Category Archives: Herbert Hoover

Sunday morning coffee

24 Sunday Mar 2019

Posted by in Beatles, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, Style, Theodore Roosevelt Jr (President)

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A First Army field jacket seen at Brooklyn Flea, March 2019

I hope everyone’s week was good. Blogging will continue to be light in the coming days while the semester is in full swing. There is just so much going on. Yesterday I began Eric Rauchway’s new book Winter War: Hoover, Roosevelt and the First Clash Over the New Deal, which is about the four month interregnum between the November 1932 election and March 1933 inaugural. Almost fifteen years ago now I read Rauchway’s Murdering McKinley: The Making of Theodore Roosevelt’s America for a class on the Gilded Age with David Nasaw. I’m only about fifty pages in but the tone so far is very harsh toward Hoover. I’ll come back to it with more observations when I finish the book.

I was at Brooklyn Flea across the street from the Barclays Center yesterday, where I bough a small leather wallet and a pair of cuff links. I’m transitioning to wearing suits more and am making French cuff shirts part of my arsenal. I have three suits now and intend to get a solid grey worsted or flannel number over the summer in time for the fall semester. All in due time.

When I was at the flea market yesterday I saw what I though might be a pasteover Beatles Butcher cover. I don’t own any vinyl, nor do I plan on going down that rabbit hole, but when I saw a copy of Yesterday and Today in a bin I had to stop and look. The anodyne trunk photograph was pasted on, which led me to think it might have been a second state copy. I mentioned it to the vendor, telling him what he may have on his hands, and even got him to take a picture of me with the album cover. When I got home I examined the photo while reading online about ways to tell if a record is indeed a Butcher second state. (First and third state versions are obvious.) To make a long story short it was not a Butcher cover, and the giveaway was right there even though I was unaware of it in the moment: the copy I saw had an RIAA Gold Record seal, an indicator that this was a later pressing. And that was the end of that.

I did see and photograph the First Army field jacket you see above. Even had it been in my size I would not have purchased the coat. Putting it mildly, it is bad form to wear military gear with patches if one has not served with said unit. Seeing it though was something special. I always wonder when I encounter such things in second-hand places how they got where they did. Who owned it and where & when did he serve? Two years ago I bought a heavy winter coat, made in England many decades ago, in a thrift store in Pompano Beach. It is entirely speculation on my part but I can surmise that the double-breasted, full-length coat once belonged to a retiree who brought the piece down with him from the Northeast only to bring it to Goodwill upon realizing he would never need it in sub-tropical Florida. I think of him and who he might have been every time I put it on, and try to live up to his legacy.

Sunday morning coffee

10 Sunday Feb 2019

Posted by in Herbert Hoover, New York City

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Depression Era Hooverville in New York’s Central Park, circa early 1930s

Good morning, all. I have spent a good portion of the morning putting together this week’s presentations for our class on the life, times, and legacy of Robert Moses. I have learned a tremendous amount already this year. I thought I would share this incredible image I intend to show tomorrow in class. This is a so-called Hooverville in Central Park during the Great Depression. These squatter camps were ubiquitous across the United States and were so named in derisive “tribute” to President Herbert Hoover, who Americans unfairly blamed for the onset of the financial crisis.

I am often taken aback looking at old photographs of such cities as New York, London and Paris and seeing how dirty and chaotic they were not so very long ago. Yes, this was the era of the Great Depression and a Hooverville to boot; still, the early twentieth century cities were not the gleaming metroplises we know today. When I moved to New York City twenty-two years ago in 1997 the Bowery still had the last of its flop houses. Today those are gone and in their place are boutiques selling expensive retail goods.

(image/skyscrapercity.com)

Sunday morning coffee

03 Sunday Jan 2016

Posted by in Herbert Hoover, Woodrow Wilson, WW1

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3g10020vYesterday Mike Hanlon over at Roads to the Great War posted my article about the grain crisis and Prohibition. In a nutshell, the drys used the food shortage as a means to further their goal of passing the Eighteenth Amendment. Anti-Irish and, especially, anti-German sentiments were also part of the equation. Please read the whole piece. It’s a fascinating topic, and Hoover and Wilson found themselves unfortunately stuck in the middle.

On a more general note, if you have not done so already please check out Mike’s website worldwar1.com for extensive coverage of the WW1 centennial. For years now he and his staff have been maintaining several web platforms relating to the conflict. They do a great job discussing the war in all its complexity. The Great War centennial is an opportune time to take a fresh look at these events that did so much to shape the world we live in today.

(image/Library of Congress)

Antietam plus 103 years

17 Thursday Sep 2015

Posted by in Antietam, Herbert Hoover

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The Cornfield at Antietam as it was in summer 2012

The Cornfield at Antietam as it was in summer 2011

I could not let the anniversary of the Battle of Antietam go unnoticed. It is one of my goals to attend a battle anniversary there sometime in the coming years. Usually we go to Gettysburg the week prior to the anniversary of that battle, intentionally avoiding the crowds of July 1-3. The Antietam remembrance seems more lowkey and doable. We have a friend who was ranger there for years before taking another ranger post in Washington D.C. He always spoke of the big crowds who show up every September 17 for the extended battlefield walks.

Antietam Day 1904: Not that many years ago the men who once fought the Army of Northern Virginia remembered their feats

Antietam Day 1904: Not that many years ago the men who once fought the Army of Northern Virginia remembered their feats

Antietam Day was a big deal here in Brooklyn for decades after the war. This is not surprising given the number of New York regiments in the Army of the Potomac. Remember that Brooklyn was its own municipality until 1898. One sees the headstone and GAR plaques of the men of the such units as the 14th Brooklyn everywhere in Green-Wood Cemetery. Prospect Park was the big gathering place for these commemorations.

The image is a little grainy but above is a shot of the event held on September 17, 1904. You can see that there were still hundreds of living veterans there to mark the occasion. Their numbers would dwindle markedly over the next decade. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle noted in 1914 that while preparations were being made for the 52nd anniversary the British, French and Germans were assembling on the Aisne for a battle that could dwarf Sharpsburg. The Prospect Park programs seem to have become more muted after that first Antietam anniversary during the Great War. This was probably a combination of weariness from the news overseas and the fact that Civil War veterans were becoming fewer in number. Who wanted to commemorate after Versailles?

The Civil War’s 150th anniversary created a surge of interest in battlefield tourism. Hopefully interest will not slow down just because the sesquicentennial has come and gone.

(image/Brooklyn Daily Eagle via newspapers.com)

 

Hoover’s legacy

23 Thursday Oct 2014

Posted by in Herbert Hoover

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I generally refrain from posting youtube clips but here is one I came across today and wanted to share. The U.S. Embassy in Brussels produced the footage in 2012. I know that this is the third night in a row I have posted on Belgian relief and the Great War, but it is a topic of incredible importance. It is funny how are perceptions of the presidents are skewed. We focus on some so much and others hardly at all. This is unfortunate for our national understanding.

It is lost on us today how long Hoover worked in the public sphere. He was going strong well into the Cold War. Some say he cynically did this to save his legacy after his presidency and the Great Depression. I for one have never seen it that way. The video is long at fifteen minutes but take the time.