1874-1964
Secretary of Commerce, 1921-1929
President of the United States, 1929-1933

From Rags to Riches.

Herbert Hoover was one of the most admired public figures in the United States before his reputation was tarnished by the onset of the Great Depression during his presidency. Hoover's life seemed like that of a Horatio Alger hero. Son of an Iowa farmer and orphaned at age ten, Herbert Clark Hoover earned a degree from Stanford University, became a mining engineer, and was a self-made millionaire before he reached forty. During World War I he directed the Belgian Relief Commission and headed the U.S. Food Administration, an arm of Woodrow Wilson's war mobilization effort. Hoover spent most of the 1920s as secretary of commerce under Presidents Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge.

Secretary of Commerce.

Known to insiders as "Secretary of Commerce and Under Secretary of Everything Else," Hoover...