The really successful man of business is one who can at the same time create a demand and provide the means of meeting it. The college community awoke one morning to the realization that it needed above everything else efficient laundry-service. And it seemed that an alert young student of mining engineering was managing the business. Before long it was clear, not only that the college was by way of being systematically and satisfactorily served in this respect, but that, what was even more important, a man with a veritable genius for organization had appeared on the campus. It soon became natural to “let Hoover manage” the various student undertakings; and to this day “the way Hoover did things” is one of the most firmly established traditions of Leland Stanford.
Graduating from the university in the pioneer class of 1895, he served his apprenticeship at the practical work of mining engineering in Nevada County, California, by sending ore-laden cars from the opening of the mine to the reducing works. He earned two dollars a day at this job, and also the opportunity to prove himself equal to greater responsibility. The foreman nodded approvingly and said, “There’s a young chap that college couldn’t spoil! He has a degree plus common sense, and so is ready to learn something from the experience that comes his way. And he’s always on the job—right to the minute. Any one can see he’s one that’s bound for the top!”
It seemed as if Fate were determined from the first that the young man should qualify as a citizen of the world as well as a master of mines. We next find him in that dreary waste of New South Wales known as Broken Hill. In a sun-smitten desert, whose buried wealth of zinc and gold is given grudgingly only to those who have grit to endure weary, parched days and pitiless, lonely nights, he met the ordeal, and proved himself still a man in No Man’s Land. He looked the desert phantoms in the face, and behold! they faded like a mirage. Only the chance of doing a full-sized man’s work remained.
The Broken Hill contract completed, he found new problems as a mining expert and manager of men in China. But he did not go to this new field alone. While at college he had found in one of his fellow-workers a kindred spirit, who was interested in the real things that were meat and drink to him. Miss Lou Henry was a live California girl, with warm human charm and a hobby for the marvels of geology. It was not strange that these two found it easy to fall into step, and that after a while they decided to fare forth on the adventure of living together.
It was an adventure with something more than the thrill of novel experience and the tonic of meeting new problems that awaited them in the Celestial Empire. For a long time a very strong feeling against foreigners and the changed life they were introducing into China had been smoldering among many of the people. There was a large party who believed that change was dangerous. They did not want railroads built and mines worked. The snorting locomotive, belching fire and smoke, seemed to them the herald of the hideous new order of things that the struggling peoples of the West were trying to bring into their mellow, peaceful civilization. The digging down into the ground was particularly alarming. Surely, that could not fail to disturb the dragon who slept within the earth and whose mighty length was coiled about the very foundations of the world. There would be earthquakes and other terrible signs of his anger.
The Boxer Society, whose name meant “the fist of righteous harmony,” and whose slogan was “Down with all foreigners,” became very powerful. “Let us be true to the old customs and keep China in the safe old way!” was the cry of the Boxers. The “righteous harmony” meant “China first,” and “China for the Chinese”; the “fist” meant “Death to Intruders!” There was a general uprising in 1900, and many foreigners and Chinese Christians were massacred. Mr. Hoover, who was at Tientsin in charge of important mining interests, found himself at the storm-center. It was his task to help save his faithful workers, yellow men as well as white, from the infuriated mob.
There was a time when it looked as if the rising tide of rebellion would sweep away all that opposed it before reinforcements from the Western nations could arrive. And when the troops did pour into Peking and Tientsin to rescue the besieged foreigners, another lawless period succeeded. Mr. Hoover found it almost as hard to protect property and innocent Chinese from soldiers, thirsty for loot, as it had been to hold the desperate Boxers at bay. The victorious troops as well as the vanquished fanatics seemed to
have eaten on the insane root
That takes the reason prisoner.
The master of mines had a chance to prove himself now a master of men. He succeeded in safeguarding the interests of his company, and somehow he managed, too, to keep his faith in people in spite of the war madness. He never doubted that the wave of unreason and cruelty would pass, like the blackness of a storm. Reason and humanity would prevail, and kindly Nature would make each battle-scarred field of struggle and bloodshed smile again with flowers.
The adventure of living led the Hoovers to Australia, to Africa, to any and all places where there were mines to be worked. As manager of some very important mining interests Mr. Hoover’s judgment was sought wherever the struggle to win the treasures of the rocks presented special problems. He had now gained wealth and influence, but he was too big a man to rest back on what he had accomplished and content himself with making money.