Herbert Hoover: The Man and His Work

by Vernon L. Kellogg

turbance and to restore business as far as may be to a reasonable basis.

"The business men of this country, I am convinced, as a result of hundreds of conferences with representatives of the great forces of food supply, realize their own patriotic obligation and the solemnity of the situation, and will fairly and generously coöperate in meeting the national emergency. I do not believe that drastic force need be applied to maintain economic distribution and sane use of supplies by the great majority of American people, and I have learned a deep and abiding faith in the intelligence of the average American business man whose aid we anticipate and depend on to remedy the evils developed by the war which he admits and deplores as deeply as ourselves. But if there be those who expect to exploit this hour of sacrifice, if there are men or organizations scheming to increase the trials of this country, we shall not hesitate to apply to the full the drastic, coercive powers that Congress has conferred upon us in this instrument."

From the beginning of the war the food necessities of the Allies and European neutrals

had led them to make the most violent exertions to meet their needs, and these exertions were intensified as the war went on. Food was war material. It existed in America and was imperatively demanded in Europe. By any means possible, without regard to price or dangerous drainage away from us Europe meant to have it. Hoover early saw the danger to America in this. Things had to be balanced. We were ready to exert every effort to supply the Allies every pound of food we could afford to let go out of the country, but there was a limit, a danger-line. Hoover could not trust to appeal to the European countries to regard this danger; they were in a state of panic. It required recourse to legal regulation. There was necessary an effective control of exports. Without such control the tremendous pressure of demand from the European countries, with the sky-rocketing of prices incident to it would have broken down the whole fabric of Hoover's measures for guarding the food needs of our own people and of stabilizing prices and preventing an actual food panic and consequent industrial break-down in our country at

a moment when we were calling on our industries and our people as a whole for their greatest efforts.

The Food Law alone was not sufficient to give Hoover the strength he needed for this control. But casting about for assistance he formed a close working alliance between the Food Administration and the War Trade and Shipping Boards to effect the needed regulation. The combination had the power to establish an absolutely effective control of exports and imports. Not a pound of food could be sent out of the country without the consent of the Food Administration.

Growing out of this export control and really including it, was the wider function of the centralization and coördination of purchases not only for the Allies and Neutrals but in connection with the buying agencies of our Army, Navy, Red Cross, and other large philanthropic organizations. Under the pressure of the need for food control, the foreign governments had taken over almost completely, early in the war, the purchases of outside foodstuffs for their peoples, and the Allies had so

closely associated themselves in this undertaking that they had it in their power, if they cared to use it, to dominate prices to the American farmer. Hoover very early saw the advisability of an American centralization of the purchases for foreign export as an offset to this danger. He further recognized in such a coördinating centralization the possibilities of much good in the stimulation of production and stabilization of home prices. A Division of Coördination of Purchase was therefore formally set up about November 1, 1917, under the efficient direction of F. S. Snyder.

In a memorandum dated November 19, the Food Administrator stated that he considered it vital to the general welfare that all large purchases of certain commodities should be made by plans of allocation among food suppliers at fair and just prices, "the efforts of the Federal Trade Commission to be directed to see that costs are not inflated." The memorandum further stated that all allotment plans between Allied countries and the food industries should be entered into with the Allied Provisions Export Commission through the Division of

Coördination of Purchase; and that all estimated and specific requirements of food products of all characters for the Allied countries should be furnished the Division of Coördination of Purchase by the Allied Provisions Export Commission and that such requirements shall bear the approval of the Allied Provisions Export Commission. Also, that on the question of issuing licenses for the exporting of the purchases, the approval to export will be arranged by the Food Administration's Division of Coördination of Purchase, and the War Trade Board; and the final action taken on each requirement shall have the approval of the head of the Division of Coördination of Purchase.