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In the election of 1920 the American
public elected Warren G. Harding to the
Presidency. His campaign emphasized a return to "normalcy",
and that's what people wanted. Soon after the election, Mr.
Harding told Mr. Hoover that they would like to have him in
the cabinet either as Secretary of the Interior or as
Secretary of
Commerce. Hoover chose the Commerce post because he
thought that in that position he could carry out some of the
ideas he had for making that department a vital contributor
to every aspect of the nation's economic life.
Hoover reorganized the Commerce Department.
His goal was to transform
the department into a service organization. His work was
guided by efficiency, standardization and the elimination of
waste. He kept in mind the delicate line between government
power and private enterprise. He worked to gain the
cooperation of people and businesses by offering guidance,
information and service that they could use. He developed
foreign markets for American products. He also worked to
eliminate industrial waste (by this he meant time-wasting
strikes, the waste of manpower and money in unemployment;
the waste of effort and money in careless planning, to name
a few). One early effort was to standardize and simplify
sizes and styles of thousands of consumer items. For
example, every combination of nuts and bolts had different
thread sizes. Manufacturers were making too many sizes and
kinds of everything. As industry began to understand the
savings involved in setting standards that would apply
throughout the industry, one after another asked for
guidance from the Commerce Department. Standard sizes were
adopted for paper, auto tires, nuts and bolts, plumbing,
window frames, and many more items.
Hoover developed major projects for
navigation, irrigation of dry lands, electrical power, and
flood control. Other sections of the Department of Commerce
that Hoover worked with included: the Bureau of Standards
which researched safety standards in such items as elevator
and auto brakes; the census which provided statistics that
could be useful to businesses; the Bureau of Foreign and
Domestic Commerce which worked to develop markets at home
and abroad; the Bureau of Lighthouses; and the Bureau of
Fisheries. Regulation
of the radio and the airways came under Commerce
jurisdiction. As the new air industry developed, Hoover
held a conference on aviation to promote codes and
regulations. He was instrumental in 
the
development of the Air Commerce Act. Under the direction of
Herbert Hoover the Commerce department expanded its capacity
to provide businesses with information and advice.
One interesting facet of Hoover's commerce
days was the organization of Better
Homes in America. This division gave the public new
ideas and improvements for their homes. Hoover was always
ready to serve children. He became president of the American
Child Health Organization, and he raised funds to promote
health education in schools and communities. He formulated
The Child's Bill of Rights, worked unceasingly for good
health and hygiene practices for children, and supported
immunization and vaccination against small pox and
diphtheria. Milk and hot lunches were a priority in areas
where undernourished children were located. In 1923
President Harding died and Calvin Coolidge became
president. Hoover continued in his position as Secretary of
Commerce. During his tenure in Commerce, both of his sons
left to attend Stanford University.
In the spring of 1927 one of the greatest
floods in history broke the banks and levees of the
Mississippi River. Water was everywhere from Cairo, Illinois
to the Gulf of Mexico. Over a million people were driven
from their homes, two million acres of crops, thousands of
cattle and millions of dollars in buildings and property
were destroyed. The governors of the six states along the
Mississippi asked for
Herbert Hoover in this emergency. President Coolidge sent
him to mobilize state and local authorities, militia, army
engineers, Coast Guard, weather bureaus, and the Red Cross.
His work in the flood brought Herbert Hoover to the front
page of papers everywhere. He also discovered while working
on the flood problems that he might improve the general
health of the people in the southern states. He
set up health units, with a grant from the Rockefeller
Foundation, to work in the flooded regions for a year. These
workers had stamped out malaria, pellagra and typhoid from
many countries. Herbert Hoover also headed a drive which
collected $15 million dollars for the Red Cross.
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Last updated: June 20, 2001