The Abingdon War-Food Book

by Herbert Hoover

Excerpt from The Abingdon War-Food Book

I have read with lively interest John Wes ley's Thoughts about food difficulties. The difficulties that he noted in 1773 are still with us. Some people have too much food and some have too little. Such conditions have always existed and always will exist under our present social organization  and perhaps under any possible social organization. But at the present time we have newer and greater food problems; they are international problems. Now it is some nations, not only individuals, who have more food than is necessary, while others stand face to face with national starvation. Our duty, therefore, is a double one. We must try to solve in some measure the great international food problems and at the same time not forget those more individual problems Of which Wesley spoke. And the solving of the greater will help us in the solution Of the lesser prob lems, for the stimulus Of the present inter national food situation serves to arouse the interest Of everyone in all food problems.

62 pages, Paperback

First published September 27, 2015

About the author

Herbert Clark Hoover, the 31st President of the United States (1929–1933), was a mining engineer and author. As the United States Secretary of Commerce in the 1920s under Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, he promoted government intervention under the rubric "economic modernization". In the presidential election of 1928 Hoover easily won the Republican nomination. The nation was prosperous and optimistic, leading to a landslide for Hoover over the Democrat Al Smith, whom many voters distrusted on account of his Roman Catholicism. Hoover deeply believed in the Efficiency Movement (a major component of the Progressive Era), arguing that a technical solution existed for every social and economic problem. That position was challenged by the Great Depression, which began in 1929, the first year of his presidency. He tried to combat the Depression with volunteer efforts and government action, none of which produced economic recovery during his term. The consensus among historians is that Hoover's defeat in the 1932 election was caused primarily by failure to end the downward spiral into deep Depression, compounded by popular opposition to prohibition. Other electoral liabilities were Hoover's lack of charisma in relating to voters, and his poor skills in working with politicians.