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His career as an engineer took him all over the world, including Australia (where he worked for a gold mining company), and China (where he helped American soldiers rescue other Americans who were under siege during the Boxer Rebellion). All of this made Hoover quite wealthy and he once said "If a man has not made a million dollars by the time he is forty, he is not worth much".
But Hoover wasn't a capitalist without a heart. In fact he was a driving force behind humanitarian relief efforts in war-torn Europe during and after the first world war. He administered the distribution of over two million tons of food to nine million war victims. In an early form of shuttle diplomacy, he crossed the North Sea forty times to meet with German authorities and persuade them to allow food shipments, gaining him international acclaim and admiration in the process. After the war, Hover was head of the American Relief Administration. In this role Hoover organized shipments of food for millions of starving people in Central Europe in both allied and axis nations. This included aid to the defeated German nation as well as relief to famine-stricken Bolshevik-controlled areas of Russia. He was met with opposition from such leading Republicans as Senator Henry Cabot Lodge. When asked if he was not thus helping Bolshevism, Hoover retorted, "Twenty million people are starving. Whatever their politics, they shall be fed!"
Hoover rose to national prominence as Secretary of Commerce in the 1920s under Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge. Years before P3 projects became popular, he was a proponent of partnership between government and the private sector. Viewed as an economic whiz kid, he was a popular choice to be the GOP candidate in the 1928 election, which he won easily despite the fact that he had never previously been elected to office. Hoover is the last cabinet secretary to be directly elected President of the United States, as well as one of only two Presidents (the other being William Howard Taft) to have been elected without previous electoral experience or high military rank.
Hoover was a big believer in the Efficiency Movement. He felt that the economy was riddled with inefficiency and waste, and could be improved by experts who could identify the problems and solve them. When the Wall Street Crash of 1929 struck less than eight months after he took office, Hoover tried to battle the Great Depression with government supported programs, public works projects such as the Hoover Dam, tariffs such as the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, an increase in the top income tax bracket from 25% to 63%, and increases in corporate taxes. These initiatives failed to produce economic recovery during his term, but many of these initiatives served as the groundwork for many of the policies incorporated in Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. Hoover's defeat in the 1932 election was caused primarily by failure to end the downward economic spiral. He was also blamed for an over-aggressive military response to a protest by First World War veterans known as the "Bonus March" even though the military, under the command of General Douglas MacArthur, exceeded Hoover's orders. Hoover resented Roosevelt for his defeat and it is said that he refused to speak to his successor during the ride in the open car from the White House to Roosevelt's inauguration.
After leaving office, Hoover was among the many Americans to advocate for neutrality in World War Two. He initially believed that the Allies would be able to contain Nazi Germany. When the war raged on, Hoover was a vocal supporter of providing relief to European countries that were occupied by the Germans. He was instrumental in creating the Commission for Polish Relief and Finnish Relief Fund. In 1946 President Truman selected Hoover to tour Germany to report on the food status of the occupied nation. Hoover toured Germany and produced reports that were critical of U.S. occupation policy. On Hoover’s initiative, a school meals program in the American and British occupation zones of Germany was begun on April 14, 1947. The program served 3.5 million children aged six through 18. A total of 40,000 tons of American food was provided in what was called Hooverspeisung (Hoover meals).
In 1949, the New York State Governor Thomas E. Dewey offered Hoover a seat in the U.S. Senate, to fulfill an unexpired term, but Hoover declined it. Hoover became friends with President Harry S. Truman. He joked that they were the sole members of the "trade union" of former Presidents.
Although he was an anti-Communist, Hoover opposed American involvement in the Korean War. He said "To commit the sparse ground forces of the non-communist nations into a land war against this communist land mass [in Asia] would be a war without victory, a war without a successful political terminal... that would be the graveyard of millions of American boys and the exhaustion of the United States." Hoover wrote The Ordeal of Woodrow Wilson, a bestseller, and the first time one former President had ever written a biography about another. He also threw himself into fund-raising for the Boys Clubs (now the Boys & Girls Clubs of America).
In 1960, he appeared at his final Republican National Convention. Since the 1948 convention, he had been billed as the guest of "farewell" ceremonies (the unspoken assumption being that the aging former President might not survive until the next convention). Joking to the delegates, he said, "Apparently, my last three good-byes didn't take." Although he lived to see the 1964 convention, ill health prevented him from attending
Hoover died following massive internal bleeding at the age of 90 in New York City at 11:35 am on October 20, 1964, 31 years and seven months after leaving office.