Mr. Hoover came from Holland stock, being a direct descendant of Andrew Hoover, who emigrated from Holland in 1740. His father, who was a blacksmith by trade, died when Herbert was but four years of age and his mother died three years later. The orphaned boy was reared on a farm by Quaker relatives, his mother having been a preacher of that denomination. When he was but thirteen years of age it became necessary for him to earn his own living and he secured a position as office boy in Salem, Oregon.

After securing, under difficulties, a partial education, he entered Leland Stanford University at its opening. He paid his expenses from previous savings and by doing outside work. In summertime he worked in the various government surveys and in the mines of California. Having a natural aptitude for engineering he entered, on his admission to Leland Stanford, the department of geology and mining. On receiving his degree in 1895 he went to work as a mine laborer in California. Later he entered the employment of Louis Janin, at that time the leading mining engineer of the West, at a salary of forty-five dollars per month.

In 1897 he was sent to West Australia to examine mining properties there. After a successful career there he returned to the United States in 1899. Not long after his return to California the imperial government of China offered him the position of chief engineer of its Bureau of Mines. Accepting this position he sailed for the celestial empire, where he made extended investigation of the coal and iron mines of several of the provinces of the empire.

He was in China at the time of the Boxer rebellion and took an active part in defending the foreigners. The change of government in China ended his employment and he returned again to the United States. At the instance of British, German and Belgian bondholders of a large coal mining, railway and shipping concern he returned to China in 1901 as manager of these interests. Later he became a partner in a large engineering firm having offices in various cities in Europe and America. This continued until 1907, when he established himself as an engineer, having offices in New York and San Francisco. By 1913 the concerns of which he was consulting engineer were employing more than one hundred and seventy-five thousand men.

He was in Europe as a representative of the Pan-Pacific Exposition of San Francisco when the great war broke out. It was then he became connected with the work that brought him his greatest famefeeding the starving people of Belgium. It was a work of humanity and called out all the great organizing ability of Mr. Hoover. The story of his work in that direction is a prominent part of the story of the great war. This work caused President Wilson, when the United States entered the war, to call Mr. Hoover to Washington to handle the food problem in this country, where he organized and directed the Food

Commission. Here his great organizing ability and his untiring energy had ample scope.

On entering upon the discharge of his duties as Secretary of Commerce, Mr. Hoover undertook the reorganization of the department to bring it into active service not alone to the business but to the agricultural groups. The great surplus productions of this country needed markets and the activities of the department were employed to find these markets. He brought the department to a position of being one of the most important of the agencies of the government. Through systematic organization the foreign trade was expanded and domestic commerce greatly improved.

THE DEPARTMENT OF LABOR

T

DEPARTMENT

UNITED

OF

LABOR

AMERICA

HE DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE AND LABOR had hardly got started in functioning before a demand went up from various sources for a separation and the establishment of a new department to handle all matters pertaining to labor. The industrial activities of the country were diversified, ramifying every section of the country and involving, to some extent, all classes of citizens. Labor was held to be no longer a commodity but an industrial unit by itself, and as such demanded to be handled separately from every other activity so far as government supervision, direction or control were concerned. These considerations were impressed upon Congress and in the closing session of the sixty-second Congress an act was passed creating the Department of Labor. By the terms of the act it was not to become effective until March 4, 1913. The act declares "the purpose of the Department of Labor shall be to foster, promote and develop the welfare of the wage-earners of the United States, to improve their working conditions and to advance their opportunities for profitable employment."

STATES

OF

To this new department were transferred from the Department of Commerce and Labor the bureaus, divisions and branches of the public service having to do with immigration, naturalization, the bureau of labor as then organized in the Department of Commerce and Labor and the children's bureau.

It was made the duty of the new department, among other things, to collect and report for public information complete statistics of the condition of labor and the products, and distribution of the products of the same. The Secretary was given power to act as mediator and to appoint commissioners of conciliation in labor disputes when he deemed necessary.

The matter of immigration had long been one of agitation on the part of Congress and of the varied interests of the country, and many efforts had been made to bring about a better condition of affairs between labor and the employment of labor, thus avoiding or preventing strikes, lockouts, etc. These perplexing questions are now the subject