were more obvious during the great depression, when the whole notion of capitalism was being questioned more strongly because what had happened with the collapse of that system. stubbornness in was ignoring the paranoia and murderous history of the soviet union. niss tonight at 8:00 eastern on c-span's q&a. announcer: c-span cities tour visited palo alto, california. we continue our look with the hoover institution to tour the hoover tower. linda: we are in the hoover tower on stanford's campus, which was dedicated by herbert hoover himself in 1941. hoover himself was in front of the tower there, giving his

speech, and that was actually the 50th anniversary of the founding of stanford itself. he was an alum of stanford. he was part of the first class. got a degree in geology and became immensely successful as a mining engineer in many parts of the world, became a millionaire, and at the age of 40 in 1914 was in london where he and his wife had their headquarters. at that point, people contacted him to help get americans stranded on the continent and in england back to the united states. as he was doing this, he realized this was a catastrophic war with people starving in belgium and northern france. so he stepped in immediately, and hoover and his wife were -- and his wife was at your mental and helping him as well.

basically, he saved millions of people during the war, and millions more after the war in about 20 countries or so. here is a lovely quote here. "this structure is dedicated to the use and preservation of the collection of books and manuscripts on war, revolution, and peace." peace was very important, of course, to herbert hoover. he also came from a quaker background, and his motto was to study war in order to avoid war. to promote peace, you have to understand the consequences and the origins of war. there is another wonderful quote from his speech in 1941 there. over the elevator that goes to the top of the tower.

"the purpose of this institution is to promote peace. its record stands as a challenge to those who promote war. they should attract those who search for peace. i therefore dedicate this building to these purposes." so we are now about to enter herbert hoover's office, in which he spent quite a lot of time. we actually have a photo here of herbert hoover at his desk, which would have been right about here at an angle with this great view of the campus. so, he died in 1964, and his wife sadly died 20 years earlier. so he spent a lot of time here

in his office on campus, splitting his time between california and new york, where he lived. and he was incredibly involved with the operations of his library and archives. and as you can see here, on top of everything else that he did, these are all the books that he either wrote or cowrote. i don't know when herbert hoover slept, because he was so prolific. this is a wonderful translation that he and his wife did of a genealogy, treaties that was written in latin in 1556. his real name did not sound so scholarly. they together worked on this project. absolutely fantastic work. she, i understand, did most of the translation, and he worked on the plates. but it was an incredibly

scholarly collaboration that they did so much together. they were quite a pair, and this is a beautiful example of that. you can see from the photo here, the campus is right behind here. i think his desk was right here. it is really exciting to be in the same spot where he was. and to think that he was the first alumn here, part of the first class on campus. the university gave so much to him, and he gave so much back. now, this room was refurbished in 1990, so the furniture here is new. but this is the desk that he had as secretary of commerce. we have two chairs here. one was his chair as secretary of commerce, and the other is his cabinet chair. the meetings the cabinet had would have had a chair for each

secretary, and he would have had his as secretary of commerce. in fact, one of the chairs still has a plaque here. secretary of commerce, march 1925 to august 1928. this is the foyer to his office. this is a very interesting historic artifact. herbert hoover was incredibly well known and admired after world war i. his fame was universal, really, because he had saved millions of people through relief operations. both parties wanted him. he was called a master of efficiency. he was incredible in so many ways that it is very understandable that people would have wanted to have him

join their party. he threw his hat in with the republican party. this is the banner for the convention in kansas city, missouri, 1928. this is the fabulous view that we have from the top of the tower. it is the center of the campus. it looks very much like it was when it was originally built in 1891. and the story is related to the amazing carillon. the story is this -- in 1939, 1940, at the new york world fair, you had this carillon in the pavilion. -- belgian pavilion. this was the time when the tower was being built, eventually dedicated in 1941. originally, herbert hoover meant for the reading room to be here at the top of the tower. but with the beginning of world

war ii in europe, 1939, there was no way that carillon could be sent back to belgium. so herbert hoover and many others raised funds and acquired this carillon. he sent a telegram to his architect saying, change of plans. the reading room is going to stay downstairs, and we are going to have this wonderful carillon at the top. the architect went with it, did not bat an eye, just changed the plans. in 1989 when we had yet another earthquake, there was a little bit of damage, and it was in need of refurbishing. so the bells were sent back to europe, and came back. on top of that, when they were reinstated, they built this enclosure so that a professor of music here on the campus, when he played, he is not deafened by the sound. he can just play in this

enclosure. in order to study history, you have to have records. you have to have the original documents, the primary sources. they have to be collected and preserved and made available to the public. the public at large and the historians, journalists, researchers. we need to understand what happened in order to plan for the future, and herbert hoover saw that. that was his vision. we have not stopped collecting since. we are so proud of being able to preserve this history of the 21st century. announcer: our cities tour staff recently traveled to palo alto, california, to learn about its rich history. history. ,o watch more video

visit c-span.org/cities tour. you're watching american history tv all weekend every weekend on c-span3. >> lectures in history baylor university professor julianne class on the american military including the look of the equipment and capabilities of the continental army and militia troops. she compares the advantages and disadvantages of the american and british forces. her class is about one hour 10 minutes.