Calvin Bryce Hoover

Calvin Bryce Hoover
Calvin Bryce Hoover
Born	(1897-04-14)April 14, 1897 Berwick, Illinois
Died	June 23, 1974(1974-06-23) (aged 77)
Nationality	American
Fields	Comparative economic systems
Institutions	University of Minnesota Duke University
Alma mater	Monmouth College, University of Wisconsin–Madison
Known for	Economics, Consulting

Calvin Bryce Hoover (April 14, 1897 – June 23, 1974) was a noted economist and professor. He spent 1929-1930 in Moscow and wrote The Economic Life of Soviet Russia in 1931. Following his travels to Soviet Russia he also traveled to and researched the economies of Germany, Italy, France, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Australia. He is considered to be the founder of the field of comparative economic systems.

Hoover was born in Berwick, Illinois to John Calvin Hoover and Margaret Delilah Roadcap Hoover. Growing up poor, he worked with his father on the railroad and on their tenant farm during breaks from school. He described his early economic and political beliefs as a sort of "primitive socialism," which he came to after noticing the inequities of income in Berwick. His father also read the newspaper The Appeal to Reason, which further fostered his left-leaning ideas. Hoover was also an avid reader of history and literature, and compared to the world in his books he saw his small hometown as boring. Looking back on his youth, he once wrote "I wanted to see far places and to have the adventures which both historians and novelists agreed had happened to me through the ages."

Furthermore, coming of age in the early twentieth century, Hoover felt that he had been born too late, "into an age in which nothing ever happened," and had missed the tumultuous adventures of the American frontier. This feeling was exacerbated by visits from his uncles, who had served in the Confederate Army during the Civil War.

Hoover's family valued education, and since Berwick did not have any high schools, they sent him and his sister to high school in the city of Monmouth, the county seat, 12 miles away. Given his family's lack of economic means, sending two children to high school was a difficult task, for two reasons. First, it was difficult to find transportation through twelve miles or rural Illinois (in the winter it was impossible), and he and his sister used various methods before finally taking jobs as servants in Monmouth. Second, the local high school charged tuition for to students whose families did not live in Monmouth.