Long before he became president of the United States, Herbert
Hoover had experience helping people during large-scale crises.
He engineered protective barricades in China during the Boxer
Rebellion of 1900. In the onset of World War I, he was selected
by the American Consul General to coordinate the evacuation of
120,000 American tourists from Europe. As U.S. Food
Administrator he developed a plan that fed Allied soldiers in
Europe and avoided rationing at home, and after the Great War,
he organized food shipments to millions in central Europe and
Soviet Russia. But Ill-fated words from his 1928 campaign
speech, “We in America today are nearer to the final triumph
over poverty than ever before in the history of any land,” the
subsequent stock market crash, and what some view as bad
economic policies have branded him as one of the worst
presidents in our nation’s history. Herbert Hoover was a long-
time contributor to the Post. His article, “Some Notes on
Industrial Readjustment,” published 10 years before the