in Europe had flung confusion into the mar- 340 THE MAKING OF kets and gamblers were plundering agriculture as thieves loot a burning city. Wheat was worth $1.44 on the farms ; $3.25 on the Chicago gambling table; double that in the flour-barrel. Stock- growers were selling calves because they could not profit by raising them; the urban middle classes were eating less meat because they could not af ford to buy it. Not only the winning of the war but the feeding of Americans, and after them the populations of Europe, depended upon the director of the Food Administration in Washington. Hoover knew how narrow was the margin of hope, because he knew more intimately than any other American the actual situation of all the nations at war. He must stabilize and increase America s food-pro duction, decrease her consumption, and squeeze out between them a larger exportation of food than in normal times, and he must do it immedi ately. He began at once by creating a decentralized organization, an organization based on a theory opposed to that of all American political and eco nomic organization. Twenty years in the affairs of the world had not altered his belief in individ ualistic democracy; absolute authority was in his hands as Food Administrator, and he delegated that authority downward as rapidly as possible. It was the plan he had followed in his mining HERBERT HOOVER 341 career; it was the plan he had used in Belgium. He delegated his authority to the State Food Ad ministrators, through them to county organiza tions, and beyond them to the American individual. Then he began his tremendous campaign of pub licity. It was the Quaker village once more ap plied to huge affairs, the principles of free discus sion and individual responsibility. He believed in humanity; he rested half his load upon his faith in the righteousness and the power of fully informed individuals acting freely. Twelve out of twenty million homes in America responded to his belief, and sixty million Americans were vol untarily pledged to follow his instructions for saving food. The problem of production and distribution was more difficult. He encountered there the funda mental selfishness of men who see their property attacked, and the desperation of men working for self-preservation. He had to deal with gamblers who clutched their winnings and with farmers to whom the war had brought their first hope of prosperity, and he had to mend and alter and keep running the whole intricate machinery of Amer ica s food-supply that for two hundred years had never been controlled by any central intelligence or justice. He began, under the Food Control Act of August, 1917, by instituting a system of licens ing handlers of food products who did a business 342 THE MAKING OF of more than a hundred thousand dollars a year, and by guaranteeing farmers a minimum price of two dollars a bushel for 1918 wheat. But the winning of the war for the Allies de pended upon the immediate response of the indi vidual Americans to whom he had appealed. Upon them he rested all his hope. Despite desperate urging to institute in this crisis a system of food- rationing and food-cards he still relied upon the action of free individuals. His campaign of pub licity continued; his instructions went out to American housewives. In the last analysis it was they who must win the war. Prohibition, policing, autocratic authority, however used, would not avail against a people who would not voluntarily respond to his appeals. One reason, if reasons were demanded, was that there was not time to use such methods. In January, 1918, five months after he became Director of the American Food Administration, Lord Ehondda, the English Food Controller, saw the last hope gone. He laid down his hand and said in effect to the British War Council : Gentlemen, we are through. The Allies have lost the war. His cablegram to Herbert Hoover was already in the office of the Food Administrator in Wash ington. "Unless you are able to send the Allies at least seventy-five million bushels of wheat over and above what you have exported up to January HERBERT HOOVER 343 first and in addition to the total exportable surplus from Canada I cannot take the responsibility of assuring our people that there will be food enough to win the war. Imperative necessity compels me to cable you in this blunt way. No one knows bet ter than I do that the American people, regardless of national and individual sacrifice, have so far refused nothing that is needed for the war, but it now lies with America to decide whether or not the Allies in Europe shall have enough bread to hold out until the United States is able to throw its force into the war. This was the anxiety that Herbert Hoover car ried with him, underlying all the anxieties and battles of that winter. The 1917 wheat crop had been poor ; the United States had barely enough grain for its own normal consumption. He was embroiled in difficulties with millers, bakers, and middlemen ; he was charged with disorganizing all normal business by the activities of his new grain- administration, by his entry into the market as a coordinator of supplies for the Allies. He was in reality trying at once to save the farmer from the effects of speculation and extortion, to stabil ize prices and prevent wild gambling and panic, and in the face of the world s shortage of grain and ships to get enough wheat to Europe to save the Allies without undernourishing the American people. By July he had sent ten million more 344 THE MAKING OF bushels of wheat than Lord Rhondda had asked for, and the crisis was past. After that, the strain of the work was less. It was a matter of organization and reorganization only, and carrying the load of the Food Adminis tration was rest after the terrific labors of the C. E. B. and the first months in Washington. He. had authority from Congress to go into the mar kets as a buyer, and he organized the United States Grain Corporation that by skilful maneu vering kept up the price of wheat and held down the price of flour. In his office it was a matter of percentages ; in 1910 the farmers had been getting 27 per cent., the millers 6y 2 per cent., the middle men and bakers 66% per cent, of the price of bread. In 1915 the proportions had been 30, 11, and 59. With the Grain Corporation and Food Administration in the field the farmers got 40 per cent.; the millers 3 per cent., and the middlemen and bakers 57 per cent. And the margin between producer and consumer had been cut from $11.00 to $3.50 per barrel of flour. Those figures, sel dom known and never intelligently considered by the American people, were nevertheless of the greatest importance to the prosperity of every farmer who plowed a field and to the health of every child whose mother gave it a piece of bread and butter. The altering of those figures was Herbert Hoover s task and he did it anxiously and HERBERT HOOVER 345 with care because he felt the human values they represented. But he did it, because he must, by methods repugnant to him. The autocracy he was compelled to use in the Food Administration was against all his convictions ; he did not believe that such economic control was the proper pro vince of government. It was necessary in the emergency of the war, but just and efficient con trol of food-supplies was properly a matter for the people themselves to undertake. Out of the activities of the Food Administration grew many related problems of organization. He formed an alliance between his department and the War Trade Board and Shipping Board to control exports and provide a further check on the possibility of panic at home. He centralized and coordinated the food purchases of the Allies, the neutral countries, the American Army, Navy, and Red Cross, in order that the food might be pro portioned in relation to the supply and the need for it. His Division of Coordination of Purchase considered and approved every shipment /of food stuffs from America. But this work, important as it was to the Allies and to every American, and filled with anxieties and crises, was not so exhausting as the C. R. B. had been. He was at work ten and twelve and fourteen hours a day, but on Sundays he was able to relax and to store up in hours of delightful busy 346 THE MAKING OF idleness the energy he needed. Every Sunday morning he and Lou Henry and the boys piled lunch-baskets and rugs into an automobile and went out into the country. Clerks and secretaries and heads of departments from the Food Admin istration went with them, and somewhere in Vir ginia or Maryland, at an inviting shady place beside a stream, they parked their cars, spread their rugs, and played. The children waded, the girls picked flowers. Herbert Hoover cast an engineer s eyes upon the scene and, choosing an interesting spot, rolled up his sleeves and built dams, canals, and miniature power-plants where tiny streams of water turned wheels of twigs. His hands were covered with mud, and the sun was warm on his back. The boys hung about him, enthralled. He explained engineering problems of the past and future, in the Sierras, Egypt, Russia. They knelt together in the mud and tried to make water run up hill. Appetites bit sharply at them before the camp fire was going nicely and they sniffed the perfume of frying chicken mingled with the scent of the summer woods. Hoover ate like a boy, sitting cross-legged, a brown-bread sandwich in one hand, a chicken bone in the other. His mind was wiped clean of all its cares. "Send you to Europe? Not while you can fry chicken like this!" And, lying on the rug, he lighted the mild cigar that was his one dissipation HERBERT HOOVER 347 and smoked it with slow enjoyment, watching the sunshine through the leaves, until he fell asleep and Mrs. Hoover, lifting a warning hand above his head, sent the children to play farther down the creek. There was in those Sunday holidays an epitome of the man Herbert Hoover. As a great name, as a great chief of organization, he moved through two hemispheres, changing the currents of history and the lives of millions. His name itself had become a verb incorporated in the English lan guage. Behind the shelter of his fame he re mained essentially the human being created by the forces that had created America, simple, practical, active, finding his rest from work in other work, and at home with the forests and streams that had been the environment of his pioneer ancestors as he was at home in their ideals and their ideology. This was the man who, when the war ended in the tears and wreckage of Europe, went back across the Atlantic with the strength of America behind him, to enter a new epoch in the world s history. The old civilization, broken and mangled by the war, was staggering under a load it could not carry. In the ruins of autocratic organizations the white peoples of the earth, desperate, starving, faced the enigmatic future. The world they had 348 THE MAKING OF known had been shattered beneath their feet ; they struggled among the fragments, clinging to them, throwing them away, trying to find foothold, try ing to build again some stability for their children. Eussia, the first nation to go to pieces, dreamed amid blood and terror of a new earth, of an indus trial civilization unlike any that had been known. Beyond the smoke of battles and of darker rumors a handful of men in Moscow were trying to apply to the complexities of huge organizations the prin ciple of communism in which human society began. What they were doing no one knew; the story of what they hoped to do came down from the north on every wind. Germany was still in the grip of the British blockade. Her people, exhausted by the war, overwhelmed by the incredible fact that the Ger-. man Army was defeated, and starved behind the inexorable barrier of English ships, swayed like crowds in a panic. They had fought for their emperor to the limit of their strength, and they were hungry. They had yielded to the victorious enemy, and they were hungry. They had over turned the German throne, and still they were hungry. German machine-guns in the streets of Berlin watched those hungry people. What Herbert Hoover had expected in the old C. E. B. days had occurred. He knew the food resources of Germany ; he had estimated that they HERBERT HOOVER 349 would not last beyond April, 1919. He knew that the hunger of the people would become starvation then. When he landed in Europe as a member of the peace mission he knew that unless the Eng lish blockade was lifted before April the German people would see on the winds blowing down from Russia their only sparks of hope. Machine-guns would not hold them then, nor save the rest of Europe. Germany was asking for food, begging for food. She had gold to pay for it. But the gold was wanted for indemnities and reparation funds. There were meetings in London, conferences in Paris; intrigues and counter-intrigues between governments, between factions in governments; arguments, counter-arguments, floods of publicity, filed reports. Still the English blockade held. The masses in Germany were moving. Barri cades and blood and powder smoke in the streets of Berlin. Noske holding the people quiet with bayonets, and their hunger growing. In January Herbert Hoover put the situation squarely before the Council of Four. He had the facts on Germany s food-supply, on the strength of the Spartacist movement in Germany, on the unrest through all Europe. He got the order lifting the English blockade. Then he attacked the multiplying obstacles in the way of getting the food through. To bring English and Germans 350 THE MAKING OF together, to arrange financial agreements and transfers, to reconcile hatreds and opposing inter ests, was a matter of weeks prolonged into months. Within Germany Noske held control from day to day; hunger had become famine. The situation could not last beyond April. In March the last negotiation was completed at Brussels. Herbert Hoover was there to put it through; he was free now to ship the food from America. But he had not waited for that; the food was already on the seas, bound for Hamburg. Four days after the Brussels meeting the first shipment of wheat and fats was in Germany. It was his first victory against the forces pulling all Europe toward the solution offered by Russia. Chief of the American Relief Administration and member of the Supreme Economic Council, he held a power greater than emperors had dreamed of; and he used it quietly, steadily, effectively, to put out the smoldering brands of revolution wherever a spark showed. He saw the task of re organization before the world, and he saw the solution of its problems in an individualistic de mocracy founded on the right of each man to use his initiative in the acquiring of property and the shaping of his own life. He saw in commun ism not only the immediate danger of violent up heavals, of death and destruction and a further breaking down of international economic organiza- HERBERT HOOVER 351 tion, but beyond them a false step in human prog ress. Society rested upon the individual, not upon the community. The right function of gov ernment was not economic; government should exercise upon the individual the smallest possible control consistent with its duty of insuring each individual his right to live, to acquire possessions, to enjoy political liberty and to pursue happiness. He saw the failures and weaknesses and crimes of governments, but he believed that political prob lems were best solved by democratic republics and economic injustices corrected by a decentraliza tion of organization. Therefore communism had in him a most thor ough and efficient enemy. He fought it with a weapon that in those months of doubt and anguish was the strongest force in Europe, food. The United States has put into his hands as chief of the American Relief Administration one hundred million dollars. It was one cupful of water with which to put down the fires of revolu tion leaping everywhere among the ruins of Eu rope. Russia was a blaze on the horizon ; Germany still smoldered; Austria-Hungary, the once solid barrier between Europe and Asia, had been broken into kindling heaps of fuel; Italy flickered with little flames; France was smoking; England was beating out the sparks in Clyde and Belfast. Once out of control, the roaring conflagration 352 THE MAKING OF would have burned away the wreckage of the world s old civilization. It must be saved. The only way to save it was to rebuild from the fragments a solid economic structure that would resist the flames. While, around the Council of Four in Paris, all the gov ernments argued questions of mandates, of Shan tung, Fiume, the Saar basin, the protectorate over Asia Minor, the indemnities from Germany, the reparation funds, Herbert Hoover was quietly, steadily at work laying the foundations of a new economic Europe, from the German borders to the Black Sea and the Caspian. He was rebuilding it in spite of broken-down transportation, indus tries destroyed, the changing political boundaries of states, the innumerable small wars ravaging Central Europe. With railroads out of commis sion, factories silent, armies burning and pillaging, and new barriers of hatred and greed rising every where, his men were reconstructing the old com mercial unity of Central Europe. Austrian ma chinery for Galacian oil and Croatian pork; Ru manian oil for Hungarian wheat; grain in Jugo slavia for steel in Vienna, Polish potatoes for Czech sugar, Czech coal for Budapest machines, they bargained and traded and got the goods through despite hindering diplomacy, red-tape, looting soldiers, and political boundaries never twice the same. They were feeding the people HERBERT HOOVER 353 and saving the governments. They got the goods through, an American on every train. Meantime Hungary went communist. Bela Kun and the Soviets were on the old throne of the Hapsburgs, and in hungry Vienna the life of the Austrian Government was a matter of days. Aus trian generals saw with horror that when the crisis came they would not be able to control their own troops. There was a communist revolt in Munich. If the whole of Austria-Hungary went, Czecho-Slovakia would follow, and Germany, Italy, even France might go. It was Herbert Hoover in Paris and his man Captain Gregory on the ground who made the counter-revolution in Budapest, made it with their tremendous power of food-control and a skilful handling of the political situation. Bela Kun and the Soviets fell; Vienna was held in a firm grip with American relief and American soldiers ; Czecho-Slovakia stood firm, and Europe was kept from communism. Herbert Hoover was not able to keep the Rumanian armies from helpless Hungary. The swing of the pendulum, carrying past the republic at which he had aimed, swung Archduke Joseph upon the throne of his Hapsburg ancestors. It was Herbert Hoover who flung him off it again; Herbert Hoover white-faced with fury in the Council of Four and coldly determined at the end 354 THE MAKING OF of the telegraph wire that reached to Captain Gregory in Budapest. Americans would not per mit communism; they would not tolerate for a moment the reactionary kingdom of the hated Hapsburg. The Archduke Joseph followed Bela Kun, and the cheerful voice of America was in the telegram that announced his downfall: Hoover, Paris. Archie went through the hoop at eight o clock to-night. GREGORY. The American Relief Administration ended with the end of those fearful months in which the Council of Four discussed behind closed doors the map of Europe; in which governments and fac tions intrigued, plotted, counter-plotted, fought for the spoils of a wrecked world; in which the European peoples, disillusioned, despairing, bleeding under the tread of armies and starving among silent factories, quivered toward a stam pede that would have destroyed every remnant of the old regime. It was a turmoil from which, having done what it could to stay the forces of destruction, having helped to lay the foundations for a renewal of construction, the American Be lief Administration withdrew. There was only one task in Europe that it did not relinquish, the effort toward insuring that HERBERT HOOVEfe 365 the white races in Europe would live to make their own future. Their children were dying ; the com ing generations had been fed into the war fur naces. Crippled, wizen, twisted by suffering and hunger into figures that were a terror rather than a hope, they must be fed and mended and made strong enough to take up the burden of the new century. From the profits of the Relief Admin istration its chief had saved enough to give them milk and medicines, and this work he continued from his offices in New York. It was the only remaining charity that the United States Govern ment gave to the peoples of Europe. America faced her own problems of recon struction at home and enterprise abroad. It was in helping to meet those problems that Herbert Hoover would make his own future. He returned to his own country, which in spirit he had never left, and he brought back to her enriched by world experience those qualities of character and mind that two hundred years, earlier had made her a nation courage, honesty, energy, a practical grasp of concrete fact, and an unalterable belief in a democracy made by individuals for individ uals. These qualities had made him part of the world-pioneering movement of America ; they had made him one of the most powerful men in history. Upon these qualities in Americans he based his 356 HERBERT HOOVER confidence that his country would stand unshaken by the great catastrophe, building a secure future on the firm foundations of the past. HOME USE CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT MAIN LIBRARY This book is due on the last date stamped below. 1 -month loans may be renewed by calling 642-3405. 6-month loans may be recharged by bringing books to Circulation Desk. Renewals and recharges may be made 4 days prior to due date. 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