Locating the roots of Hoover's personal beliefs in his Quaker upbringing in Oregon and seeing his outlook on the natural world shaped by his frontier experience and education, Clements finds that this policy maker combined an interest in conserving the environment with an engineer's drive to rationalize the use of natural resources. He examines Hoover's difficult negotiation of the Colorado River Pact that permitted the construction of the dam that would bear his name as well as his efforts to create a St. Lawrence Waterway to link the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean. Hoover's relief efforts during the 1927 Mississippi River flood and his promotion of timber and oil conservation reveal other dimensions of his approach to conservation.
Although Hoover was not a modern environmentalist, he pioneered some of the first broad environmental policies in the United States. The National Conference on Outdoor Recreation brought together wilderness advocates and urban planners and the passage of the first federal law to limit oil pollution in navigable waters began an ongoing effort to control the effects of industrialization.
Challenging previous critical assessments of Republican environmental policies during the 1920s, Clements proposes that Hoover's conservation efforts were an attempt to balance growth and conservation. His unparalleled examination of early-twentieth-century conservaton speaks to ongoing debates about how best to protect the environment without ruining the economy.
BACK COVER: "This rich, nuanced study is a major contribution to Hoover scholarship and to understanding the pre-World War II history of conservation and the environment. Many Hoover studies examine either Hoover's policies during the twenties or as president. Clements traces Hoover and conservation through both periods, and the result is an extremely interesting and perceptive portrait of Hoover's thinking and his policies in action. A real pleasure to read."--David Hamilton, author of From New Day to New Deal: Farm Policy from Hoover to Roosevelt, 1928-1933
