Description:

Hoover Herbert

Sec of Commerce Herbert Hoover TLS to American Eugenics Society executive secretary Leon F. Whitney



1p TLS on "The Secretary of Commerce, Washington" letterhead signed by then 3rd U.S. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover (1874-1964) as "Herbert Hoover" at center right. Cream bifold stationery watermarked with American eagle. In near fine condition. Expected light paper folds. Remaining pages blank. Page measures 6.875" x 9".

 

On July 9, 1928 from his Washington, DC offices, Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover thanked Leon F. Whitney for his recent letter. The topic of their previous correspondence is unknown, but Hoover wrote here in part: " … I want to know how much your suggestions are appreciated."

 

Leon Fradley Whitney (1894-1973) was a licensed veterinarian whose interests in dog breeding led him to make controversial parallels to human subjects. Whitney served as Executive Secretary of the American Eugenics Society Between 1924-1934, and it was in this capacity that he wrote Hoover. His secretarial term at the AES was bookended by the publication of his eugenicist manifesto The Case for Sterilization (1934). At the time this letter was written, Whitney was one of eight full-time staff at AES offices in New Haven, CT, Ann Arbor, MI, Chicago, IL, and New York, NY.  Between 1940-1964, Whitney later served as a clinical instructor in the Pathology Department at Yale School of Medicine.  He also wrote children's books.

 

The extent of Whitney and Hoover's relationship can only be speculated, but the two would have another interesting encounter, at least in print. In the April 7, 1929 issue of the Los Angeles Times, Whitney co-wrote an article called "What Made Hoover - Heredity or Environment?" The article presented nature arguments by Whitney, and nurture arguments by Dr. Mandel Sherman. Whitney wrote in part: "Only twenty-five percent [of our people] have superior and very superior intelligence. Only the top four percent have very superior intelligence. No psychologist doubts that Hoover comes within this top four percent. Where did he get this intelligence? From the air he breathed? From the water he drank? From his mother's tender care? Oh, no. That degree of intelligence was fixed when he was a single cell."

 

Eugenics was a hot topic in early-twentieth-century America. It impacted social attitudes towards mental and physical disability, racial purity, crime, poverty, aptitude, and birth control. Hoover was not a eugenicist after Whitney's ilk. Yet as K. Clements explores in The Life of Herbert Hoover: Imperfect Visionary, 1918-1928, Hoover's thinking was informed by eugenicist arguments, especially in his understanding of what differentiated normal, abnormal, and subnormal individuals.

 

Hoover was a mining industrialist and life-long humanitarian who gained his first political experience as Director of the U.S. Food Administration and, between 1921-1928, 3rd 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 (1882-1945) 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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