August 10, 1874 Herbert Hoover was born in West Branch, Iowa. At 17 years old he enrolled at Stanford University when it opened in 1891. By 1895 he had graduated with an A.B. degree in engineering. On February 10, he married Lou Henry who he had met a Stanford. They later moved to China, so He could work as China's leading Chief managing engineer for a mining company. While trying to leave China, the Boxer Rebellion forced them to stay and work in Tientsin. Mrs. Hoover worked in Hospitals and Herbert Hoover directed the building of barricades. Many years later in 1914, Germany declared war on France, and the American Consul General asked Hoover to help in brining trapped tourists to safety. Hoover formed a committee and with in six weeks they had saved 120,000 American tourists. When the United States entered World War I, President Wilson asked Hoover to become the head of the Food Administration. He succeeded in cutting consumption of foods needed overseas and avoided hunger in the U.S. Hoover then really took action as the head of Food Administration and he extended aid to famine-stricken Russia in 1921. Later in 1921 Hoover became the Secretary of Commerce under Presidents Harding and Coolidge. Hoover now had much experience in politics and became the Republican Presidential nominee in 1928. His election seemed to ensure prosperity because he had proposed direct relief to the country, which was suffering in a great depression. Then in 1929 he was elected at the Thirty-first president of the United States. In 1931 depression had escalated and so did unemployment, even though President Hoover developed and proposed the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to aid business, additional help for farmers facing mortgage foreclosures, banking reform, a loan to states for feeding the unemployed, expansion of public works, and drastic governmental economy. His opponents in Congress, felt his "trickle down effect" was worthless and Hoover was blamed for the depression.