One Summer: America, 1927

put in front of the camera. He even found time in the spring of 1927 to produce an article for the Atlantic Monthly on how to improve the nation’s fish hatcheries. (‘I wish to state a fact, to observe a condition, to relate an experiment, todefine a proposition, to offer a protest, and to give the reasons for all,’ he wrote in the article’s opening passage, proving that there was no matter too small to escape his numbing pomposity.) When not sorting out the nation’s problems, he travelled widely to accept honours. In the course of his life, he received more than five hundred awards, including honorary degrees from eighty-five universities.
    Coolidge didn’t have much regard for Hoover. He didn’t like most people, but he seemed especially not to like Hoover. ‘That man has offered me unsolicited advice for six years, all of it bad!’ Coolidge once barked when the subject of Hoover came up. In April 1927 Coolidge puzzled the world by issuing a statement proclaiming that Hoover would never be appointed secretary of state. The headline on the front page of the New York Times for 16 April 1927 read:
     
    C APITAL M YSTIFIED
ON H OOVER’S S TATUS
WITH THE P RESIDENT
     
    W HITE H OUSE D ECLARES H E W ILL
N OT B E S ECRETARY OF S TATE ,
E VEN IF K ELLOGG Q UITS
     
    Why Coolidge issued the statement at all, and why with such finality, was a matter that puzzled every political commentator in the country. As Hoover had indicated no desire for the role, and the incumbent, Frank B. Kellogg, no inclination to leave it, they were as bewildered as everyone else.
    With withering disdain Coolidge referred to his tireless commerce secretary as ‘Wonder Boy’, but, much as he sneered, he was glad to have someone to do so much of his work for him. And now when the Mississippi flooded as it never had before, it was to Herbert Hoover that he turned. One week after making his enigmatic promise not to promote Hoover to the role of secretary of state, President Coolidge appointed him to head the relief efforts todeal with the emergency. Apart from that one act, Coolidge did nothing. He declined to visit the flooded areas. He declined to make any federal funds available or to call a special session of Congress. He declined to make a national radio broadcast appealing for private donations. He declined to provide the humourist Will Rogers with a message of hope and goodwill that Rogers could read out as part of a national broadcast. He declined to supply twelve signed photographs to be auctioned off for the relief of flood victims.
    Hoover made his headquarters nominally in Memphis, but over the next three months he was to be found everywhere – in Little Rock, Natchez, New Orleans, Baton Rouge. Wherever a man of dignity was needed, there stood Hoover. To give the commerce secretary his due, he presented an air of statesmanship that the president declined to provide. It was he who addressed the nation by radio. ‘It is difficult to picture in words the might of the Mississippi in flood,’ Hoover reported to the nation from Memphis.
     
To say that two blocks from where I stand it is at this minute flowing at a rate ten times that of Niagara seems unimpressive. Perhaps it becomes more impressive to say that at Vicksburg the flood is 6,000 feet wide and 50 feet deep, rushing on at the rate of six miles an hour. Behind this crest lies the ruin of 200,000 people. Thousands still cling to their homes where the upper floors are yet dry … This is the pitiable plight of a lost battle.
     
    Much worse was to come. Over the next two weeks, the number of homeless would soar to half a million. Hoover, however, was in his element. He had a massive crisis to solve and the authority to instruct and deploy people from a multitude of departments and agencies – the Red Cross, Weather Bureau, Public Health Service, Coast Guard, Veterans’ Bureau, Interstate Commerce Commission, national lighthouse service, and at least a dozen more – and to interfere directly in the running of four largegovernment departments: Agriculture, Navy, War and the Treasury. No one short of the presidency had ever been in charge of so much at once. No aspect of the operations escaped his concentrated attention. He authorized the setting up of 154 refugee camps and provided exacting instructions on how each should be laid out and operated: tents should be 18 feet by 18 feet and arrayed in ordered ranks along streets exactly 25 feet wide, with 10-foot-wide