Maybe Herbert was

an intellectual giant

after all

 

Few readers, I think, would dispute Andrew Hook's conclusions
(2 November) on the rather unpleasant tone of John Cameron's comments on the tented protestors. However, I wonder if he has been a bit hasty in disputing the intellectual status of Herbert Hoover. Certainly, as president, Hoover pursued ultimately unsuccessful policies eerily similar to those of George Osborne and would have felt quite at home on the Tory frontbench today (one can see why John Cameron so admires him); however there was another side to him that should not be ignored.
     My own interest in Hoover arose from a professional interest, before I even knew of his political role. One of the great renaissance scientific works is 'De Re Metallica' by Georgius Agricola. It is the first comprehensive account of the extraction, refining and uses of minerals, published in 1556, and remained the key work in this important field for 200 years. It is still widely quoted by those of us with a scientific or technological interest in mining and mining diseases and their prevention. Of course it was written in Latin, and thus stopped being accessible to most scientists from the end of the 19th century, although a rather inaccurate German translation was made.
     Herbert Hoover was a Quaker and was orphaned at the age of eight, but became one of the first students at the new Stanford University, reading geology. He became a mining engineer and a successful if fairly ruthless businessman, working in Australia and China and being responsible for a number of significant innovations in his field.
     He and his wife, a fellow graduate of Stanford, learnt Mandarin Chinese, but they were also fluent in German and Latin. They collaborated (working at weekends and in the evenings in the course of a busy life together) on an English translation of 'De Re Metallica', a work of considerable scholarship which was published in 1912. An illustration of the intellectual calibre of the two translators can be gained from reading their introductory notes on Agricola's life and his place in the history of science and technology. The book was published privately but reprinted in facsimile by Dover Publications of New York in 1950 and is still available to scholars.
     At the start of the first world war in 1914, Hoover organised food relief for Europe on a voluntary basis and was responsible for preventing starvation in several countries. This marked the start of his involvement in politics that led to his policies and contributions being discredited when his election as president was followed within a year by the Great Depression. However, he lived long enough, dying in 1964 at the age of 90, for his achievements and failures to have been put into perspective.
     Whether he was an intellectual giant I leave to others to decide, but the width and depth of his talents is impressive, in some ways matching those of his subject Agricola who really was a renaissance man; there was certainly more to Hoover than his political views. And there is a Scottish link. Hoover and his wife were members of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society.

Anthony Seaton

I rattled some cages when I had the temerity not only to to cast a jaundiced eye on the 'rabble without a cause' but to infer a leading engineer might be an intellectual. In the pre-industrial age the title was only conferred on men of letters but I had assumed in the 21st century it could be extended to include men of science and technology.
     Orphaned as a child, Herbert Hoover never attended high school but studied at night school before entering Stanford University and graduating with a degree in geology. He first worked in China as a mining engineer and became fluent in Mandarin which he spoke for the rest of his life – which some might consider an intellectual achievement.
     Moving to Australia he devised a revolutionary method for recovering zinc and founded the company we know today as Rio Tinto which in turn made his fortune. From then on he became an international mining consultant and prolific author in science and economics, holding professorships at the universities of Stanford and Columbia.
     In the first world war, US President Wilson used the dynamic and incisive Hoover to provide famine relief for the allies during the war and defeated Germany in the aftermath. At the close of the war, the New York Times rightly named Hoover one of the 'Ten Most Important Living Americans' and Wilson hoped he would be his successor. Instead, he ran the commerce department under Harding and Coolidge, revolutionised business-government relations and promoted the radio, air travel and international trade. He was beyond any question the best secretary of commerce in US history; home ownership, long-term mortgages and product standardisation are part of his legacy.
     Wall Street crashed soon after his election as president and though he combated the Great Depression more ably than is ever allowed, it could not be turned round in three years. Nonetheless his Emergency Relief and Construction Act gave funds for public works and government secured loans to kick-start industry in what was essentially a 'New Deal'.
     He remained active and after the second world war, President Truman asked him to tour Europe and Germany to ascertain the economic situation and what might best be done. His brilliant report highlighting the need for massive US aid was taken up by secretary of state George Marshall and his officials and formed the basis of the Marshall Plan. Like his contemporary Neville Chamberlain, he was a potentially outstanding national leader who was unlucky in his timing and faced intractable problems.
     Was he an intellectual? Well, perhaps not by the exacting standards of Scottish literati but as a scientist and economist myself, I think he might just about pass the test.

John Cameron