Rare ALS as president, one page, 5 x 8, embossed White House letterhead, no date [1921-1923]. Handwritten letter to future American President Herbert Hoover, then serving as the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, in full: “My Dear Secy Hoover, This note will be presented to you by Major Stanley Washburn, who knows Russia well, and has some ideas about the relief and its effects which I would like him to present to you.” In fine condition, with two file holes, a light paperclip impression, and some old erasures in the bottom blank area.
A content-rich letter from Harding to Hoover, whose support of the sitting president during the 1920 election season resulted in his appointment to Harding’s cabinet as Secretary of Commerce, a role befitting of Hoover’s talents given his experience during World War I as the director of the United States Food Administration. Although WWI concluded in November 1918, Europe continued to face a critical food situation with the threat of millions dying from starvation. As such, the United States Food Administration became the American Relief Administration (ARA), and Hoover was charged with providing food to Central and Eastern Europe.
Against the opposition of Henry Cabot Lodge and other Senate Republicans, Hoover provided aid to the defeated German nation after the war, as well as relief to the famine-stricken Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. The Russian famine of 1921–22 claimed six million people, but the intervention of the ARA likely saved millions of lives. 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!’ Harding is a great rarity in autograph letters as president, especially of such postwar historical content and presidential associations.
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