The Irtish properties were near the Manchurian border, a thousand miles up the Irtish River from Omsk, a mere remote bleak spot on the wild, bare Siberian steppes. But at this spot lay extensive deposits of zinc, iron, lead, copper and coal, all together. He had first of
all to build 350 miles of railroad to make the spot at all accessible. And the actual "mining" operations included everything from digging out and smelting the ores to manufacturing all sorts of things from metal door-knobs to steel rails and even steamboats to ply on the Irtish River. He put a large sum of English, Canadian and American money—including much of his own—into the work of building up a great establishment which was just on a paying basis when the war broke out. It is all now in the hands of the Bolsheviki, with a most dubious outlook for the recovery of any of the money put into it.
Other large operations under his direction were in Colorado, Mexico, Korea, the Malay Straits Settlement, South Africa, and India (Burma). The Burma undertaking has been, in its outcome at least, and, indeed, in many other respects, Hoover's greatest victory in mining engineering and organization. It is today the greatest silver-lead mine in the world, although it started from as near to nothing as a mine could be and yet be called a mine. It took him and his associates five years
to transform some deserted works in the heart of a jungle into the foremost producer of its kind in all the world. This mine is far away in the north of Burma, almost on the Chinese border. They had first to build eighty miles of railroad through the jungle and over two ranges of mountains, a sufficient feat of engineering in itself, and then to create and organize at the end of this line everything pertaining to a great mining plant. Thirty thousand men were employed in establishing the mine.
Altogether Hoover and his associates had in their employment, in the various mining undertakings under way in 1914, about 175,000 men, and the annual mineral output of the mines being handled by them was worth as much as the total annual output of all the mines in California. And practically all of these successful mines had been made out of unsuccessful ones. For Hoover really developed a new profession in connection with mining; a profession of making good mines out of bad ones, of making bankrupt mining concerns solvent, not by manipulation on the stock exchange but
by work in the earth, in the mills, in the mine offices. He works with materials, not pieces of paper. It takes him from three to five years to bring a dead mine to life; the mine must have mineral in it, to be sure, to start with, but he does all the rest. That little matter of having mineral in it is the whole thing, you may think. But if you do, you must think again. The history of mining is more a history of how mines with mineral in them have not succeeded in becoming mines where the mineral could be profitably got out of them, than of how such mines have succeeded. A successful mine is infinitely more than a hole in the ground with mineral at its bottom. It is railroads and steamers, mills, housing for men, men themselves, organization, system, skill, brains, all-around human capacity. Herbert Hoover is a great miner because he is—I say it bluntly and not from any blind hero-worship—a great man.
If he is, he can do more than mine greatly; he can do other things greatly. Well, he can, and he has done them. We come to that part of his story now, the part that begins when
the World War began, when the world saw with amazement that grew into ever greater amazement an unknown miner, that is, unknown except to other miners, calmly do things that only great men can do. But we who know now the story of the boy and the man of the years before the war are not so much amazed. We know that he is the kind of man, who had had the kind of experience, the kind of world education, who with opportunity can do things the world calls great and be the great man. But just for a few minutes before we begin with August, 1914, the time when Herbert Hoover began a new chapter in his work because the world had begun a new epoch in its history, let us have a glimpse of this man outside of his mines and his offices. Let us see him in his home, with his family, with his books if he has any, and with his friends of whom he has many.
His two children, Herbert and Allan, were born in 1903 and 1907 respectively. Living first in apartments, the Hoovers felt that they and the boys and the dog Rags needed more room, or perhaps, better, different kind of
room, room for an energetic family of Americans to grow up in Western American fashion, as far as this could be compassed in London. And so they found, farther west, in a short street just off Kensington High Street and close to Kensington Gardens, a roomy old house with a garden with real trees in it and some grass and flower-beds. It had been built long before by somebody who liked room, and then rebuilt, or at least made over and added to, by Montin Conway, the Alpinist and author. For generations it had been called "The Red House," a name that became in the succeeding years more and more widely known to Americans living in, coming to, or passing through London, for it became a well-known house of American foregathering.