Rails for worn-out railways back of the fighting fronts;
Locomotives and rolling stock to take the place of those every day going to pieces;
Everything with which the people of England and France and Italy and Russia have usually supplied themselves, but cannot now afford the men, the materials, or the machinery to make.
I particularly appeal to the farmers of the South to plant abundant foodstuffs as well as cotton. They can show their patriotism in no better or more convincing way than by resisting the great temptation of the present price of cotton and helping, helping upon a large scale, to feed the nation and the peoples, everywhere who are fighting for their liberties and for our own. The variety of their crops will be the visible measure of their comprehension of their national duty.
The response was amazing in its enthusiastic and general compliance. No autocracy issuing a ukase could have been obeyed so explicitly. Not only did the various classes of workers and individuals observe the President’s suggestions to the letter, but they yielded up individual right after right in order that the war work of the government might be expedited. Extraordinary powers and functions were granted by the people through Congress, and it was not until peace was declared that these rights and powers returned to the people.
These governmental activities ceased functioning after the war:
Food administration;
Fuel administration;
Espionage act;
War trade board;