ORGANIZING THE NATION
Preceding and following chapters show how important a part organization
played in the separate phases of civilian support of the war. In every
line of war effort there was voluntary and spontaneous team-work on the
part of all especially interested individuals who steadily coöperated
with and formed a part of the nation-wide organization of that division
of national life. The Food Administration and the Fuel Administration
organized, each for its special work, the whole country and brought
its own organization into touch with the people of every county and
every community in the United States. The financing of the war evolved
its own formation of a network of committees covering the land for the
sale of bonds and stamps. So also in the mobilizing of industry for the
support of the war each division of interest drew together in patriotic
coöperation and all combined in voluntary team-work. A wide-spreading
organization, inspired and held together by love of country, worked
here, there and everywhere to aid in clearing the land of enemy spies
and propaganda. Women linked up their existing organizations more
closely and created new ones for more efficient work in all of the many
kinds of war service which they undertook. Even the upholding of the
fighting forces by thought and effort for their welfare and happiness
was effectively organized. And so on, through every phase of civilian
support of the war, the universal individual eagerness to do everything
possible was organized into a systematic, effective coöperation that
was comprehensive in its scope and was directed by able leadership
along definite policies which converged into the one purpose of
applying that mobilized effort to the prosecution of the war.
These were separate organizations, each devoted to its own purpose.
But interlocking them all, partly by virtue of having conceived and
launched many of them and partly by reason of its own purpose, bringing
them all into efficient and harmonious coöperation and at the same time
aligning the entire country in one vast organization that practically
put the whole nation into one huge civilian army working for the
support of the fighting forces, was the Council of National Defense.
Created by an act of Congress in the late summer of 1916, the Council
of National Defense was not fully organized until March, 1917, when
our entrance into the war had become inevitable. In the creating act
the Council was charged with the “coördination of industries and
resources for the national security and welfare.” It was to consist of
the Secretaries of War, the Navy, the Interior, Agriculture, Commerce,
and Labor and it was directed to nominate to the President an Advisory
Commission of seven persons, each having special knowledge of some
industry, public utility or natural resources, or being otherwise
specially qualified to give aid and counsel in the stimulation,
development and coördination of national activities and “the creation
of relations which would render possible in time of need the immediate
concentration and utilization of all the resources of the nation.”
Primarily the Council of National Defense was an organizing machinery.
It took into its hands the universal eagerness to serve of all the
millions of the American people in civilian life and created for them
the emergency means by which each and all could join the vast and
immediate mobilization of resources and of effort that was necessary.
At once it summoned to Washington for conference and the starting of
coöperative effort the leaders in science, engineering, industry and
other phases of national life. Under this exchange of ideas there was
a rapid evolution of plans that were quickly put into operation under
its auspices. As they proved workable and grew in importance some
were turned over to existing agencies for administration and others
developed into separate organizations. But all were so interlocked that
they marched forward with harmonious step, each coöperating with and
aiding the others.
The coöperation among industrial leaders for the mobilizing of the
country’s material resources for war production which was at once
instituted by the Council developed later into the War Industries
Board, the story of whose work for the war is told in the chapter
dealing with “War-Time Management of Trade and Industry.” The Council
initiated also the work of stimulating production for aircraft needs,
of speeding coal production, of interesting the people in food
conservation and of drawing the railroads together into a national
transportation policy. Its Committee on Labor drafted the War Risk
Insurance Bill, initiated the undertaking and then turned it over to
the Treasury Department. The policy of price fixing, which finally
developed into a definite organization under the War Industries Board,
had its beginning in the informal voluntary agreements entered into
between members of the Council in the early days of its existence and
representatives of industry. So also the priorities policy, which
afterwards became a most important and efficient means of controlling
trade and industry and bringing them into direct and effective war
service, began with voluntary agreements between leaders of industry
and commerce and the Council in the early days of the war. Its
Commercial Economy Board, which afterwards became the Conservation
Division of the War Industries Board, did a comprehensive and most
essential service in the planning and instituting of economical
policies for industry of nation-wide application that would release
material and labor for war production uses. By the principle of
voluntary coöperation which it inspired, initiated and organized into
the war machinery of the Government the Council largely eliminated the
possibility of profiteering in connection with war effort and so helped
to make the conducting of the industrial phases of this war, enormously
increased though they were in both magnitude and possibilities,
incomparably more honest than it had been in any previous war in which
the country had ever engaged.
The Department of Science and Research of the Council of National
Defense did particularly valuable work in getting together the
scientific and technical men of the country and so organizing and
directing their knowledge and skill and their ability in research
as to form a war resource of inestimable value. Its membership
included a large part of the men representative of the scientific,
technical and engineering achievement in the United States and through
this Department of the Council their services were at the call of
the Government whenever needed. Through its General Medical Board
the Council aided in the mobilization of the medical personnel and
resources of the country. Its Committee on Engineering and Education
brought together the best thought and skill for the solution of
engineering problems in connection with the war and for the aligning
of educational institutions and facilities behind the country’s war
effort. Its Committee on Labor, besides drafting the war-risk insurance
bill and initiating that undertaking and aiding in the development
of the plan for the War Labor Administration, did valuable work in
helping to maintain hearty coöperation between the labor movement
and the national war policies by promoting the welfare of industrial
workers and by providing a system for the rapid and intensive training
of mechanics. Its Highways Transport Committee coöperated with the
War Department in facilitating the work of its important motor-truck
convoy service, developed rural motor express routes, instituted a
movement for the better development and care of highways and assisted
the Railroad Administration in its early struggle with the congestion
of freight.
As an organizing machinery and provider of means by which the whole
nation could be brought into coöperation for war effort swiftly and
efficiently, the Council of National Defense did not confine itself
to the material phases of the country’s resources but also helped the
national spirit to find adequate expression. To that end it organized
a great, nation-wide system by which the war machinery was synchronized
to harmonious work through every smallest section of the country and
through which the national spirit was enabled to find expression in
effective action. Under the State Councils Section of the National
Council of Defense within a few months there had been organized in
every state of the Union a State Council of Defense whose function
was to centralize and coördinate the war work within the state, to
coöperate with the work of the National Council, to inaugurate whatever
new work local conditions rendered advisable and to create and direct
local councils. County councils were organized in every county of each
state and within most of the counties community councils, usually with
the school district serving as the unit, were formed. These community
councils were not committees, but were the community itself, with
all its citizens and agencies organized for coöperative, effective,
national service. It was a neighborhood democracy made effective
by organization and it established a direct means of reciprocal
communication between the Government and the masses of the people.
An immense and closely woven network thus overspread the country
consisting, under the State Councils, of 4,000 county organizations,
16,000 women’s divisions and 164,000 community and municipal units,
extending through the wards of cities, through towns and villages,
across farming countrysides. The Woman’s Committee of the Council,
described at more length in the chapter on “The Work of Women for the
War,” collaborated constantly, organizing the women of every community
for any sort of war work they could do. While the functioning of the
Councils, State, County and Community, was kept flexible and responsive
to local initiative and local conditions, their most important work was
that of translating into action those war policies of the Government
that called for the coöperation of the people. Through them were made
effective such nation-wide movements as the conservation of food and
coal, the increasing of food production, the mobilization of industry,
the selling of bonds and war stamps, the marshalling of labor, while
there was hardly a war effort of the Government of any sort in which
they did not give aid. So remarkable and important has been this
unifying of the nation by means of the system brought into life for war
purposes by the Council of National Defense that it is likely to remain
as a permanent and useful feature of the life of the country in the
coming years of peace.
Throughout all the many services of the Council of National Defense
during the war, its organization of war machinery, its mobilization
of material resources, its bringing together of leaders in all phases
of national life and showing them how they could aid the country, its
vital work in enabling the humblest individual, and all the individuals
in the nation, to become efficient in action for the war, the two most
conspicuous features are, the voluntary character of all the effort
and the universal willingness of the equally universal coöperation.
Of all the vast and varied services which it commanded, from captains
of industry and leaders of science to the committee heads in little
country towns, practically all, except those of its office staff and
clerical assistance, were given gladly to the nation for the sake of
love of country and belief in American ideals. And the result proved,
in the words of President Wilson, “beyond all question that the highest
and best form of efficiency is the spontaneous coöperation of a free
people.”