1. By: Todd Hill

2. Early Life  Hoover was born in an Iowa village, but spent most of his childhood in Oregon.

3. Education  He enrolled at Stanford University when it opened in 1891, graduating as a mining engineer.

4. Career  He married his Stanford sweetheart, Lou Henry, and they went to China, where he worked for a private corporation as China's leading engineer

5. “Promotion”  Next Hoover turned to a far more difficult task, to feed Belgium, which had been overrun by the German army.  After the United States entered the war, President Woodrow Wilson appointed Hoover head of the Food Administration. He succeeded in cutting consumption of foods needed overseas and avoided rationing at home, yet kept the Allies fed.

6. “They shall be fed!”  After the Armistice, Hoover, a member of the Supreme Economic Council and head of the American Relief Administration, organized shipments of food for starving millions in Central Europe. He extended aid to famine- stricken Soviet Russia in 1921.  When a critic inquired if he was not thus helping Bolshevism, Hoover retorted, "Twenty million people are starving. Whatever their politics, they shall be fed!"

7. Nominee  After capably serving as Secretary of Commerce under Presidents Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge, Hoover became the Republican Presidential nominee in 1928.

8. Assured Nomination  When the Republican convention in Kansas City began in the summer of 1928, the fifty-three-year-old Herbert Hoover was on the verge of winning his party's nomination for President.  Hoover's nomination was assured when he received the endorsement of Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, who controlled Pennsylvania's delegates.

9. Promises  The Republican platform promised continued prosperity with lower taxes, a protective tariff, opposition to farm subsidies, the creation of a new farm agency to assist cooperative marketing associations, and the vigorous enforcement of Prohibition.

10. Destruction  His election, seeming to ensure prosperity, was crushed within months with the stock market crash causing the nation to spiral downward into what became known as the Great Depression. Claiming that everything would turn out better in the end if we just wait.

11. Religious Problems  Religion and Prohibition quickly emerged as the most volatile and energizing issues in the campaign.  Al Smith, a Catholic, was running for Presidency.  No Catholic, had ever been elected President, a by-product of the long history of American anti-Catholic sentiment.

12. Problems with KKK  Vicious rumors and openly hateful anti-Catholic rhetoric hit Smith hard and often in the months leading up to election day. Numerous Protestant preachers in rural areas delivered Sunday sermons warning their flocks that a vote for Smith was a vote for the Devil. Anti-Smith literature, distributed by the resurgent Ku Klux Klan (KKK), claimed that President Smith would take orders from the Pope, declare all Protestant children illegitimate, annul Protestant marriages, and establish Catholicism as the nation's official religion. When Smith addressed a massive rally in Oklahoma City on the subject of religious intolerance, fiery KKK crosses burned around the stadium and a hostile crowd jeered him as he spoke. The next evening, thousands filled the same stadium to hear an anti-Smith speech entitled, "Al Smith and the Forces of Hell."

13. Prohibition Argument and Problems  A consistent critic of Prohibition as governor of New York, Smith took a stance on the Eighteenth Amendment that was politically dangerous both nationally and within the party.  While the Democratic platform downplayed the issue, Smith brought it to the fore by telling Democrats at the convention that he wanted "fundamental changes" in Prohibition legislation

14. Rumors about Al  Shortly thereafter, Smith called openly for Prohibition's repeal, angering Southern Democrats.  At the same time, the Anti-Saloon League, the Women's Christian Temperance Union, and other supporters of the temperance movement exploited Smith's anti- Prohibition politics, dubbing him "Al- coholic" Smith, spreading rumors about his own addiction to drink, and linking him with moral decline.

15. Election  The Republicans swept the election in November. Hoover carried forty states, including Smith's New York, all the border states, and five traditionally Democratic states in the South.

16. Citation  "Campaigns and Elections." Miller Center of Public Affairs. Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia, 2011. Web. 21 Mar. 2011..  "Herbert Hoover - 31st President of the United States." Search Beat. Search Beat, 2011. Web. 21 Mar. 2011..  Herbert Hoover Cartoon. N.d. MITOPENCOURSEWARE. Web. 22 Mar. 2011..  "Herbert Hoover - 31st President of the United States." Search Beat. Search Beat, 2011. Web. 21 Mar. 2011..  Portrait of Herbert Hoover. N.d. Herbert Hoover NHS Collection. nps.gov. Web. 22 Mar. 2011..