Not Mentioned in History Class - Pt. II

Herbert Hoover shares the distinction with a very short list of folks who by their life's work have saved millions of lives. 

It was a choice he made at great personal cost. An interesting fellow indeed.

Refugees fleeing Antwerp, 1914.

Herbert Hoover and the War Years

World War I destruction

in Louvain, Belgium

"Trapped between German bayonets and a British blockade, Belgium in the fall of 1914 faced imminent starvation."

My classes covering WWI focused on politics and leaders, battles and numbers. Real life for the millions of families caught up in the maelstrom received little commentary.  Herbert Hoover wasn't mentioned at all.

Hoover's food relief efforts during World War I

saved between 15 and 20 million European

children.  (unknown copyright)

 
Here's the rest of the story beginning with Belgium.

"Hoover was asked to undertake an unprecedented relief effort for the tiny kingdom dependent on imports for 80 percent of its food. This would mean abandoning his successful career as the world's foremost mining engineer. For several days he pondered the request, finally telling a friend, "Let the fortune go to hell." He would assume the immense task on two conditions-- that he receive no salary, and that he be given a free hand in organizing and administering what became known as the Commission for the Relief of Belgium." 

Throughout the war, Herbert Hoover orchestrated supplies for the displaced peoples.  At the peak of his effort, 10.5 million people were fed every day.

"War inflicts a special terror upon children," and Hoover being himself an orphan, "made their needs his top priority-- first in Belgium and northern France, where he fed an estimated 11 million youngsters between 1914-18, and later throughout the ravaged continent of Europe. When children in the war zone showed signs of rickets and tuberculosis, cocoa was added to their diet, along with an extra "Hoover lunch" of white bread and thick vegetable soup."

The organization which he chaired, the Commission for Relief in Belgium, grew to include a fleet of ships, the dedicated production of factories and mills, and even railroads.  A monthly budget of $11 million which Hoover raised moved over two million tons of food and supplies during the war.

Belgian refugees in London.

Hoover had become an established businessman by the time the war began in 1914. With successes in mining and industry, he had proved himself an extraordinary corporate leader in several countries.

At the request of the U.S. Ambassador to the U.K., Hoover began his humanitarian efforts in Belgium, crossing the North Sea forty times to meet with German military authorities to persuade them to allow the relief efforts.  He met regularly with representatives of British, French, German, Dutch, and Belgian governments to protect the work during the war years and after.

At war's end, like most of Europe in 1918, Germany was devastated.  The economy had collapsed, their currency was worthless, farms were dead, livestock had been eaten by soldiers, and people were starving.  Hoover orchestrated extraordinary humanitarian aid to the defeated Germany, Europe, and Russia after the war.

Cologne, Germany, 1945

In the years that followed and leading up to WWII, Hoover was a well-known hero in Germany and was revered by children as the great American humanitarian.  

Following WWII, Hoover joined in yet again to assist the recovery. 

From the Hoover Archives:

... Hoover frowned on receiving medals--what he called "toys"--even from Belgium. Eventually King Albert persuaded him to accept a unique title on condition that it would lapse upon his death. And so Hoover became "Friend of the Belgian People," with a passport stamped "Perpetual."

Official honors aside, countless gifts of appreciation were sent to Hoover for his fifty years of relief work. These included honorary degrees and beautifully decorated albums, embroidered and woven hangings, books and letters, sculpture and artwork ranging from a child's crayon drawing to richly illuminated testimonials. 

Hoover's personal favorites were the letters and drawing from children in many countries, including those from German youngsters who in the wake of World War II thanked him for their daily "Hoover Speisung," or Hoover lunch, and addressed simply to "Onkel Hoover, New York, New York."

Herbert Hoover shares the distinction with a very short list of folks who by their life's work have saved millions of lives.  It was a choice he made at great personal cost.  An interesting fellow indeed.

Henry Ford, on the other hand, ... see Not Mentioned in History Class - Pt. I

Going into government or politics ...

~ Humans of New York

I was thinking of going into government ...

There is little vision among younger Americans for pursuing a political career, and little expectation they'd accomplish much worthwhile if they did.  Public trust in the government isn't what it used to be.

So, what might we do to improve things?
Does voting change things now?  Does writing to Congress?
How about public protest?  Consider the lessons on that from history.
Not everything is bad, of course.  Government is not the center of the universe.  So, where are the good efforts, the right things, and are we invested appropriately, personally?  Got a plan?

Your taxes subsidize Walmart operating costs

Workers at Walmart have protested the fact that they have to hold food drives for their own employees, and that they are having to work two or three jobs in order to survive. 

Walmart has been under scrutiny lately for costing taxpayers $6+ billion a year in social assistance because of low wages and the carefully limited hours they give employees.  

“A single Walmart Supercenter cost area taxpayers between $904,542 and $1.75 million per year," according to The Americans for Tax Fairness.  (That's  $3000 to $5,800 on average for each of 300 workers).”

Walmart is the nation's largest retailer, accounting for ~10% of U.S. retail sales.

CEO Doug McMillon has made a first change, a $9/hr minimum wage. We'll see if anything more of substance appears. For now, working at Walmart means you can qualify for SNAP, EITC, and housing assistance programs if that employment is the larger part of your family income.  

Competitors Costco and Kroger are doing well; their stocks out-performed Walmart, rising 2-3 times higher. Both Costco (COST) and Kroger (KR) already pay higher wages and provide better hours & benefits for their employees.

"The Walton family, which owns Wal-Mart, controls a fortune equal to the wealth of the bottom 42 percent of Americans combined."  The six heirs took about $6.32 billion in dividends from their ownership share of Walmart last year.  The new employee minimum wage could cost them about 8% of their profits.  Poor things, their life is so hard!

Neither Walmart nor the minimum wage are the problem or the solution, of course.

UPDATE APR 2015: McDonald's CEO announced enhanced benefits for employees at its company-owned restaurants, including a wage increase and paid time-off for full and part-time crew employees. Education benefits include free high school completion and college tuition assistance.

Gross

GNP, GDP, "Our gross national product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors, and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwoods, and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm, nuclear warheads, and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile."  ~Bobby Kennedy 

Success can be the enemy of a good life.  Too much focus on work and wealth can and will deprive us and others of the things that truly matter.  It may be years before we spot the damage.

It doesn't have to be that way, of course.  There are so many things that make up a meaningful life ... and all of them involve doing, usually for others.

Disagree?

My two-minute list; probably a hundred more if we thought about it.

Absolutely.
 You disagree with him.
   He disagrees with them.
     They disagree with me.
        Big deal. 

How many issues are there for us to disagree about?  

Plenty, obviously. Some are important, some not, and opinions vary about that too.

The important part of it all is sitting down with friends or family or with the community and graciously talking things through to a workable solution.

Some perhaps useful pieces:

Reaching for wisdom is not the same as reaching to win.
Having an opinion is not the same as knowing.
Attributing some rotten motive to another doesn't help.  Ever.

Doctrine is not the same as knowledge.
Justice is not the same as law.
'Equal' doesn't mean 'alike'.

Anyone's worldview and the real world will disagree.

A free market and a fair market are different.
Communism, socialism, capitalism, collectivism, and egalitarianism are all pretty much okay ideas, but the players can be a problem.

And, anyone's worldview will disagree with the real world.

Plenty to disagree about; true?

     In her office briefly on a business matter, I asked what she'd been doing lately. With just a little prodding, I got updates on her volunteer work with returning disabled veterans.  She'd arranged to completely furnish a home for this one fellow.  Furniture for the living room and dining room and kitchenware and curtains and a bedroom, a table and chairs with tablecloth and dishes ...  He'd come home to nothing at all, no home, no family, and she'd pulled donors together to make a welcoming place for him.   

     She lit up as she talked about it, and about the difference it had made.  She eventually admitted with some annoyance that she'd been nominated for 'woman of the year'.  The recognition wasn't what she wanted.  And none of the things we might disagree about came up in the conversation.  It's been like that for twenty years now.   (Connie, from my short list of  gutsy heros who understand what's important and what isn't.) 

Magic Words

How do you explain love to an infant?

At eleven months, little Ruby Marie discovered how to cover her eyes with her little hands and then emerge excitedly with a big smile and giggle.  Her mom laughs and applauds, "peek-a-boo!"  They both giggle and laugh and clap their hands, and then do it again.  And again and again.

Conversation with a preverbal infant ranks up among the most enjoyable of activities available.

There is an element of learning by mimicry, of course.  Children learn by doing with their parents.  From reading National Geographic and tieing shoes to cooking meals and car repairs, children learn by observation and participation alongside their mentors.

Beyond the manual skills arena, children learn the elements of interpersonal relationship and communication in precisely the same manner.  How to get along, how to discuss, how to negotiate, how to compromise, how to make rational decisions, ... all are initially learned by observation and participation.

Only 7% of what we communicate is in the words.  True? 

 True enough.

See Content and Context: 

It's worth remembering, there's much more than just the words.  What a child receives and gives in these entertaining exchanges is largely nonverbal, but it is hugely meaningful and richly complex.

Little Ruby may be pre-verbal, yet with no words at all, both mom and baby can express ...

• interest in the other, 
• enjoyment of their company, 
• pleasure in engagement, 
• happiness in being able to amuse each other, 
• affection, appreciation, affirmation,
• focused encouragement, directed interest,
• preferential differentiation (i.e., I like your company, this book, that window), 
• and an encompassing love.

Plowing through our adult lives with words and intellectual labors, struggling to explain or describe or quantify ... it's worth remembering that the difference between us and a server farm full of information machines is precisely illustrated by the smallest folks among us.

Conversation with a preverbal infant ranks up among the most instructive activities available.