Skip to main content

Hoover’s Surprising New Friends

March 2023
1min read


Historical reputations have strange, chafneleonlike lives, changing hues with changing times. Herbert Hoover has long occupied a prominent role m the demonology of American liberalism. It would seem natural, therefore, that the historians of the New Left, who are unsparingly critical of most of the nation’s past leaders, would be even harsher in their judgment of the Great Engineer. Tel astonishingly enough, Hoover’s views have won respect from some “revisionist” historians, as the remarks below reveal. Professor William Appleman Williams, of Oregon State University, one of the earliest New Left scholars, was asked by AMERICAN HERIT AGE for a comment on the foregoing article and replied with the following estimate of Hoover—which leads to intriguing speculations on what other once-condemned American conservatives may become tomorrow’s revisionist heroes .

The inside truth is that H. C. Hoover is also H. C. Coney. Both were men caught up in doing what they had to do, and both had a handle on part of the truth. Coney was right. Children and women and men need to be helped when the system ( any system) fails to reward their commitment and their labor. Indeed, they must be helped: he was beautiful in the way he cut through to his truth and did what he had to do.

But Hoover was also right. He recognized a crucial point before it was demonstrated. That was his beauty, though we have never fully understood it—or honored him. Hoover told us that if we (the neighbors of the stricken) cannot be roused to provide such help, and if the way the government helps them in lieu of our direct assistance is not handled very carefully, then make no mistake and play no games: there will be hell to pay for the help they get.

Hoover perceived the outlines of that inferno. He feared there would be bureaucratic statism that would devalue the human beings it claimed to save; that there would be imperialism in the name of welfare; and that there would be violence in the name of peace. We now know those were legitimate fears.

That does not change the need for direct relief. But it does help us understand more fully why H. C. Coney could tighten the screws on H. C. Hoover. And it does give us more to turn over in our minds as we reflect on the episode.

The point is to get both truths together. Meaning that unless you and I decide that she and he are at least as important as us, then we all are going down the memory hole together. The time is long past for passing the buck to the government.

William Appleman Williams

We hope you enjoy our work.

Please support this 72-year tradition of trusted historical writing and the volunteers that sustain it with a donation to American Heritage.

Donate

Stories published from "February 1972"

Authored by: Robert C. Alberts

“57 VARIETIES” WAS ONLY A SALES SLOGAN, BUT H. J. HEINZ UNDERSTOOD FROM THE START THAT THERE WAS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR HONEST PRODUCTS AND WELL-TREATED WORKERS

Authored by: The Editors

Pictorial mementos of Father Heinz’s brand of paternalism

Authored by: Bruce Catton

A FAMOUS HISTORIAN RECALLS THE COUNTRY WHERE HE GREW UP

Authored by: David L. Lewis

Henry Ford bought a $75,000 Stradivarius, learned to play “Turkey in the Straw,” and tried to teach all those Model T riders how to do-si-do like Grandpa

Authored by: Janet Stevenson

When one weary woman refused to be harassed out of her seat in the bus, the whole shaky edifice of Jim Crow began to totter

Authored by: Michael Pearson

The key to control of Canada was a city whose defenders doubted they could hold out for long once the American Rebels attacked

Featured Articles

Often thought to have been a weak president, Carter was strong-willed in doing what he thought was right, regardless of expediency or the political fallout.

Rarely has the full story been told how a famed botanist, a pioneering female journalist, and First Lady Helen Taft battled reluctant bureaucrats to bring Japanese cherry trees to Washington. 

Why have thousands of U.S. banks failed over the years? The answers are in our history and politics.

In his Second Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln embodied leading in a time of polarization, political disagreement, and differing understandings of reality.

Native American peoples and the lands they possessed loomed large for Washington, from his first trips westward as a surveyor to his years as President.

A hundred years ago, America was rocked by riots, repression, and racial violence.

During Pres. Washington’s first term, an epidemic killed one tenth of all the inhabitants of Philadelphia, then the capital of the young United States.

Now a popular state park, the unassuming geological feature along the Illinois River has served as the site of centuries of human habitation and discovery.  

The recent discovery of the hull of the battleship Nevada recalls her dramatic action at Pearl Harbor and ultimate revenge on D-Day as the first ship to fire on the Nazis.

Our research reveals that 19 artworks in the U.S. Capitol honor men who were Confederate officers or officials. What many of them said, and did, is truly despicable.

Here is probably the most wide-ranging look at Presidential misbehavior ever published in a magazine.

When Germany unleashed its blitzkreig in 1939, the U.S. Army was only the 17th largest in the world. FDR and Marshall had to build a fighting force able to take on the Nazis, against the wishes of many in Congress.