Description:

Hoover Herbert

Herbert Hoover TLS Re: Multi-Million Pound Gold Mine in Western Australia

 

2pp TLS signed by mining executive Herbert Hoover (1874-1964) as "Yours faithfully / HC Hoover" at bottom of the first page. Written in London, England on July 27, 1906. Typed in purple and black ink on cream stationery paper, the first page with "Bewick, Moreing & Co." letterhead. Docketed at top and vertically along left margin. Double hole-punched. Several rusted paper clip impressions at upper left. Expected light paper folds, else near fine. 8.25" x 10.25".

 

Herbert Hoover wrote this confidential memorandum to William J. Loring (ca. 1869-1952), one of his subordinates at Bewick, Moreing & Co., in the summer of 1906.

 

In part:

 

"Mr. Rolker

 

Rolker has arrived, and I have seen him. He tells me that he found you very much discouraged and worried in Melbourne, which I do not wonder at, considering the troubles you are having with the gang there, but I feel that I may be personally somewhat responsible for your feeling, on account of the amount of kicks that I have been passing on, and I hope you will not take these latter so seriously.

 

Agnew

 

I hope you will have found that he is able to do the business to your satisfaction, as it appears to me, he is making a real hard effort and, so far as we can see at this end he is doing splendidly. I thought it might be useful to you to be able to put his salary up, if you were satisfied with him, and so I cabled you thereon."

 

Hoover and Loring were employees of the London-based mining corporation Bewick, Moreing & Co. (BMC). The firm had significant mining interests scattered throughout the British Empire. In the southern hemisphere, BMC excavated mines in eastern and western Australia and in northern New Zealand. Hoover had met Loring, a fellow American, on assignment in the western Australian bush in the early 1900s, when Loring served as superintendent of the Sons of Gwalia Mine. Hoover's letter demonstrates the extent to which Loring was in the front lines of BMC operations in Australia, brokering deals with discontented mining gangs, and supervising hardworking higher-ups dispatched from London headquarters. 

 

Even more fascinating is the second page entitled "Oroya Black Range Limited," which shows an itemized list projecting future profits of the eponymous company (OBRL). An offshoot of the Oroya Brownhill Company, of which Hoover was a director, OBRL had acquired 128 acres of land in the Black Range District of the East Murchison gold field approximately 250 miles east of Cue in Western Australia earlier. Preliminary core testing results were revealed at the 11th Annual General Meeting of Shareholders on May 31, 1906 and reported in the June 2, 1906 issue of the Economist. Engineers estimated that this new excavation zone would yield an average of one ounce of gold per ton of rock. The estimated profit per month would be £73,000 or over £8,500,000 in 2018 currency. "Through the good offices of Mr. Hoover and Mr. Loring," the article continued, shareholders would be welcomed to purchase £1 shares in the company.

 

Hoover made his fortune at the turn-of-the-century as a mining engineer, consultant, administrator, and investor. After joining BMC in 1897 as an underling, Hoover was promoted to junior partner by 1898 and full partner by 1901. Hoover was a corporate "fixer" tasked with evaluating and revitalizing failing BMC holdings in Asia, Australia, and Africa. He left BMC in 1908 to become a freelance consultant.

 

William J. Loring was one of twentieth-century America's most successful mining industrialists. He entered the trade at age 12, and by his early 30s had become one of BMC's major representatives in Australia. When Hoover left the company's employ in 1908, he sold his BMC shares (amounting to 33 1/3% of the entire corporation) to Loring. He and Hoover were initially friendly, but relations became strained after Hoover violated a non-competition agreement. Following a 1917 lawsuit, and especially after Loring's Western U.S. investments failed in the late 20s, he deeply resented and even hated Hoover.

 

Hoover gained his first political experience as Director of the U.S. Food Administration and, between 1921-1928, U.S. Secretary of Commerce. Hoover was blamed for mismanaging Depression recovery efforts; many viewed his 1932 presidential loss to 32nd U.S. President Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt as a referendum. Both Presidents Truman and Eisenhower appointed Hoover to head post-World War II fact-finding and aid-giving commissions. This later political involvement rehabilitated Hoover’s image.

 


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