What was it in the Iowa farm life that became a part of the Quaker boy, Herbert Hoover? He learned to look life in the face, simply and frankly. Hard work, resolute wrestling with the brown earth, made his muscles firm and his nerves steady. The passing of the days and the seasons, the coming of the rain, the dew, and the frost, and the sweep of the storm, awoke in his spirit a love of nature and a delight in nature’s laws. “All’s love, yet all’s law,” whispered the wind as it passed over the fields of bending grain. Since all was law, one might, by studying the ways of seed and soil and weather, win a larger harvest than the steadiest toil, unaided by reason and resource, could coax from the long furrows. It was clear that thinking and planning brought a liberal increase to the yield of each acre. The might of man was not in muscle but in mind.
Then came the move to Oregon. How the Golden West opened up a whole vista of new ideas! How many kinds of interesting people there were in the world! He longed to go to college where one could get a bird’s-eye view of the whole field of what life had to offer before settling down to work in his own particular little garden-patch.
“I don’t want to go to a Quaker school, or a college founded by any other special sect,” he said. “I want to go where I will have a chance to see and judge everything fairly, without prejudice for or against any one line of thought.”
“The way of the Friends is a liberal enough way for a son of mine, or for any God-fearing person,” was his guardian’s reply. “Thee must not expect thy people to send thee to a place of worldly fashions and ideas.”
“It looks as if I should have to send myself, then,” said the young man, with a smile in his clear eyes, but with his chin looking even more determined than was its usual firm habit.
When Leland Stanford Junior University opened its doors in 1891, Herbert C. Hoover was one of those applying for admission. The first student to register for the engineering course, he was the distinguished nucleus of the Department of Geology and Mining. The first problem young Hoover had to solve at college, however, was the way of meeting his living expenses.
“What chances are there for a chap to earn money here?” he asked.
“The only job that seems to be lying about loose is that of serving in the dining-rooms,” he was told. “Student waiters are always in demand.”
The young Quaker looked as if he had been offered an unripe persimmon. “I suppose it’s true that ‘they also serve who only stand and wait,’ ” he drawled whimsically, “but somehow I can’t quite see myself in the part. And anyway,” he added reflectively, “I don’t know that I need depend on a job that is ‘lying about loose.’ I shouldn’t wonder if I’d have to look out for an opening that hasn’t been offered to every passer-by and become shop-worn.”
He had not been many days at the university before he discovered a need and an opportunity. There was no college laundry. “I think that the person who undertakes to organize the clean-linen business in this academic settlement will ‘also serve,’ and he won’t have to ‘wait’ for his reward!” he said to himself.