From what little I have read about him it seems to me that he was a perfectly decent human being.

Well, that's a really subjective question. It really depends on your definition of "good." According to most historians, Hoover was an excellent public servant in many government jobs before ascending to the Presidency. And from the same sources, he was a horrible President.

G'day Ameliaearhart, Thank you for your question. He was a good man who struggled to cope with the worst depression in history. However, he did excellent charity work at the end of both world wars. I have attached sources for your reference. Regards Wikipedia Herbert Hoover http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Hoover Presidential Library http://www.hoover.nara.gov/ White House http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/hh31.html

Hoover Herbert was a bad president. He was president when I was young, and my father hated his gosh darn guts!

Unfortunately Hoover inherited the presidency at a bad time. He tried many things to fix the farming economy and unemployment, but some say he wasn't extreme enough. He was simply scared of making people dependent on the government. I wonder if he has been exonerated now that most of us are indeed dependent on governments programs.

A great man i don't know how my s/o would keep the house clean without that invention of his.lol

He was a good man, and I think his intentions were good, but he was not a good politician and unable to cope with the financial catastrophe that beset America during his tenure.

Good question. I spent most of my life believing that the only thing this guy ever did was get elected president during the good times in the late 20's and when things went south, he stood by and watched it all go to hell without any interference from the executive branch. A feakin' bum. Turns out, he had lived a few lives before the presidency. Orphaned at 10, he never went to highschool. He studied nights and went to Stranford in the school's inaugural year, graduating with a degree in geology. He started his career as a mining engineer, working years in Australia and China. He and his wife got trapped in Tianjin during the Boxer Rebellion. They were both authors. Later, as a partner in a mining firm in Australia, he pretty much became independently wealthy. But when Germany attacked Belgium in August 1914, he took over the greatest humaitarian relief effort to feed the vanquished nation the world had ever seen up to that time. After the war, in face of the ridicule of many in our Senate, he continued this relief work, organizing food shipments to starving post-war French, Germans and Russians. As a result, was extremely popular with the people of both Europe and America. In 1927, he was so popular that the nearly railroded him into the presidency. He had proven to the world that through volunteerism, technical solutions, and minimal government input, disasters could be managed. Then came the Depression. "Hoover's stance on the economy was based largely on volunteerism. From before his entry to the presidency, he was a proponent of the concept that public-private cooperation was the way to achieve high long-term growth. Hoover feared that too much intervention or coercion by the government would destroy individuality and self-reliance, which he considered to be important American values. Those ideals, as well as the economy were put to the test with the onset of The Great Depression. At the outset of the Depression, Hoover claims in his memoirs that he rejected Treasury Secretary Mellon's suggested "leave-it-alone" approach,[12], critics, on the other hand, accuse Hoover of sharing Mellon's Laissez-faire viewpoint. It is often inaccurately stated that Herbert Hoover did nothing while the world economy eroded. President Hoover made several attempts to stop "the downward spiral" of the Great Depression, however his policies had little or no effect. As the economy quickly deteriorated in the early years of the Great Depression, Hoover declined to pursue legislative relief, believing that it would make people dependent on the federal government. Instead, he organized a number of voluntary measures with businesses, encouraged state and local government responses, and accelerated federal building projects. Only toward the end of his term did he support a series of legislative solutions." -- Wikipedia. It looks like he tried to be proactive, but he was stonewalled by a republican Congress and his own cabinet. Evidently, he just didn't get the Republican philosophy and because of this, he was made ineffective by those who did. Interestingly, a lot of the programs and methods carried out by his successor, FDR, originated from his office. Further, today many Republican pundits accuse FDR of socialism, while Democratic pundits accuse Hoover of heartless capitalism. As you can see, both are wrong and, if we are to experience another depression, we would fare well to learn that the type of government programs that first came out of Hoover's office and later put into practice by FDR and his government, were successful in easing the misery of many during the depression. Interestingly, one could draw the same conclusions by comparing how the Katrina evacuation was handled versus the Gustav evacuation. Evidently, government assistance is effective and necessary during large disasters. Volunteerism and minimal government involvement alone just won't do it. Yes, he was a great man. One of my favorite people of history. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Hoover