Woodrow Wilson was not Herbert Hoover’s type. Once, amid a search for a new Stanford president, Hoover had moaned about the candidacy of a classicist known to him as that “loud-mouthed Princetown [sic] professor.” There were three strikes built into that short phrase. Hoover had never shaken his Quaker mistrust of loquacity. He was skeptical of the administrative capacities of career academics. And he loathed Princeton as a bastion of Eastern privilege and everything detestable in American college life. Wilson, orotund and patrician, a career professor and former president of Princeton, failed on all counts.1
Yet Hoover admired Wilson’s intelligence and accomplishments, and was flattered by his attentions. The president’s initial letter congratulating him on aiding Americans stranded in Europe had given Hoover a foot in the White House door, and he’d kept it there ever since, asking Wilson for occasional assistance with the Belgian relief and commenting, with or without invitation, on the conduct of U.S. foreign policy. Like most Americans, Hoover supported the president’s early efforts to keep the nation out of war. He agreed that the proper international role of Americans was to avoid European entanglements, vindicate the rights of neutral nations, and do what they might to mitigate the barbarism of the belligerents.
Hoover and Wilson would form a long and productive relationship, and they would always be a curious pair. In some ways they were alike: both erudite and ambitious sons of ministers, hungry for power, tireless in its pursuit, jealous of their prestige, and difficult to know. In other ways they were not: East Coast versus West Coast, mining tunnels versus ivory towers, Wilson’s long, lordly face against Hoover’s flat block. All of this like and unlike produced a strange sort of harmony between them. Hoover was a hardened man of action who craved intellectual respectability. Wilson was a respected intellectual who admired “men on the make” and surprised opponents with his ruthlessness. Wilson wrote an important book about governance before taking up its practice; Hoover wrote an important book about mining after fifteen years in the field. Wilson was renowned for battling privilege and improving the quality of education at one of the country’s oldest universities; Hoover had fought to promote academic excellence and to prevent privilege from rooting at a new institution.2
Generally they got along, but the one important limit to their compatibility was Hoover’s reluctance to scale the higher reaches of Wilson’s idealism. Hoover had nothing against high-mindedness, as any one of his sermons on the engineer as agent of social progress might demonstrate. He had ideals, and he admired ideals. Ideals, however, only took one so far. Their attraction intensified for Hoover in proportion to their attainability. Achievement was his highest good.
He understood this about himself. He laid out his philosophy of life in a brief, unpublished autobiographical fragment in 1916. “There is little importance to men’s lives except the accomplishment they leave to posterity,” he said. “When all is said and done, record of accomplishment is all that counts.” This was not to say that the ends justified the means for Hoover: it mattered to him how things were done, and he would demonstrate more integrity in public life than he had in business. His point was that he wanted something to show for his efforts, something demonstrable and measurable. He held “the organization or administration of tangible institutions or constructed works” in highest regard. These were hard outcomes. Moral influence and thought leadership, he believed, were soft outcomes, always of “indeterminate” effect.3
Wilson, although occasionally pragmatic in pursuit of personal and political agendas, was a true idealist, genuinely believing that he could achieve “the destruction of every arbitrary power everywhere” and establish the “reality of equal rights between nations great and small.” Like many idealists, Wilson lacked the executive temperament. He admitted to Lincoln Steffens that he preferred talking, listening, and thinking to making decisions, and that he often struggled to shut down his mind in order to act. These tendencies struck Hoover as problematic, even dangerous. He thought Wilson was lost in the clouds at critical moments on America’s path to war.4
One of those moments had come on May 7, 1915, when Germany sank the unarmed ocean liner Lusitania off the coast of Ireland. The dead numbered 1,198, including 128 Americans. An outraged Hoover wanted a forthright response from the White House. He bombarded Ambassador Page and the president with what he admitted were “mighty long and possibly pretty crude” instructions on how to rally the neutral nations to answer the barbaric German “violations against life.” Instead came Wilson’s troubling address at Convention Hall in Philadelphia: “There is such a thing as a man too proud to fight. There is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to convince others by force that it is right.” The speech was savaged in the London press as an indulgence of cold-blooded murder.5
Hoover wrote the president that Americans in England were “filled with humiliation” at the interpretation of his remarks. While he did not believe the United States should go to war over the Lusitania, he begged that Wilson articulate a policy “which will not necessarily lead to war but which in its vigor might bring to an end at least some phases of these violations of international law and humanity.” Wilson responded dismissively, thanking Hoover for his patriotism.6
It would require several months and several more attacks on unarmed ships before Wilson took a harder line with Germany. In the meantime, Berlin, anxious to keep the United States out of the conflict, halted U-boat attacks on unarmed passenger vessels. The president’s patient approach seemed to have brought the desired result. While their differences remained, Hoover congratulated Wilson on his management of the crisis, showed him support and respect, and played the role of courtier with aplomb. He never betrayed impatience with Wilson in public or in person, and he privately flattered the president on his oratory and ideals. The task was no doubt eased by Hoover’s conviction that Wilson was a great man. It also helped, in moments when his faith was tested, that Hoover needed Wilson. The more likely it became that the United States would go to war, the more Hoover wanted a role in the administration.
Hoover’s many accomplishments as a miner, engineer, financier, author, and humanitarian had done nothing to slake his ambition. Nor had married life, fatherhood, or middle age. He continued to fret about his place in the world. His promise to his grandmother on leaving for college—“Thee will have cause to be proud of me someday”—still rang in his own ears.7
Like many a careerist, he kept in the back of his mind a well-thumbed book of prospects ranked by desirability and probability. Early in his CRB tenure, the presidency of Stanford had caught his eye. As he gloried in the warm glow of international recognition conferred by the Belgian relief, he reset his sites, imagining himself as material for high public office. His friends began picturing him in the White House. Harper’s Weekly mentioned him as a potential vice-presidential nominee in 1916. Although Hoover dismissed the speculation, he had probably already weighed the presidency as a long-term goal. Again, audacity came easily to him.8
He began his campaign for a role in the U.S. war effort at an unseemly moment. In the fading weeks of 1916, Wilson was still determined to forge a peace. He had just won reelection on the slogan “He Kept Us Out of War.” Hoover wished the president well but felt the odds on eventual U.S. mobilization were strong enough to warrant some preparedness on his own part. He signaled to associates to lobby on his behalf in Washington. Letters were dispatched to key figures in the administration noting Hoover’s availability in the event that matters escalated. Articles began to appear in the press celebrating Hoover and the CRB’s achievements, implicitly advertising his services.9
At the same time, the extended Hoover clan packed for home. Theodore and his wife returned to California at the end of 1916 after ten years in London. Lou and the children, who had returned to England as their father’s work dragged on, followed several weeks later. It seemed the sensible thing to do with Zeppelins bombing London and, perhaps more alarming, the boys developing accents and behaving like proper English gentlemen. Bert, too, began spending more time stateside. He spent January and February of 1917 in Washington and New York. Officially, he was on a fund-raising tour for the CRB; unofficially, he was trying to insinuate himself further into national affairs and Wilson’s circle. He used a well-publicized address to the New York Chamber of Commerce on February 1 to make his first serious effort to exert leadership in American political life.
Hoover’s speech confronted one of the uncomfortable truths about the United States and the Great War: American business was getting rich off of Europe’s woes. Firms were selling food and war materials to the combatants, loaning them money, and replacing the belligerents in foreign markets. The U.S. economy was booming and Europeans were bitter. America’s “profits from misfortune” would only be justified, Hoover said, if the nation assumed “its burden towards the helpless in Europe.” He closed with a fund-raising pitch for the CRB, calling it “the greatest work which America has ever undertaken in the name of humanity.” The argument for American generosity toward Europe for reasons of humanitarianism and for the protection of American economic interests abroad was one Hoover would make repeatedly in the years ahead.10
He did not have to wait long for his chance to serve. The very day he spoke to the Chamber of Commerce, newspapers blared that Germany had answered Wilson’s latest peace proposals with a declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare, promising to sink any vessel, belligerent or neutral, armed or not, in British waters and the Mediterranean. Berlin’s wager was that its subs could starve England into submission before the United States could mobilize. So far as the press was concerned, the fight was on. Wilson, said to be “staggered” and “amazed” at Berlin’s treachery in resuming submarine attacks, handed the German ambassador his passports on February 3 and spent the next eight weeks in what the press called “a twilight zone” between peace and war, hoping for some last-ditch opportunity to avoid the inevitable while watching helplessly as U-boats picked off U.S. and Allied merchant ships with ease and regularity.*, 11
It was during this period that Colonel House asked Hoover to reflect on his observations of European mobilization and prepare a memorandum for the White House on the economic and logistical challenges facing a U.S. war effort. Hoover turned it around in less than a day. The memorandum was cool to the notion of raising a large American expeditionary force for deployment in Europe. Hoover recommended instead that the United States answer the Allies’ real needs by sending them food, money, and ships. One of his more startling proposals was that the British blockade of Germany, which he had previously decried as inhumane and militarily counterproductive, be strengthened for reasons of military necessity. Hoover did not explain his change of heart beyond the claim of necessity. He told House that his revulsion at the policy remained intact. Hoover’s boldest proposal was that a man of cabinet rank be appointed to run the U.S. war in Europe on President Wilson’s behalf, operating for efficiency’s sake outside of the usual ambassadorial and bureaucratic channels. He made it clear that he saw himself in this exalted role.12
House forwarded the memo to the president. “I think you will agree with most of his suggestions,” he wrote, adding that if Wilson wanted a European war chief, Hoover was the best man available. Wilson forwarded the memo to Secretary of War Newton Baker, describing it as worthy of consideration. Hoover was summoned to the White House four days later for a private conference with Wilson. They discussed the needs of the Allies. Hoover ventured that food would be second only to military action as a factor in the outcome of the Great War. Wilson asked Hoover to return to Europe and study the economic organization and food policies on both sides of the lines. This conversation, together with a further talk with Secretary Lane, left Hoover convinced that the United States was going to fight and that he would be invited to oversee the nation’s food supplies when the moment came.13
With passenger service suspended because of the U-boat campaign, Hoover returned to Europe on the Antonio Lopez, an ancient, reeking Spanish cargo steamer with a full sailing rig and livestock pens on its forward deck. By the time the vessel docked in Cadiz on March 25, the world had convulsed again. Czar Nicholas II, Emperor and Autocrat of all the Russias, had abdicated after losing the support of his army. In Washington, Woodrow Wilson had been informed of the infamous Zimmerman Telegram—Germany’s attempt to lure Mexico to its side with the promise of American territory. Hoover had just made his way from Cadiz through Paris to London when Wilson appeared before a special session of Congress to ask for a declaration of war.
It was an extraordinary address. Wilson, in his rich baritone, opened with a clear denunciation of Germany’s unrestricted submarine warfare and an assertion of America’s right to neutrality, and promptly ran away with himself. By the end of his 3,400 words, he had proclaimed that his people were entering “the most terrible and disastrous of all wars” with the monumental objective of liberating the world for all time from militarism and autocracy. The United States would fight “for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.”14
While Congress voted overwhelmingly to give the president his war, some notable voices bridled at his grandiose aims. “I want especially to say that I am not voting for war in the name of democracy,” said Ohio senator Warren Harding. “It is my deliberate judgment that it is none of our business what type of government any nation on this earth may choose to have. I am voting for war tonight for the maintenance of just American rights.”15
As the Wilson and Harding statements suggest, America was not clear on its purpose in embarking for Europe. The president’s holy war for democracy was an improvisation. Only a few weeks earlier, one of his allies would have been Nicholas II. A fight to end autocracy in partnership with the Czar would have been problematic for a leader of Wilson’s stamp. The establishment of a republic in Russia had given him an opening to proclaim his mission in ideological terms.
Hoover articulated his own position on war aims in a congratulatory telegram he sent Wilson after his address: “[Your] message enunciates our conviction, born of our intimate experience and contact, that there is no hope for democracy or liberalism and consequently for real peace or the safety of our country unless the system which has brought the world into this unfathomable misery can be stamped out once and for all.” A lot of care went into the note. Hoover tethered his thoughts to “experience,” as well as to specifics: the democracy of “our country,” and the German “system” he held responsible for the war. He was doing his best to convince the president that he was on board with his war message without endorsing the full scope of his crusade. He had also dropped his resistance to an American expeditionary force. Within days of Congress’s war declaration, Hoover learned from Ambassador Page that he was wanted at home with respect to U.S. food supplies.16
The opportunity was smaller than expected. The Council of National Defense, a temporary body established by Wilson to advise on war policy, was asking Hoover to chair its committee on food supply and prices. The position had no staff, budget, authority, or defined responsibilities. Hoover took it with the intention of leveraging it into something more. He hired his friend Ben Allen as his press agent and began filling American newspapers and magazines with stories on the importance of food to the war effort. After less than a week in London, he prepared to recross the Atlantic.17
On April 21, 1917, a party of a dozen CRB men headed by Hoover fought its way through the noisy jumble of bicycles, horses, omnibuses, and automobiles on London’s Drummond Street. They hustled under the magnificent Doric arch that served as the gateway to Euston Station, climbed down the wide staircases into the Great Hall, and there amid the din and tobacco smoke they encountered still more traffic, this of the human variety: porters, hawkers, civilian travelers, soldiers shipping out, soldiers on leave, soldiers wearing the white lapels of the invalid. Finding their platform, Hoover shook hands with the CRB men who were staying behind. Years later he would say he was touched by their little send-off. At the time, he simply stepped onto his train, took a seat at a window, and began dictating a letter to his secretary. His devotees on the platform waved as the wheels turned. Hoover paid them no notice.
Not only did Hoover leave the station without a wave, the whole Hoover family had forsaken England without looking back. London had been the family’s seat for the better part of two decades. It had been the backdrop to almost the whole of the Hoover marriage, and the stage on which Bert had built his career and made himself wealthy. Red House had been the hearth at which the children were raised, at which the Hoovers’ extended families and hundreds of friends had been entertained. All of it was abandoned, along with the family automobile, the piano, the pianola, most of their heavy Victorian furniture, and the domestic staff. It was the sort of thing that happened in the Great War. Tens of millions were dislocated and dispossessed. It mattered less for the Hoovers because they had a choice, and because England had always been something of a hotel for them.
The SS Philadelphia, Hoover’s ride home, was a stately old passenger liner painted camouflage gray and outfitted with antisubmarine guns fore and aft. U-boat fears kept her bottled up at Liverpool for three days awaiting clearance to sail. While pacing the decks of the near-empty ship, Hoover shared with his companions his premonition that they would be torpedoed at sea. He had recently spoken to Rear Admiral William Sims, the U.S. naval representative in England, who confided that Germany was sinking more tonnage than published figures indicated.
On April 25, the Philadelphia was finally escorted by the British navy through a maze of mines to the open sea. In its first twenty-four hours out of port, the ship’s radio received a flurry of SOS calls from stricken vessels along its route, victims of German subs. Unable to respond without endangering itself, the Philadelphia held to its course as its crew and passengers held their collective breath. They had been assigned life preservers for the voyage, an unusual precaution even in wartime. Preferring icy weather and turbulent seas to the threat of torpedoes, the captain of the Philadelphia steered a high northern arc that took eight days to complete. Hoover had plenty of time to lie in his berth and ponder the job ahead.
He knew as well as anyone that the war had created a global food crisis. Mass strikes and food riots in Petrograd had been instrumental in the fall of the Romanovs. Shortages in France and Italy were reaching the critical point: five hundred would die in a Turin food uprising before long. The English were struggling. The brutal effectiveness of the U-boats, sinking four or five British ships a day, had left the island with just six weeks’ supply of wheat. Lloyd George, now prime minister, thought his people could not last a year. He would soon resort to rationing, banning even the throwing of rice at weddings.
Germany, too, was desperate, having just suffered through what was ruefully known as the Turnip Winter. Scarcity and high prices had sparked bread riots in major cities. The Austrian foreign minister doubted the Central Powers had sustenance to fight another year. Hoover, perhaps overestimating the enemy’s strength, believed Germany could hold out indefinitely, barring a disastrous harvest.
Wholesale food prices in America had jumped 21 percent in the early months of 1917, demonstrating that not even neutrals were immune to the food panic. Wheat, eggs, oranges, sugar, and milk were expensive. Through February, while Hoover was still in the city, New York dailies reported that angry homemakers had overturned peddlers’ carts in the Bronx and Harlem. Five thousand women had marched on Madison Square crying for bread. Boycotts were organized, commissions struck, and protesters were arrested by the hundreds. It seemed an open question whether food would decide the war or start another.
While the president had not mentioned food in his war message, he had at least described a policy framework in which Hoover could operate. Wilson had promised to draw abundantly and efficiently on the material resources of the country for the war effort. Hoover understood that to mean that the first duty of the United States was to supply the Allies with food. Failure to do so, he had told the press before sailing, “may possibly result in the collapse of everything we hold dear in civilization.”18
Having declared a food emergency, Hoover faced the question of how the United States should organize to meet it. He had witnessed England’s early efforts to muddle through the war without any special food controls and its subsequent race to catch up with Germany in the wholesale militarization of its economy. The productivity of the German state was the talk of the war, and all of the combatants were now more or less following its lead. The influential New York Times reporter Oscar King Davis had lived in Berlin through the Turnip Winter and come away impressed by the possibilities of an authoritarian economy. Two days after Wilson’s war message, King published the first in a series of articles praising German advances in centralized planning and industrial organization. He quoted economists on the efficiencies to be gained by abolishing trifles and luxuries and directing the nation’s full resources to the production of essentials:
We do not need a drug store or a cigar shop and a bakery and that sort of thing in every block as we have now. That must be stopped, and we must have those men and women working at lines of industry which will produce something not only for their profit but also for the benefit of Germany as a whole.19
To Hoover and many of the American intellectuals concerned with state organization, Berlin’s scientific approach made the United States, with its own abundance of cigar shops and bakeries, seem woefully inefficient. Hoover’s business experience, moreover, had left him with a taste for centralized control. He had discussed with Wilson the extraordinary powers necessary to stabilize prices and reduce speculative profits in wartime markets. The reins of command, he had said, would need to be placed in the hands of America’s best industrial brains, men of affairs, not bureaucrats who, in Hoover’s view, were barely tolerable even in peace. Wilson, his cabinet secretaries, and his agency heads would need to forgo peacetime modes of operating and move with the speed and ruthlessness of dictators.
They must not become dictators, however. Hoover’s years in Europe had also sharpened his appreciation for traditional American liberties. He knew his countrymen were accustomed to a loose system of minimal, decentralized government. He had to balance the organizational demands of total war with the democratic character of the American people. He would use public opinion to ignite “the spirit of self-denial and self-sacrifice” across the land and encourage a self-governing people to voluntarily bind themselves to the state’s objectives. If they could be persuaded to cut their consumption and waste, and to produce and export more food, prices could be held at reasonable levels without the government setting the market. The power of the state would be more a threat than a reality, used only in emergencies, or to chasten uncooperative hoarders, speculators, and profiteers.20
This, Hoover believed, was how a truly democratic society went to war: organized and unified, depending upon the goodwill and honest efforts of its citizenry rather than a coercive state. It was consistent with the administration’s approach to mobilization. In his second inaugural, Wilson had expressed his hope that the heat of battle would purge the country of faction and division, of party and private interest, and let it “stand forth in the days to come with a new dignity of national pride and spirit.”21
The SS Philadelphia cruised into foggy New York Harbor in the early morning of May 3 without having spotted a single German submarine on its voyage. It docked at Chelsea Piers, where Hoover was greeted by a large contingent of CRB men and a troop of Boy Scouts who in response to his public requests for increased agricultural production were cultivating bean fields to feed American soldiers. Lou had wanted to meet him, but unspecified concerns for the health of her boys kept her in California. “We are so terribly glad to get you back,” she wired.22
A quick scan of the papers would have told Hoover he was lucky to be alive. U-boats were now destroying Allied merchant ships, fighting ships, and fishing vessels at a rate of almost ten a day. Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels had admitted the damage wreaked by subs was far worse than his experts had thought possible.23
Hoover also learned on landing that Wilson was asking Congress that very day for absolute authority to regulate food and other essentials for the duration of the war. This vast expansion of presidential powers was embodied in the Food and Fuel Control Act, introduced with administration approval by chairman Asbury Lever of the House Committee on Agriculture. The Lever Act, as it became known, would grant the president a free hand to fix prices, seize factories, ban uneconomical practices, regulate exchanges, interfere in railways, and do whatever else he felt necessary to ensure sufficient food supplies and fair prices for producers and consumers.24
The bill’s sponsors soft-peddled this eye-popping expansion of presidential authority. “It is hoped,” said Lever, “that the mere conferring of the more extreme new powers will be sufficient without its becoming necessary to exercise them.” There was speculation that the president’s new powers would be delegated to Hoover in the capacity of United States food commissioner, or as some phrased it, the nation’s “food dictator.”25
Entertaining the press at the CRB offices in New York the afternoon of his landing, Hoover explained that the administration’s new powers were essential. The situation was “grave,” he said, “extremely grave,” and one of “extreme gravity.” His manner, reporters noticed, was as heavy as his language. He saw no quit in the enemy. Germany had the will, the industrial strength, and the material resources to sustain a long fight: “If the Hohenzollerns and the militarist Government are to be destroyed—and nothing short of the destruction of these mad dogs will give hope of permanent peace—the war must go on at least a year more, or probably two years.”26
The press gave Hoover coverage on the assumption that he was set to serve as food dictator, but he remained nothing more than a committee chair and adviser. He caught up with Colonel House at half past four that afternoon and put on a show in hopes of winning the powers he was already reputed to hold.
Hoover employed with House his favorite job-seeking tactic of pretending to be unavailable. He presented himself as a humble mining engineer, indifferent to title, accolades, or power, yearning only to escape the burdens of war relief for the comforts of his California hearth. Washington could offer him only headaches. He allowed that any man of duty would feel compelled to sacrifice himself in service to his country if called upon to do so by the president in a time of emergency. And he permitted the conversation to turn to the role of food dictator. It would be a dreadful task, he said, one that only a man of force and experience could manage. Such a man would need to be granted broad powers. Such a man would also need complete autonomy in order to give all that was in him to give and to make his enormous personal sacrifice worthwhile. Such a man could not accept any compensation for his services. This last provision emphasized his selflessness while underscoring his independence. He would not be beholden to his masters for his pay.27
House was a veteran campaigner. Born to affluence and a politically connected family, he had elected a string of Texas governors before latching on to Wilson as confidant and fixer. The title of Colonel was honorary, and he did not look of the rank: he was a pale, balding little man, a habitual hand-wringer with a gift for intimacy and a sixth sense for the ways of powerful men. House listened to Hoover with his famously friendly eyes and replied to him in confidential tones. His analytic mind, at the same time, found Hoover an easy read. His principal worry was “what authority he would be given” over food policy, House wrote in his diary. “He has a well thought out and comprehensive plan if he can only put it into execution.”28
It occurred to House that Hoover was on a collision course with Secretary of Agriculture David Houston, who quite reasonably saw himself as responsible for what Americans grew and ate. House thought Houston had better judgment—Hoover’s pessimism wore on the cheerful colonel—but that was Houston’s only edge. “Hoover knows the question of food control as no other man does, and he has the energy and driving force which Houston lacks.”29
Before going to bed, House sent a note to Wilson describing his chat with Hoover: “He has some facts that you should know. He can tell you the whole story in about forty minutes, for I timed him.” Hoover’s expertise and reputation would inspire confidence in Europe and America, the colonel continued, and unless “Houston does give him full control I am afraid he will be unwilling to undertake the job, for he is the kind of man that has to have complete control in order to do the thing well.”30
Just before midnight, Hoover rushed to Pennsylvania Station and boarded a red-eye to Washington.
The rush to mobilize had thrown the capital, a comfortable little town, home to a small and inefficient national government, into turmoil. The local population jumped by almost a hundred thousand people as volunteers, job seekers, and businessmen descended on the Mall. Traffic was suddenly jammed. Restaurants had lines down the sidewalk. Office space was at a premium and office supplies were sold out. It seemed everyone in D.C. wanted an appointment with everyone else, and through it all the administration continued to launch new boards and agencies, each claiming authority over some huge swatch of the public business. Despite the chaos and confusion, Hoover managed an impressive entrance to Washington. He wrangled a suite at the city’s best hotel, the new Willard, and found offices at the Department of the Interior courtesy of his friend Franklin Lane. While waiting to see Wilson, he lobbied cabinet secretaries and congressional connections and appeared before two congressional agricultural committees.
At 2 p.m. on the afternoon of May 9, Hoover had his appointment at the White House. The president was cool to the idea of a one-man food controller precisely because it would appear to be a dictatorship. He had already alarmed Congress with his request for sweeping presidential powers. He proposed instead to form a board or commission, his preferred approach to all questions of war management. Hoover, by his own account, protested that committees were inefficient, indecisive, and contrary to the spirit of American leadership, which had always preferred a single executive head. He argued that an individual leader would be more effective in rallying the citizenry to sacrifice and voluntary effort. While insisting on dictatorial powers, he agreed that the title of “dictator” was dangerous: he preferred “administrator.” Wilson closed the meeting without a commitment.31
Hoover walked out of the White House and told reporters he had no intention of becoming “food dictator of the American people.” The man who accepts such a position, he said, would “die on the barbed wire of the first line entrenchments.” He followed up the next day with a press release stating that he did not want any public office, and that all public service he had ever rendered had been forced upon him. He reached a pitch of sanctimony that might have made Wilson blush: “My only desire is to see the proper instrumentality set up to meet this, one of our greatest emergencies, and a man of courage, resource and experience at its head who is willing to sacrifice himself on the altar of the inarticulate masses whom he must protect.”32
Secretary Houston, a North Carolinian who, like Wilson, had entered politics through the academy, knew exactly the threat the newcomer posed to his Agriculture Department. He thought Hoover shifty: “he could not look you in the face.” He complained to Josephus Daniels that separating the management of wartime food supplies from Agriculture would be like putting all battleships in a bureau separate from the navy. Daniels advised him to brace for the inevitable:
The food commission must do a work that will not appeal to people, for they will not wish to deny themselves wheat or sugar. If you or any other member of the Cabinet should ask people to give up food to which they are accustomed, they would resent it. But if the Almoner of starving Belgium, crowned with world praise, makes the request, people will respond.33
For all the gamesmanship in Hoover’s demands for power and independence, he was prepared to walk away if they were not met. “Matters are very uncertain here as to organization,” he wrote Lou, “and unless it is put on footing that gives some promise of success I certainly do not intend become connected with it. It may be some time before situation becomes definite.”34
Lou replied: “Have written and wired my plans absolutely dependent on yours could leave at any time for short time but do not think I should leave the boys for all summer and they cannot go east till cold weather do you think it advisable build fifty thousand dollar house or five thousand or none at all.”35
Before dealing with his wife’s telegram, Hoover answered a return summons to the White House on the warm and sunny evening of Sunday, May 13. While the details of their conversation are unrecorded, the president apparently told the almoner of starving Belgium that he was getting his way. Hoover wired Lou that he felt secure enough to rent a home in Washington and that she could get on with her plans in California:
I want you to do whatever you consider in the best interest and pleasure of yourself and the children I shall remain here throughout the summer and I must have a house to live in which I am trying in odd moments to find you can build any sort of house you wish but if it is to be the ultimate family headquarters it should be substantial and roomy. The cost is secondary.36
Within a week, Wilson announced that he would create an emergency food administration under the auspices of the Lever Act, with Hoover at its helm. He claimed that the experience of the belligerents had proven the necessity of placing unexampled powers in the hands of one man. He hoped that Hoover could engage the voluntary cooperation of the American people and supply all wants without exercising the powers at his disposal. Secretary Houston surrendered, telling reporters that he and Hoover were entirely in accord on food matters, that Hoover was the best man for the job. He went so far as to claim that he had been instrumental in Hoover’s rise to prominence in Washington.37
With Wilson’s endorsement, Hoover had cleared an important hurdle in his bid to return to America in a top job. He was still not official, however. The Lever Act required congressional approval.
* The public was ahead of Wilson on the war. Theater audiences, it was reported, were cheering “The Star-Spangled Banner” after this diplomatic break. The nation was “aflame with patriotism and joy,” wrote the New York Herald. Added the Tribune: “At last, the United States of America is about to throw its might upon the side of the great democracies of the world which are fighting a military autocracy.” (New York Tribune, February 1, 1917; New York Herald, February 4, 1917.)