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. 
 
 ALL BOOKS ARE SUBJEOTOO RECALL 7 DAYS 
 AFTER DATE^EtKED OUT. 
 
 #1976 ~~ 
 
 J> i 
 
 I 
 REC I 
 
 JAN 16 
 
 REC.C1RSEP1 fc 80 
 
 71981 
 
 
 LD21 A-40m-8, 75 
 (S7737L) 
 
 General Library 
 University of California 
 Berkeley 
 
 I r-TTJ : ^ J 
 
 JAN 1 5 1 
 
 
-i, 62(C7899 
 
 ,,; f v 
 
 
 50585; 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY