AMERICAN FOOD ADMINISTRATION: PRINCIPLES, CONSERVATION, CONTROL OF
EXPORTS
Put yourself in Hoover's place when the President called him back from
the Belgian relief work to be the Food Administrator of the United
States. Here were a hundred million people unaccustomed to government
interference with their personal affairs, above all of their affairs of
stomach and pocketbook, their affairs of personal habit and private
business. What would you think of your chance to last long as a new kind
of government official, set up in defiance of all American precedent and
tradition of personal liberty, to say how much and what kinds of food
the people were to eat and how the business affairs of all millers and
bakers, all commission men and wholesale grocers and all food
manufacturers were to be run?
The stomach and private business of Americans are the seats of unusually
many and delicate nerve-endings. To hit the American household in the
stomach and the American business man in the pocketbook is to invite a
prompt, violent and painful reaction. Yet this is what President Wilson
asked Hoover to do and to face.
Hoover realized the full possibilities of the situation. He had seen the
rapid succession of the food dictators in each of the European
countries; their average duration of life--as food dictators--was a
little less than six months. "I don't want to be food dictator for the
American people," he said, plaintively, a few days after the President
had announced what he wanted him to do. "The man who accepts such a job
will lie on the barbed wire of the first line of intrenchments."
But besides trying to put yourself in Hoover's place, try also to put
yourself again in your own place in those great days of America's first
entry into the war, and you will get another, and a less terrifying,
view of the situation. Remember your feelings of those days as a
per-fervid patriotic American, not only ready but eager to play your
part in your country's cause. Some of you could carry arms; some could
lend sons to the khaki ranks and daughters to the Red Cross uniform.
Some could go to Washington for a dollar a year. Yet many could, for one
sufficient reason or another, do none of these things. But all could
help dig trenches at home right through the kitchen and dining-room. You
could help save food if food was to help win the war. You could help
remodel temporarily the whole food business and food use of the country
to the great advantage of America and the Allies in their struggle for
victory.
Well, Hoover put himself both in your place and in his own place. And he
thought that the food of America could be administered--not
dictated--successfully, if we would try to do it in a way consonant with
the genius of American people. Hoover had had in his Belgian relief work
an experience with the heart of America. He knew he could rely on it. He
also believed he could rely on the brain of America.
So he put the matter of food control fairly and squarely up to the
people. He asked them to make the fundamental decisions. He showed them
the need and the way to meet it, and asked them to follow him. He
depended on the reasoned mass consent and action of the nation, the
truly democratic decision of the country on a question put openly and
clearly before it. It could choose to do or not do. The deciding was
really with it. If it saw as he did it would act with him.
He was to be no food dictator, as the German food-minister was, nor even
a food controller as the English food-minister was officially named. He
was to be a food administrator for the people, in response to its needs
and desire for making wise food management help in winning the war. So
while the food controllers of the European countries relied chiefly on
government regulation to effect the necessary food conservation and
control, the American food administrator trusted chiefly to direct
appeal to the people and their voluntary response.
And the response came. Even where governmental regulation seemed
necessary, as it did especially in relation to trade and manufacturing
practices, he attempted to have it accepted by voluntary agreement of
the groups most immediately concerned before announcing or enforcing it.
To do this he held conference after conference in Washington with groups
of from a score to several hundreds of men representing personally, and
in addition sometimes by appointment from organized food-trade or
food-producing groups, the point of view of those most affected by the
proposed regulation. He explained to these men the needs of the nation,
and their special opportunities and duties to serve these needs. He put
their self-interest and the interests of their country side by side in
front of them. He showed them that the decision of the war did not rest
alone with the men in the trenches: that there were service and
sacrifice to render at home in shops and stores and counting rooms as
well as on the fighting lines. He debated methods and probable results
with them. He laid all his cards on the table and, almost always, he
won. He won their confidence in his fairness, their admiration for his
knowledge and resourcefulness and their respect for his devotion to the
national cause.
But he knew always that he was playing with dynamite. He could not see
or talk to everybody at once, and the news that ran swiftly over the
country about what the Food Administration was doing or going to do was
not always the truth, but it always got listened to. And the first
reaction to it was likely to be one of indignant opposition. This was
well expressed by the cartoon of black Matilda in the kitchen: "Mistah
Hoover goin' to show me how to cook cawn pone? Well, I reckin not." So
with the business man. But the second reaction, the one that came after
listening to Hoover and thinking about the matter overnight, was
different.
I remember a group of large buyers and sellers of grain, men who dealt
on the grain exchanges of the Middle West, who came to Washington, not
at his request but on their own determination to have it out with this
man who was threatening to interfere seriously with their affairs;
indeed, who threatened to put many of them out of business for the
period of the war. They came with big sticks. They met in the morning
for conference with the object of their wrath. Then they went off and
met in the afternoon together. They came the next morning for another
conference. And they met again alone to pass some resolutions. The
resolutions commended the Food Administrator for the regulations he was
about to put into force, and recommended that they be made more drastic
than he had originally suggested!
But among the hundred million people of the United States there were
some who did not justify Hoover's belief in American patriotism and
American heart. Just as there were some among the seven million Belgians
who tried to cheat their benefactors and their countrymen by forging
extra ration cards. So when a measure to regulate some great food trade
or industry, as the wholesale grocery business or milling, was agreed to
and honestly lived up to by eighty-five or ninety per cent of the men
concerned, and for these could have been left on a wholly voluntary
basis, there were a few for whom the regulations had to be legally
formulated and energetically enforced. They were the ones who made the
reluctant gifts to the American Red Cross, which was the Food
Administrator's favorite form of penalization, when he did not have to
go to the extreme of putting persistent profiteers out of business.
The Food Control Law, passed by Congress in August, 1917, under which
the Food Administrator, acting for the President, derived his authority,
was a perfectly real law, but it left great gaps in the control. For
example, it exempted from its license regulations, which were the chief
means of direct legal control, all food producers (farmers,
stock-growers, et al.) and all retailers doing a business of less than
$100,000 a year. It did not give any authority for a direct fixing of
maximum prices. It carried comparatively few penalty provisions. But it
did provide authority for three primary agencies of control: First, the
licensing of all food manufacturers, jobbers, and wholesalers, and of
retailers doing business of more than $100,000 annually, with the
prescription of regulations which the licensees should observe; second,
the purchase and sale of foodstuffs by the Government; and, third, the
legal entering into agreements with food producers, manufacturers or
distributors, which if made only between the members of these groups
themselves would have been violations of the anti-trust laws. All of
these powers contributed their share to the success of what was one of
the most important features of the food control and one to which Hoover
devoted most determined and continuous effort, namely, the radical
cutting out, or at least, down, of speculative and middleman profits.
But with the limited authority of the Food Administrator it was only
through the voluntary cooeperation of the people and food trades that
these three kinds of powers were made really effective.
The most conspicuous features of the voluntary cooeperation which Hoover
was able to obtain from the people and the food-trades by his
conferences, his organization of the states, and his great popular
propaganda, were those connected with what was called "food
conservation," by which was meant a general economy in food use, an
elimination of waste, and an actual temporary modification of national
food habits by an increased use of fish and vegetable proteins and fats
and lessened use of meat and animal fats, a considerable substitution of
corn and other grains for wheat, and the general use of a wheat flour
containing in it much more of the total substance of the wheat grain
than is contained in the usual "patent" flour.
It was with the great campaign for food conservation, too, that the Food
Administration really started its work, beginning it as voluntary and
unofficial war service. For although consideration of the Food Control
Act began before the House Committee on Agriculture about April 21, it
was not until August 10 that the bill became a law. On the same day, the
President issued an Executive Order establishing a United States Food
Administration and appointing Herbert Hoover to be United States Food
Administrator. Hoover accepted the appointment with the proviso that he
should receive no salary and that he should be allowed to build up a
staff on the same volunteer basis.
But long before this, indeed immediately after the May consultation
with Hoover for which he had been asked to come from Europe to
Washington, President Wilson had announced a tentative program of
stimulation of food production and conservation of food supply. The need
was urgent, and the country could not wait for Congressional action.
There was really a war on and there was an imperative need of fighting,
and fighting immediately and hard in all the various and unusual ways in
which modern war is fought. One of these ways which the President
recognized and which Hoover, by virtue of his illuminating experience in
Europe, knew as no other American did, was the food way. The President
wanted something started. So again, just as at the beginning of the
Belgian relief work in October, 1914, Hoover found himself in the
position of being asked to begin work without the necessary support
behind him; in the Belgian case he lacked money, in the present case he
lacked authority. But in both cases action was needed at once and in
both cases Hoover got action. He is a devotee of action.
Thus, before there was an official food administration there was an
unofficial beginning of what became the food administration's most
characteristic and most widely known undertaking, its campaign for food
conservation. It was the most characteristic, for it depended for
success entirely on popular consent and patriotic response. It was the
most widely known, for it touched every home and housewife, every man
and child at the daily sitting down at table. In planning and beginning
it Hoover had the special assistance of his old-time college chum and
lifelong friend, President Ray Lyman Wilbur, of Stanford University, who
brought to this particular undertaking a far-reaching vision, a
convinced belief in democratic possibilities, and a constructive mind of
unusual order.
It is well not to forget that the first appeal for food-saving was made
primarily to the women of the land. And theirs was the first great
response. From the very first days, in May, of general discussion in the
press of the certain need of food-saving in America if the Allies were
to be provided with sufficient supplies to maintain their armies and
civilian populations in the health, strength, and confidence necessary
to the fullest development of their war strength, the voluntary offers
of assistance from women and women's organizations, and inquiries about
how best to give it, had been pouring into Hoover's temporary offices in
Washington. And through all of the Food Administration work the women of
America played a conspicuous part, both as heads of divisions in the
Washington and State offices and as uncounted official and unofficial
helpers in county and town organizations and in the households of the
country.
The picturesque details of the great campaign for food conservation and
its results on the intimate habits of the people are too fresh in the
memories of us all to need repeating here. A whole-hearted cooeperation
by the press of the country; an avalanche of public appeal and advice by
placards, posters, motion pictures, and speakers; an active support by
churches, fraternal organizations, colleges and schools; the remodeling
of the service of hotels, restaurants and dining-cars; and a pledging
of twelve out of the twenty million households of the country to follow
the requests and suggestions of the Food Administration, resulting in
wheatless and meatless meals, limited sugar and butter, the "clean
plate," and strict attention to reducing all household waste of
food--all these are the well-remembered happenings of yesterday. The
results gave the answer, Yes, to Hoover's oft-repeated questions to the
nation: Can we not do as a democracy what Germany is doing as an
autocracy? Can we not do it better?
These results are impossible to measure by mere statistics. Figures
cannot express the satisfied consciences, the education in wise and
economical food use, and the feeling of a daily participation by all of
the people in personally helping to win the war, which was a
psychological contribution of great importance to the Government's
efforts to put the whole strength of the nation into the struggle. Nor
can the results to the Allies be measured in figures. But their
significance can be suggested by the contents of a cablegram which Lord
Rhondda, the English Food Controller, sent to Hoover in January, 1918.
This cable, in part, was as follows:
"Unless you are able to send the Allies at least 75,000,000 bushels
of wheat over and above what you have exported up to January first,
and in addition to the total exportable surplus from Canada, I
cannot take the responsibility of assuring our people that there
will be food enough to win the war. Imperative necessity compels me
to cable you in this blunt way. No one knows better than I that the
American people, regardless of national and individual sacrifice,
have so far refused nothing that is needed for the war, but it now
lies with America to decide whether or not the Allies in Europe
shall have enough bread to hold out until the United States is able
to throw its force into the field...."
I remember very well the thrill and the shock that ran through the Food
Administration staff when that cable came. It seemed as if no more could
be done than was already being done. The breathless question was: Could
Hoover do the impossible? I suppose his question to himself was: Could
the American people do it? He did not hesitate either in his belief or
his action. His prompt reply was:
"We will export every grain that the American people save from
their normal consumption. We believe our people will not fail to
meet the emergency."
He then appealed to the people to intensify their conservation of wheat.
The President issued a special proclamation to the same end. The wheat
was saved and sent--and the threatened breakdown of the Allied war
effort was averted.
Hoover felt justified in July, 1918, in making an attempt to indicate
the results of food conservation during the preceding twelve months by
analyzing the statistics of food exports he had been able to make to the
Allies. It was, of course, primarily for the sake of providing this
indispensable food support to the Allies that food conservation was so
earnestly pushed. The control of these exports and the elimination of
speculative profits and the stabilization of prices in connection with
home purchases were the special features in the general program of food
administration that were pushed primarily for the sake of our own
people.
In a formal report by letter to the President on July 18, 1918, Hoover
showed that the exports of meats, fats and dairy products in the past
twelve months had been about twice as much as the average for the years
just preceding the war, and fifty per cent more than in the year July,
1916--June, 1917. Of cereals and cereal products our shipments to the
Allies were a third more than in the year July, 1916--June, 1917.
"It is interesting to note," writes the Food Administrator, "that
since the urgent request of the Allied food controllers early in
the year for a further shipment of 75,000,000 bushels from our 1917
wheat than originally planned, we shall have shipped to Europe, or
have _en route_, nearly 85,000,000 bushels. At the time of this
request our surplus was more than exhausted. The accomplishment of
our people in this matter stands out even more clearly if we bear
in mind that we had available in the fiscal year 1916-17 from net
carry-over and as surplus over our normal consumption about
200,000,000 bushels of wheat which we were able to export that year
without trenching on our home loaf. This last year, however, owing
to the large failure of the 1917 wheat crop, we had available from
net carry-over and production and imports only just about our
normal consumption. Therefore our wheat shipments to allied
destinations represent approximately savings from our own wheat
bread.
"These figures, however, do not fully convey the volume of the
effort and sacrifice made during the past year by the whole
American people. Despite the magnificent effort of our agricultural
population in planting a much increased acreage in 1917, not only
was there a very large failure in wheat but also, the corn failed
to mature properly and our corn is our dominant crop. We calculate
that the total nutritional production of the country for the fiscal
year just closed was between seven per cent and nine per cent below
the average of the three previous years, our nutritional surplus
for export in those years being about the same amount as the
shrinkage last year. Therefore the consumption and waste of food
have been greatly reduced in every direction during the war.
"I am sure that all the millions of our people, agricultural as
well as urban, who have contributed to these results should feel a
very definite satisfaction that in a year of universal food
shortages in the northern hemisphere all of those people joined
together against Germany have come through into sight of the coming
harvest not only with health and strength fully maintained, but
with only temporary periods of hardship. The European allies have
been compelled to sacrifice more than our own people but we have
not failed to load every steamer since the delays of the storm
months last winter. Our contributions to this end could not have
been accomplished without effort and sacrifice, and it is a matter
for further satisfaction that it has been accomplished voluntarily
and individually. It is difficult to distinguish between various
sections of our people--the homes, public-eating places, food
trades, urban or agricultural populations--in assessing credit for
these results; but no one will deny the dominant part played by the
American women."
The conservation part of the Food Administration's work was picturesque,
conspicuous and important. But it was, of course, only one among the
many of the Administration's activities. On the day of his appointment
Hoover outlined his conception of the functions and aims of the Food
Administration, as follows:
"The hopes of the Food Administration are three-fold. First, to so
guide the trade in the fundamental food commodities as to eliminate
vicious speculation, extortion and wasteful practices and to
stabilize prices in the essential staples. Second, to guard our
exports so that against the world's shortage, we retain sufficient
supplies for our own people and to cooeperate with the Allies to
prevent inflation in prices. And, third, that we stimulate in every
manner within our power the saving of our food in order that we may
increase exports to our Allies to a point which will enable them to
properly provision their armies and to feed their peoples during
the coming winter.
"The Food Administration is called into being to stabilize and not
to disturb conditions and to defend honest enterprise against
illegitimate competition. It has been devised to correct the
abnormalities and abuses that have crept into trade by reason of
the world disturbance 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
cooeperate 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 cooerdination 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 cooerdinating centralization the
possibilities of much good in the stimulation of production and
stabilization of home prices. A Division of Cooerdination 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 Cooerdination 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 Cooerdination 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
Cooerdination 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 Cooerdination of Purchase.
The general plan outlined in this memorandum was the one followed. The
Allied Provisions Export Commission acted as the buying agency for the
Allies and informed the Division of Cooerdination of Purchase of the Food
Administration of the requirements of the Allies; the Food Purchase
Board acted as the recommending buying agency for the Army and Navy and
gave the Food Administration the necessary information as to the
requirements of these agencies. Grains and grain products were not
included in this scheme of buying for the Allies, as this buying was
done through the Food Administration Grain Corporation.
The Allied purchasing was therefore completely controlled. The license
to export was not issued by the War Trade Board until the application
for the same had been approved by the Food Administration, and this
approval would not be given if the rules of its Division of Cooerdination
of Purchase had not been followed. It should be noted that the Food
Administration did not actually complete the transaction of purchase and
sale for any of the commodities. Its function was completed when buyer
and seller had been brought together and the terms of sale agreed upon
and approved by it. The total volume of purchases of all supplies made
under the cooerdination of the various agencies set up by the Food
Administration aggregated over seven and a quarter billion dollars
during the course of its existence.