The War Trade Board, by limiting exports, conserved the products of the country for the use of our own people and the people of the nations associated with us in the great conflict so that these products might be used in whatever way would best aid the prosecution of the war; it so controlled and supervised the shipping of goods to associated and neutral nations as to conserve shipping space for military uses; it regulated with the closest surveillance the shipping of goods to neutral countries in order to make sure that they would not be re-shipped in covert ways to enemy destinations; it hunted out enemy and enemy-controlled firms in our own and neutral lands, closed up the former and prevented trade with the latter, although it also in neutral countries made every effort to find and list for American merchants, in the place of these forbidden firms, others in the same lines not friendly with the enemy with whom trade could be carried on; and it so arranged trade with neutral nations as to supply them with necessities, under guarantees that these should not be reëxported, in return for their export to the United States and her associates of certain needed products and permission for this country to use their shipping.
This mobilization of the commercial arm of the United States soon proved its value and the government’s control of trade through the War Trade Board was a highly important factor in hastening the winning of the war. The firm hand which was laid on commerce with certain neutral nations of Europe, through which Germany had been getting large amounts of food and supplies, finally made effective the blockade of the enemy. The trade of those nations with the United States during the two and a half years before our entrance into the war had jumped to enormous figures, many times its previous volume. When the War Trade Board assumed control of American commerce it fell, in the case of one nation, to one-twentieth of what it had been in the first year of the war, while the total exports of food stuffs of the neutrals of northern Europe to the Central Powers declined in a few months by from sixty-five to eighty-five per cent of what they had been in the previous year.
The Board procured, by trade arrangements with European neutrals, the use of shipping for the United States and Great Britain amounting to over two million tons, for which there was the greatest need for transportation of troops, munitions, foods and supplies to Europe. For this same purpose the Board conserved much tonnage by practically suspending, for several months, trade in many commodities with South America and the Orient. Working in harmony with the War Industries Board, it prevented the shipment out of the United States of all materials needed by this country and the associated nations for the swift and efficient prosecution of the war.
Both the War Trade Board and the War Industries Board coöperated constantly with the other civilian organizations through which the nation carried on its support of the war, such as the Food Administration, the Fuel Administration, the Council of National Defense, the U. S. Shipping Board Emergency Fleet Corporation and the Railroad Administration, and by this union of organization kept up a harmonious, smoothly articulated and swiftly moving team-work through which the full resources and powers of the entire nation were mobilized and put to the service of the two direct war agencies of the Government, the War and the Navy Departments.
The function of the War Industries Board in this nation-wide scheme of organization was so to organize and regulate the industries of the country as to insure the materials necessary for the war prosecuting agencies of the Government and at the same time protect the country’s civilian needs. It was charged with providing the nations associated with us in the war with such military supplies as they desired and America could spare and neutral nations with such commodities as they needed and would exchange for materials essential to this country. Thus these two administrative war agencies, the War Trade Board and the War Industries Board, together had practically complete control of all the vast affairs of the whole nation’s industry and commerce. As a sculptor works a piece of clay into any desired form, these two boards took the country’s business life into their hands and moulded and shaped it into a war-making machine.
By a system of priorities that governed both production and distribution the War Industries Board regulated the supply of raw materials to manufacturers and the delivery of finished products. It stimulated production and speeded distribution of whatever was urgently needed for the fighting forces, for exchange with neutrals or for our own people, but limited the supply of raw materials, or coal, or electricity, or labor, and temporarily withheld the facilities of distribution when need was not immediate, or when there would otherwise have been interference with some war-making effort. Every important class of industry in the country, and some that were not of large consequence in so far as the size of their business was concerned, came within the scope of the Board’s operations. The expert leaders of these industries were represented among the advisers of the Board, to which they brought their comprehensive and profound knowledge of resources, conditions, methods of operation, and quantity, quality and ordinary destination of output. Industries were listed, classified and studied to determine the degree of preference to which each was entitled, and in many cases the same method was applied to individual plants within an industry. To those entitled to preferential treatment because they could best subserve some phase of war need was given priority of service in all their requirements, while the needs of others were deferred until the preferred industries or plants were satisfied.
It is not possible to describe all the multiple achievements of the War Industries Board, but a glance at them shows many of vital importance. By establishing maximum prices upon a number of staple raw materials necessary in the war-making program, an executive order of the President putting into legal operation its agreements and decisions, the Price Fixing Committee of the Board stabilized prices and prevented or lessened profiteering in many industries. The Conservation Section reduced wastage in industry in various ways, but especially by curtailing the number of patterns, or varieties, in each of many lines of production, scrutinizing for this purpose nearly two hundred different industries. Thus, the thousand and more different patterns for a buggy step were reduced to two, with resulting economy of both labor and material. A Committee on Emergency Construction took charge, under the Construction Division of the Government, of the vast building program upon which the nation had at once to enter. Cantonments, flying fields, camps, hospitals, embarkation depots, docks, wharves, storehouses, ordnance, powder, explosives and nitrate plants and other structures had to be built with the greatest possible rapidity. The War Industries Board first developed a method for getting the necessary information concerning contractors who could take charge of this enormous building program and devised a scheme of organization and then, by means of its priorities system, made sure that each operation should have at the moment of need the necessary materials, transportation facilities and labor. These structures, finished and in construction, totaled a cost at the end of the war of approximately two billion dollars. The Chemical Division did highly important work in the way of instituting, aiding and speeding scientific investigations and stimulating new chemical industries, such as the potash supply and the dye industry. The Steel Division received the enthusiastic coöperation of the steel manufacturers, who speeded up their plants for the production of the immensely increased quantities needed of this vital product. More and more steel, and ever more steel, was necessary for the making of munitions, guns, cannon, rails, locomotives, shipyards, ships. In the last six months of 1918 the steel products that went into direct and indirect war necessities amounted to 22,000,000 tons, a production of about twenty-five per cent more than would have been the reasonable expectation for the period. The Steel Division handled approximately 40,000,000 tons of steel per year. The Board’s program of speeding work greatly increased the output in many vital industries. For instance, the locomotive industry doubled its production in three months without increasing its facilities or expanding its works. It has been estimated that the industrial capacity of the country was increased by at least twenty per cent.
All over the country business men coöperated with the War Industries Board with patriotic zeal, willingly curtailing their output and reducing their incomes in order to release material, capital, labor, fuel, transportation facilities, for the expediting of work necessary for the winning of the war. Dozens of them left their affairs in the hands of subordinates or gave up high-salaried positions and entered the service of the War Industries Board in order that the nation might have the advantage of their training and their wide and expert knowledge. These men, who were generally known as “the Government’s dollar-a-year men,” because legally the Government can accept no gratuitous service, freely gave to the country, as their contribution to the winning of the war, what it could not have bought for millions of dollars and worked with as much energy and ardor as ever they had done for the making and furthering of their own fortunes.
CHAPTER XXVI
“THE GREATEST MOTHER IN THE WORLD”
Before the world war the American Red Cross would have had ample reason to complain, had it been so minded, of the indifference of the great masses of the American people to its rightful claim upon their interest, sympathy and support. But its world-wide works of compassion during the war, that won for it the loving titles of “The Greatest Mother in the World” and “The Universal Mother,” opened their eyes and their hearts until they almost merged themselves in it and made it the organization through which they themselves functioned for the help of the war-made need and suffering.