Before he was president, Herbert Hoover was a
mining engineer. A numbers man. A logistics wizard who’d made a fortune digging
minerals out of the ground on three continents. Then, in 1914, war exploded
across Europe.
Thousands of Americans were stranded with no cash
and no way home.
Hoover organized emergency loans. Chartered ships.
Set up offices. Within weeks, he’d helped get tens of thousands of Americans
out of Europe.
He became chairman of the Commission for Relief in
Belgium after it had been overrun by Germany. Millions of civilians faced
starvation. Britain’s navy blockaded food shipments. Germany occupied the land.
Hoover negotiated with both sides to move grain across oceans and through
battle lines.
Under his direction, ships crossed the Atlantic
loaded with wheat and flour. Warehouses rose. Distribution networks spread
across occupied territories. The commission fed millions of people every day.
When America entered the war in 1917, Woodrow
Wilson made Hoover the U.S. Food Administrator, a post he held from 1917 to
1919.
Hoover didn’t want heavy-handed rationing laws. He
believed in voluntary cooperation. So he made food patriotic.
