Herbert Hoover
HOOVER, Herbert Clark BA FRGS MAmIMME (1874-1964)
Hoover was born in 1874 at West Branch, Iowa, the second son of a blacksmith. After both his parents died he went to live in Oregon with his uncle, a school teacher. In 1891 he enrolled in the first year of the new Stanford University in California. After graduating with a degree in geology he worked for two years in mining-related occupations.
In 1896, his employer, a Californian mining engineer, recommended Hoover to a London based firm of mining consultants, Bewick, Moreing and Company (BMC), which was seeking the services of a mining engineer to report on gold mining prospects in Western Australia. Hoover accepted the post offered and arrived in the goldfields in May 1897. His work involved inspecting mining prospects and assessing their potential for development as company owned mines. Over six months Hoover travelled extensively, reporting on dozens of prospects one of which was the Sons of Gwalia mine near Leonora. Hoover first visited the mine at the end of June 1897 and, after a full inspection in August, recommended that the mine be purchased.
In January 1898 a new public company ‘Sons of Gwalia Ltd’ was registered and BMC became its general manager and engineering consultant. In April 1898 Hoover became the company’s first mining superintendent. He managed the mine for seven months, planning all its major elements and establishing a tight cost cutting industrial regime. In November 1898 BMC appointed Hoover to a new position in China. He travelled there via California where he married Lou Henry, another Stanford graduate, who accompanied him to Tientsin in north eastern China where Hoover was the technical adviser to the Chinese provincial director general of mines. During the Boxer rebellion, Hoover arranged the purchase of the valuable Kaiping coal mines by an Anglo Belgian company formed by Moreing.
In September 1901 the Hoovers returned to London where Hoover was made a partner in BMC and became responsible for operating all mines managed by the company which were then principally in Western Australia. In early January 1902 Hoover was back in Perth and during the next three months he inspected all 15 of the mines which BMC managed or worked under option. It was a strenuous summer journey covering 3,000 km by train, 400 km by coastal steamer and 1,200 km by horse and trap. After his visit most of the mine managers were relocated and the first to arrive of the 20 engineers and foremen whom Hoover recruited from the USA were placed in strategic positions. A common costing system was set up at all the BMC managed mines so that variations in working costs (the cost of mining, raising and processing ore) at each mine could be compared. This information was used to illustrate the improvements made by BMC and to contrast its publication with the policy of secrecy adopted by other companies. The watershed of BMC’s expansion in the state occurred in 1904 when BMC agreed to take over the management of two of the largest gold producers in Kalgoorlie. However, the goals of both agreements were unrealistic and both contracts were terminated within a year.
Hoover returned to Australia for further supervisory visits in 1905 and 1907. In addition to the Western Australian mines he visited Broken Hill where a BMC managed company, the Zinc Corporation, was developing the innovative flotation process to extract zinc from extensive mine tailings. In 1907 he also explored the ancient Bawdwin mines in north eastern Burma and subsequently organised modern working of its rich silver lead zinc deposits.
Hoover left Bewick Moreing in June 1908 and became an independent engineer/financier based in London. In the years before the First World War his interests extended to the development of mineral and petroleum resources in Tsarist Russia. When war broke out he organised the Commission for Relief in Belgium which provided humanitarian relief to people whose supplies had been cut off by hostilities. When the USA entered the war he headed President Wilson’s Food Administration before organising post war famine relief in eastern Europe.
Hoover returned to the USA in 1919 and served as Secretary of Commerce from 1921 to 1928 under Presidents Harding and Coolidge before becoming President of the United States in 1929.
Hoover's engineering and mining publications include:
The superficial alteration of Western Australian ore deposits, TAmerIME October 1898
Mining and milling gold ores in Western Australia, E&MJ 17 December 1898, pp.725 26
Metal mining in the provinces of Chi Li and Shantung, China, TIMM 8, 1900, pp.324 31
Gold mining in Western Australia in 1902, E&MJ 3 January 1903, p.18
Metallurgical methods at Kalgoorlie, W.A., E&MJ 21 March 1903, p.437
Gold mine accounts, E&MJ 11 July 1903, p.44 (letter to editor)
Ore treatment at Kalgoorlie, E&MJ 15 August 1903, p.228
Future gold production of Western Australia, TIMM 13, 1903 04, pp.2 21
Permanence in depth in Kalgoorlie, E&MJ 31 October 1903, p.655
The economic ratio of treatment capacity to ore reserves, E&MJ 24 March 1904, p.478
The valuation of gold mines, E&MJ 19 May 1904, p.801
Mine valuation, E&MJ 7 July 1904, p.44 (letter to editor)
Ore reserves, E&MJ 18 August 1904, p.253 (letter to editor)
The training of the mining engineer, Science, N.S., (USA), vol. xx, no. 517, 25 November 1904, pp.716 19
Western Australia: [gold mining in 1904], E&MJ 5 January 1905, pp.41 42
West Australian gold mining in 1905, E&MJ 20 January 1906, p.136 & 17 March 1906, p.520
Are we near gold output limit? The Sun (San Francisco) 8 September 1912
Mine valuation and mine finance, MMg October 1912, pp.275 77v
Economics of a boom, MMg 1912, pp.370 72
Is gold output near maximum?, New York Times Annalist (London), 21 April 1913
(with L.H. Hoover) Theories of ore deposition prior to the seventeenth century, M&SP 5 October 1912, pp.426 30
(with L.H. Hoover) Notes on development of mining law, E&MJ 2 November 1912, pp.823 26
Books: Economics of Mining, New York, 1906 (joint author)
Principles of Mining: Valuation, Organization and Administration, New York, 1909
(with L.H. Hoover) Georgius Agricola, De Re Metallica, translated from the first Latin edition of 1556, New York, 1912
The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover; Vol.1 :Years of Adventure 1874 1920 (1951); Vol. 2: The Cabinet and the Presidency 1920 1933 (1952); Vol. 3: The Great Depression 1929 1941 (1952)
References:
WAGC 5 Feb 1898
Skinner 1904, 1909
Who's Who of America 1916 17 pp.1200 01
Reid pp.65, 267
ADB 5, p.361
Nash 1,2
RH.BMC
