Archive of Five Great Herbert Hoover Items

HERBERT HOOVER, Archive of five Typed Letters Signed and Typed Itineraries, 1913-1945. 6 pp., 6ʺ x 9.5ʺ to 8.5ʺ x 10.25ʺ. Expected folds, general toning; very good.

Highlights and Excerpts:

- Herbert Hoover, Typed Letter Signed, to John A. Stewart, September 3, 1913, marked "Confidential."
"I have simply lost all heart in the San Francisco position. I have on three occasions, after most careful consideration and discussion with prominent Englishmen and Officials, outline definite courses of action to the Exposition people in San Francisco. On all these occasions – the last one down to a week ago – they refused to follow my advice, and I have now come to the firm resolve that my connection shall hereafter be nil. On each of the two previous occasions I have been proved absolutely right as to my interpretation of the drift of things and the necessary remedies, and I have not the slightest doubt that I shall prove right in the more recent instance.
"San Francisco looks mighty diminutive when looked at from the West End of London, whereas it probably looks very large from the Exposition buildings in San Francisco. The whole of the difficulties arise out of the inability – possibly on both sides – to put the opposite end of this line of vision in the proper perspective."

John A. Stewart (1822-1926) was a New York City banker who replenished the nation’s gold supply during the administration of Grover Cleveland by issuing new bonds. From 1910 to 1912, he was the acting President of Princeton University.
The Panama-Pacific International Exposition was a world’s fair held in San Francisco, California, from February to December 1915. Herbert Hoover served on the Expo Authority. John A. Stewart served as chairman of the Executive Committee of the American Peace Centenary Committee and worked with the Canadian Peace Centenary Association to celebrate a century of peace between the two nations in July 1915 at the Exposition in San Francisco.

"The President’s Engagements," Two Typed Cards, November 5, 1929, December 16, 1929, with Hoover's notes and emendations in pencil.
November 5, 1929:
"12:45 p.m. Chairman Payne, Am. Nat. Red Cross.
"2:15 p.m. THE WHITE HOUSE: Mr. Eric Hendrick Louw, appt’d Min. of the Union of South Africa to present letters of credence."

John Barton Payne (1855-1935) served as U.S. Secretary of the Interior from 1920 to 1921 in Woodrow Wilson’s administration, and served as Chairman of the American Red Cross from 1921 until his death.
Erik Hendrick Louw (1890-1968) served as South Africa's first envoy to the United States. He later served as Minister of Finance (1954-1956) and Minister of Foreign Affairs (1955-1963) in South Africa.
December 16, 1929:
"10:00 a.m. Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt
"10:15 Sen. Harrison
"10:30 Rep. Lankford, Va.
"11:15 Sen Sullivan....
"12:30 p.m. Photo with delegates to conference, Am. Pharmaceutical Mfr’s Assn.
"2:15 p.m. THE WHITE HOUSE: The Japanese Amb. to present Japanese delegates to London Conf."

Edith Kermit Carow Roosevelt (1861-1948) was the second wife of President Theodore Roosevelt; they married in 1886. She served as First Lady of the United States during his presidency from 1901 to 1909. During the Great Depression, she campaigned briefly for Herbert Hoover to emphasize that his opponent, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was not her son.

- Herbert Hoover, Typed Letter Signed, to T. Henry Foster, January 5, 1940
"Some 1200 daily newspapers and thousands of citizens throughout the nation, working in State and local committees, have volunteered to aid the drive of the Finnish Relief Fund. We need and should like to have the active support of radio with its vast audiences and great influence. As a radio sponsor you are in a position to aid tremendously in this campaign."
Thomas Henry Foster (1875-1951) was the president of John Morrell & Company, a leader in the meat packing industry. Begun in England in 1827, the company expanded to the United States and Canada in the 1860s. His grandfather married into the Morrell family, and his father Thomas Dove Foster (1847-1915) was president before him.
On November 30, 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Finland, demanding that Finland cede border territories the Soviet Union deemed essential to its security, especially for the protection of Leningrad, which was only twenty miles from the Finnish border. The League of Nations ruled that the attack was illegal and expelled the Soviet Union. In the resulting three-month Winter War, Finland repelled Soviet attacks and inflicted heavy losses on the Soviet invaders, as temperatures dropped as low as -45 °F. The conflict ended with the Moscow Peace Treaty signed on March 13, 1940, in which Finland ceded 11 percent of its territory and 30 percent of its economy to the Soviet Union.
Finns appealed to former American president Herbert Hoover because of his earlier success in providing food relief to Belgium. In December 1939, Hoover organized the Finnish Relief Fund as a humanitarian aid organization to support Finnish civilians during the Winter War. The campaign was advertised in newspapers across the United States. Private donors, industrial companies, civic organizations, colleges and schools, religious organizations, and labor unions all contributed to the fund, which by March 1940 had raised $2.5 million. For years afterward, Finns used "hoover" to mean "to help" as a result of Hoover’s efforts.

- Herbert Hoover, Typed Letter Signed, to J. H. Dellinger, November 28, 1945
"It was a great pleasure to hear from you again. I was especially glad to see the material on the 1945 Conference. You have been one of the bright spots in the dark days of the Department. That, however, is looking brighter under your present secretary."

John Howard Dellinger (1886-1962) was a telecommunications engineer and scientist who worked at the National Bureau of Standards (now National Institute of Standards and Technology) in the U.S. Department of Commerce from 1907 to 1948. He received a Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1913.
Henry A. Wallace (1888-1965) served as Vice President of the United States from 1941 to 1945. After Democrats replaced him as the vice-presidential nominee in 1944, President Roosevelt offered him any position in the cabinet except Secretary of State. Wallace selected the position of Secretary of Commerce and served in that position from March 1945 to September 1946, when President Truman demanded his resignation over differing attitudes toward the Soviet Union.

Herbert Hoover (1874-1964) was born in Iowa into a Quaker family, but both of his parents died before he was ten years old. After living with relatives in Iowa and Oregon, Hoover became one of the first students to attend newly established Stanford University, from which he graduated in 1895. Hoover worked as a mining engineer in California, Australia, and China. He became an independent mining consultant in 1908 and traveled the world until the outbreak of World War I, building his reputation and fortune. When the war began, he helped organize the return of 120,000 Americans from Europe and spearheaded humanitarian relief efforts in Belgium, from his administrative base in London. After the United States entered the war, President Woodrow Wilson appointed Hoover to head the U.S. Food Administration. He lobbied for the job and agreed to accept no salary. After the war, the U.S. Food Administration became the American Relief Administration, which, at its height, fed 10.5 million people daily. From 1921 to 1928, Hoover served as the Secretary of Commerce in the administrations of President Warren G. Harding and President Calvin Coolidge. Elected President of the United States in 1928, Hoover took office less than eight months before the Wall Street Crash of 1929 plunged the nation into the Great Depression. Franklin D. Roosevelt defeated Hoover’s 1932 bid for reelection. After he left office, Hoover was a harsh critic of Roosevelt’s New Deal and U.S. entry into World War II. He particularly opposed an alliance with the Soviet Union though he worked to provide relief to countries in Nazi-occupied Europe. After the war, he became friends with President Harry S. Truman despite their ideological differences. He helped organize a school meals program in West Germany and chaired a commission to reorganize the executive departments in the U.S. government.

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

WE PROVIDE IN-HOUSE SHIPPING WORLDWIDE.