AMERICAN FOOD ADMINISTRATION; GENERAL REGULATION, CONTROL OF WHEAT AND
PORK; ORGANIZATION IN THE STATES
In attacking the problem of food control by enforced regulation Hoover
frankly repeatedly described his position as that of one who was
choosing the lesser of two evils; the other and greater one was that of
having no regulation at all. Political economists and others called his
attention constantly to the fact that the old reliable law of supply and
demand would take care of his troubles if he would but let it. If,
because of the great demand, high food prices prevailed, their
prevalence would automatically solve the problem of food shortage. They
would stimulate production and curtail consumption; our people would buy
less and there would be more of a surplus to send to the Allies.
Hoover's answer was that unrestricted sky-rocketing of prices would
certainly curtail consumption, but it would be the consumption by the
poor, the hosts of wage-earners and the small-salaried. It would not cut
down consumption by the rich, and it would promptly lead to sharp class
feeling, widespread popular dissatisfaction and resentment, even revolt.
War time was no time to force any such situation as this.
The remedy offered by supply and demand was one which would only bring
on another and worse illness. But Hoover realized and declared over and
over again that even a necessary interference with the law of supply and
demand was at best an evil. But it was less of an evil, under the
circumstances, than not to interfere with it to some degree. These were
not normal but abnormal times, and regulation by supply and demand is
primarily a process for normal times. And it is a process that requires
time to do its remedial work, and there was no time.
But Hoover did not and does not believe in price-fixing or immediate
government control of commerce where they can be avoided. In his
statement before the Senate Committee on Agriculture in June, 1917, he
said:
"The food administrations of Europe and the powers that they
possess are of the nature of dictatorship, but happily ours is not
their plight.... The tendency there has been for the government to
take over the functions of the middleman, first with one commodity
and then with another, until in the extreme case of Germany
practically all food commodities are taken directly by the
government from the producers and allotted by an iron-clad system
of ticket distribution to the consumer. The whole of the great
distributing agencies, and the financial system which revolved
around them, have been suspended for the war or destroyed for good.
That is the system which is dictatorship, and which, so far as I
can see, this country need never approach.
"In distinction from this, our conception of the problem in the
United States is that we should assemble the voluntary effort of
the people, of the men who represent the great trades; that we
should, in effect, undertake with their cooeperation the regulation
of the distributing machinery of the country in such a manner that
we may restore its function as nearly as may be to a pre-war
basis, and thus eliminate, so far as may be, the evils and failures
which have sprung up. And, at the same time, we propose to mobilize
the spirit of self-denial and self-sacrifice in this country in
order that we may reduce our national waste and our national
expenditure."
The primary basis of the commodity control, that is the control of the
manufacture, wholesale selling, storage, and distribution of foodstuffs
lay in the licensing provisions of the Food Control law. Any handler of
foods, not an immediate producer or a retailer whose gross sales did not
exceed $100,000 a year, could be forced to carry on his business under
license, and authority was provided to issue regulations prescribing
just, reasonable, non-discriminatory and fair storage charges,
commissions, profits, and practices. This license control was the Food
Administration's principal means of enforcing provisions against all
wasteful, unjust, and unreasonable charges and procedures.
But it was far from easy to determine all at once either what trades and
commodities should be taken under control or what kind and degree of
control should be exercised. As Hoover said to the Senate Committee on
Agriculture, using a metaphor springing from his engineering experience:
"It is impossible, in constructing routes and bridges through the
forest of speculation and difficulty to describe in advance the
route and detail of these roads and bridges which we must push
forward from day to day into the unknown."
And, referring again to the same matter in an address before the United
States Chamber of Commerce in September, 1917, he said:
"We shall find as we go on with the war and its increasing economic
disruption, that first one commodity then another will need to be
taken under control. We shall, however, profit by experience if we
lay down no hard and fast rules, but if we deal with each situation
on its merits. So long as demand and supply have free play in a
commodity we had best leave it alone. Our attention to the break in
normal economic control in other commodities must be designed to
repair the break, not to set up new economic systems or theories."
Hoover believed in making haste slowly. But he had to move. The crisis
of the situation was upon us, the dike was already leaking and measures
were demanded which would stop the leak before it became a flood. In the
exigency there was no time for the Food Administrator to devise and
carefully test plans suggested by even the most favored theories of
economists, if these plans offered remedies which would only be
available in an indeterminate future. The scope of the war had
disorganized the life and practices of the whole world, had overthrown
all precedents, shattered all fundamental relations. And on nothing was
its disturbing influence upon the normal more potent than in relation to
food supply.
The means of control by license regulations adopted by the Food
Administration were many and various. From the beginning the stocks of
manufacturers and dealers were limited, so that a continuous and even
distribution might prevent shortage and high prices; contracts for
future delivery were limited again to secure an equal distribution and
lessen the possibility of speculative profits from the rising market.
Wasteful and expensive practices were forbidden. All these means were
capable of rather definite application. But a greater difficulty came in
the equally important and necessary work of limiting profits and
securing a more direct distribution from manufacturer and large food
handler to consumer.
The many regulations and the varying activities necessary to achieve
these needs were mostly looked after by a Division of Distribution and
certain allied divisions, devoting their attention to special groups of
commodities. The principal division was under the immediate direction of
Theodore Whitmarsh, one of the most vigorous and able of Hoover's
volunteer helpers. Under Hoover's direction Whitmarsh and his associates
at the head of the special commodity divisions worked out the manifold
details of a regulatory system which was gradually extended to a most
varied assortment of foodstuffs, trades and manufactures.
At the end of 1918 over 250,000 food-handling corporations, firms, and
individuals were under Food Administration licenses. Meat, fish,
poultry, eggs, butter, milk, potatoes, fresh and dried vegetables, and
fruits, canned goods, the coarse grains and rice, vegetable oils,
coffee, and such various commodities accessory to food-handling, as ice,
ammonia (for ice-making), arsenic (for insecticides), jute bags, sisal,
etc., were under direct control to greater or less extent, except when
in the hands of the actual producers and the ultimate retailers. And by
the indirect means of a wide publicity of "fair prices," and by an
influence exerted through the wholesalers, even the retailers were
brought into some degree of agreement or control in connection with the
Food Administration effort to eliminate unfair dealing and food
profiteering.
But more important than the control of any one of these many foods, or
perhaps than of all of them together, and more discussed both in Food
Administration days and since, was the control of wheat, and, as a part
of it, of flour and bread. Some of the methods and results of food
conservation as especially applied to wheat have already been referred
to, but here we are especially concerned with the methods of
governmental control as applied to this grain.
Hoover had learned in Belgium, and by his observation of the situation
in England and Europe, that the poetic expression that bread is the
staff of life becomes endowed with an intense practical significance to
the food controllers and the peoples in bread-eating countries suffering
from food-shortage. The loudest call of hungry people, their primary
anxiety and the first care of the food-controlling authorities all
converge on wheat. The dietetic regime for a semi-starving people is
strong or weak, appeasing or dangerous, in proportion to the bread it
contains. If the bread ration is normal or sufficient much repression
can be used in the case of other foods. With bread there is life. The
call of the Allies on America was for wheat above all else. More than
one half of the normal dietary of France is composed of wheat bread.
England normally uses less bread and more meat, but in the war time she
found she could lessen meat supply more safely than bread supply. It was
for the possible lack of 75,000,000 bushels of wheat that Lord Rhondda
saw the defeat of the Allies staring him in the face.
The government control of the American wheat as contrasted with its
voluntary conservation, took many forms, touching it as grain, as flour,
and as bread, as object of special stimulation for production, as prior
commodity for transportation, and as export product. But curiously, that
feature of its control for which the Food Administration has been most
subject to ill-considered criticism is one for which the Food
Administration has the least responsibility; this is the
government-established "fair price" to the grower.
The Food Control Law as passed by Congress in August, 1917, contained a
provision, guaranteeing a price of two dollars a bushel for the 1918
wheat crop. It was put in to stimulate production to insure the needed
supply for the war period. And it was intended to benefit the farmer. On
the basis of this the Government would presumably be able, by proper
regulation of the food handlers and commercial practices intermediate
between the producer and consumer, both to assure the farmers of a good
price and the consumer of not being driven to panic and revolt by an
impossible cost of his daily bread. That such a regulation was
absolutely and immediately necessary was obvious from the fact that at
the very time the Food Administration was being organized unofficially
along the lines of conservation propaganda in May, 1917, wheat was
selling in Chicago at $3.25 a bushel and the consumer was paying for his
bread on that basis, although the official estimate of the Department of
Agriculture of the average price actually received by the farmer for his
crop was but $1.44 a bushel.
Congress had provided a government guarantee only for the 1918 crop. At
the time of the organization of the Food Administration the 1917 crop
was on the point of coming to market. It seemed highly desirable for the
sake of the farmers to insure their receipt of a fair price for this
crop, also. Therefore the President appointed a committee composed of
representatives of leading farmers' and consumers' organizations
together with a number of agricultural experts from the agricultural
colleges of the country under the chairmanship of President H. H.
Garfield of Williams College, later U. S. Fuel Administrator, to fix on
a "fair price" for the 1917 crop. The Food Administrator, as publicly
announced by President Wilson at the time, took "no part in the
deliberations of the committee" nor "in any way intimated an opinion
regarding that price."
The Committee in view of the fact that the price for 1918 wheat was
already guaranteed at $2.00--it was later increased by the President to
$2.26--and that any smaller price would undoubtedly lead to a
considerable holding over of 1917 wheat for sale at the 1918 price and
that a higher price would have been dangerously unfair to the consumers,
especially the great body of working men, recommended a "fair price" of
$2.20 a bushel for 1917 wheat. It was a price a little higher than that
guaranteed by England to its farmers, about the same as that adopted by
Germany, and a little less than that guaranteed by France, so desperate
that she was ready to pay anything for production, and was already
forestalling the complaint of consumers by subsidizing the bread. The
President adopted the price as recommended to him by the Committee, but
there was no Congressional guarantee to back it up. So, with the fair
price thus determined by an independent commission, the Food
Administrator proceeded with plans for holding the price of wheat at
this level and reflecting it to the farmer. The principal steps taken to
effect this were:
First, the creation of a government corporation (the U. S. Grain
Corporation) which, acting under the provision of the Food Control Law
authorizing the government to buy and sell foodstuffs, could deal in
wheat and exert its influence in the maintenance of the fair price by
acting as a dominant commercial agency for the buying, selling, and
distribution of wheat.
Second, the licensing of all store handlers and millers of wheat and
controlling them both through voluntary agreements and license
regulations.
Third, the prohibition of trading in futures.
As an illustration of the results quickly obtained by these measures we
may note that while the farmer was getting in the year just before the
war about 27 per cent of the cost of each loaf of bread for the wheat in
it, to which the miller added about 6-1/2 per cent and the middlemen and
bakers the remaining 66-1/2 per cent, and in 1915, after the war began,
the respective proportions were 30 per cent, 11 per cent, and 59 per
cent, in 1918, after the Food Administrator's control was in force, the
farmer got 40 per cent, the miller 3 per cent, and the others 57 per
cent. Or, as another illustration, while in 1917, when there was no food
control the difference between the price of the farmers' wheat and the
flour made from it was $11.00 per barrel this margin during Food
Administration days was about $3.50.
An enumeration of the many and ingenious measures adopted by Hoover and
Julius Barnes, the self-sacrificing and highly efficient head of the
Grain Corporation, to acquit themselves and the Government with fairness
to all interests of the tremendous responsibility and undertaking thus
imposed on them would carry us beyond the limits of our space. These
controllers of the American wheat had in their hands the fate of
nations. The Allies had to be supplied; and the American farmers had to
be stimulated to top effort; and the American consumers, which means the
whole people, had to be kept uninjured in working efficiency and
undismayed by possibility of food panic which would result from
prohibitive prices, or actual shortage. If the war was to be won there
simply had to be wheat enough for all, America and Allies alike, and it
had to be available both as regards distribution and price.
The results of the American wheat control can be summed up in one word:
success. The unwearying labors and undiminished devotion necessary to
achieve this success in face of great difficulties and much criticism
cannot be so readily summed up. But without them the history of the war
would have been a different history. We should never forget this. In the
records of the methods and results of the control lies the matter, all
ready for the competent pen, for an epic of the wheat, the fit third
part of the trilogy that Frank Norris began with "The Octopus" and "The
Pit" and had, at the call of death, to leave unwritten.
Another phase of Hoover's food regulatory activity, concerning which
there was, and still continues to be, much discussion, is that of his
attempt to insure a stimulated production of hogs by a stabilized price
which should well reward the grower and yet not lead to such an
exorbitant cost to the consumer as would have been a dangerous hardship
to our own people and an unfair hold-up of our associates in the war.
Next to wheat, pork products were the American food supplies most
necessary to the Allies.
Hogs are a corn product. The cost of production of hogs depends rather
more upon the price of corn than upon any other factor. Investigation
showed that owing to the violent fluctuations in demand for corn and
hogs during the war, there had been five periods between the beginning
of the war and September, 1917, in which it had been more profitable to
sell corn than to feed it to swine at the price of hogs then
prevailing, while there were only three periods when the reverse was
true. In the preceding eight years there had been only two periods in
which the direct sale of corn was more profitable than feeding it to
swine.
The results of these periods of unprofitable feeding was to retard hog
production, as the grower was discouraged from breeding during those
periods. Hoover therefore decided that the maintenance of a proper
relation between the price of corn and the price of hogs was the best
method of assuring an increased production of pork. Furthermore, the
violent fluctuations in the price of hogs tended to lift the price of
the pork products to the consumer unduly, for at every new rise the
stocks already in the warehouses over the whole country were marked up
and the spread between the consumer and the producer thereby increased.
A stabilization of the price of hogs was therefore as necessary for the
protection of the consumer for the sake of a reduction of this spread as
it was in the case of other foodstuffs.
In order that the swine growers should have an opportunity to
participate in the determination of what method would be most fair and
effective in establishing this stabilization and stimulating production,
a committee of leading producers was asked to investigate the whole
matter. This committee made a report late in October, 1917, which, after
setting out the situation in detail and calling attention to the
imperative need of a stimulation of production, declared that although
hog production for the ten years ending 1916 had been maintained on a
ratio of 11.66 bushels of corn to 100 pounds of hog, there had been but
little profit to the grower on this basis and that it would be desirable
for the sake of stimulation to pay at least the equivalent of 13.33
bushels of corn per hundred pounds of average hog and, if possible, as
much as 14.33 pounds. On this latter ratio the committee believed that
production could be increased fifteen per cent above the normal. The
Committee added an expression of its belief that "the best emergency
method of immediately stabilizing the market and preventing the
premature marketing of light unfinished pigs and breeding stock would be
to establish a minimum emergency price for good to select hogs of
sixteen dollars a hundred pounds on the Chicago market."
As the Food Administrator had no power to fix prices by law, nor to
guarantee a price for the producer backed by money in the U. S. Treasury
as in the case of the wheat guarantee, the only means available to him
to assure a stable minimum price for hogs was to come to an agreement
with the principal buyers both of hogs and the prepared pork products
that they would pay a price which would make this minimum possible. This
was accomplished by Hoover, with the approval of the President, in the
following way: The Allies agreed with the United States that their
purchases of food supplies would be made through the Food Administration
(as already explained earlier in this book). They then agreed with the
Food Administrator that their orders for pork and pork products might be
placed with the packers at prices which would enable the packers to buy
the hogs offered them at not less than the minimum price agreed to
between the Food Administrator and the producers. The orders for our
Army and Navy, and for other large buyers, such as the Belgian Relief
and Red Cross, were also placed through the Food Administration upon the
same price basis. The packers then agreed with the Food Administration
that if these orders were placed with them at the stated prices they
would pay to the producer the minimum price announced by the Food
Administration. The combined orders of these principal buyers called for
from thirty to forty per cent of the pork and pork products produced in
the United States, and the price paid by them would obviously determine
the price for the whole amount.
With this power, derived solely by agreement, and not, as many of the
producers seemed to understand, or rather, misunderstand, by
governmental authority exercised, as in the case of wheat, to establish
a government-backed guarantee, the Food Administrator announced on
November 3, 1917, that:
"The prices (of hogs) so far as we can effect them will not go
below a minimum of about $15.50 per hundredweight for the average
of the packers' droves on the Chicago market until further
notice.... We have had and shall have the advice of a board
composed of practical hog-growers and experts. That board advises
us that the best yardstick to measure the cost of production of
hogs is the cost of corn. The board further advises that the ratio
of corn price to hog price on the average over a series of years
has been about twelve to one (or a little less). In the past when
the ratio has gone lower than twelve to one, the stock of hogs in
the country has decreased. When it was higher than twelve the hogs
have increased. The board has given its judgment that to bring the
stock of hogs back to normal under the present conditions the ratio
should be about thirteen. Therefore, as to the hogs farrowed next
spring, we will try to stabilize the price so that the farmer can
count on getting for each one hundred pounds of hog ready for
market, thirteen times the average cost per bushel of the corn fed
to the hogs.... But let there be no misunderstanding of this
statement. It is not a guarantee backed by money. It is not a
promise by the packers. It is a statement of the intention and
policy of the Food Administration which means to do justice to the
farmer."
The effect of Hoover's action to accomplish the imperatively needed
stimulated production of hogs began to appear by the next July and from
that time on was very marked, the production reaching an increase over
normal of thirty percent. The price assured to the farmers by the Food
Administration was maintained uniformly from November, 1917, to August,
1918. In October, however, a critical situation arose because, by reason
of the growing peace talk, a sharp decline in the price of corn occurred
and this decline spread fear among the growers that a similar reduction
would take place in the price of hogs because of the fixed thirteen to
one corn and hog ratio. A rapid marketing of hogs ensued which broke the
price.
With the Armistice there was an immediate change of attitude on the part
of the Allies who had been trying to build up reserves of pork products
to use in times of possible increased difficulty of transportation. They
now moved promptly toward a reduction of purchases. This made serious
difficulties in maintaining the price to the producers during the months
of December, January, and February. But Hoover's original assurance to
the growers covered these months. It required most vigorous pressure on
his part to compel the Allies to live up to their purchasing agreements.
But he was finally successful in disposing of the material offered by
the growers and thus was able to keep faith with them.
Some criticism of the Food Administration because of this maintenance of
prices was voiced by consumers. But two important things must be
remembered in this connection. In the first place the stabilized price
was established primarily for the sake of stimulating an imperatively
needed increased production. In the second place the assurance of the
Food Administration given to the growers in November, 1917, that it
would do what it could to maintain the price for hogs farrowed in the
spring of 1918 covered sales extending to the spring of 1919. No one
knew that an armistice would come in November, 1918. The only safe plan
was to try to insure a food supply for a reasonably long time in
advance. To have broken the agreement with the producers when the
armistice came would have caused many of them great, even ruinous
losses. Besides it would have been a plain breach of faith. Hoover
would not do it.
In March, 1919, the War Trade Board was no longer willing to continue
its export restrictions. It was only by virtue of these that the Food
Administration had any control of the situation. They were canceled and
from that time on the market was uncontrolled. But by then, the major
hog run was disposed of, and the Food Administration had acquitted
itself of its obligation to the producers.
This is a long and dry story of pigs and corn and difficulty. But I
think it well to tell it, even though it may be dull, because it seems
to be so little known. Hoover's situation vis a vis pigs and producers
and packers in those strenuous days of threatened collapse of an
all-important food supply seems to be too little understood. And this
little understanding has resulted in too much unfair criticism. Now let
us turn to another story with more humans than hogs in it.
Hoover had said, in May, 1917, within a few days after the President had
told him that he wanted him to administer the food of America, as a war
measure: "I conceive that the essence of all special war administration
falls into two phases: first, centralized and single responsibility;
second, delegation of this responsibility to decentralized
administration."
Then let us recall how soon after that we were all assuming some share
in this "decentralized administration." If we had not all become Federal
Food Administrators of states, or county, or city, or rural sub-food
administrators, or even members of food conservation committees or
members of honor ration leagues, we were all at least, household food
administrators. We were all administering, in a new light and with a new
aim, the food we bought or cooked or ate. Hoover, the centralized and
responsible head, had decentralized food administration right down to
each one of us.
This decentralization began with an organization of all the states. The
general responsibility for this work was vested in a particular division
of the Food Administration, directed by John W. Hallowell, a young
engineer and business man who revealed a conspicuous capacity in this
important position. As early as June, inquiry was made of Governors of
the states and of other public officials and prominent men concerning
desirable men who would be willing to volunteer their services in
directing the work of the Food Administration within their state, as
their part in the war work of the nation. Early in July as many as had
been so far selected came to Washington for a first conference with
Hoover, at which plans were made for proceeding with the work within the
states immediately upon the passage of the Food Control Act. By August
10 when the Food Administration was formally established, Federal Food
Administrators were already selected for about half the states. The rest
were soon chosen. Frequent meetings were held in Washington.
At each successive conference with Hoover of these state administrators,
who were able men, experienced in business administration or public
service, their enthusiasm, their confidence in his leadership, their
response to his national ideals, their personal devotion to him, grew.
Hoover's relation to them recalled to me, with leapings of the heart,
those earlier days in Brussels when the eager young men of the C. R. B.
used to come rushing in from the provinces to group themselves around
him and derive fresh inspiration and determination from their contact
with him to see the job through and to see it through cleanly and
fearlessly.
These Federal Food Administrators listened to Hoover in Washington as we
listened to him in Belgium. He stirred their hearts and satisfied their
minds. And they went back to their difficult tasks, with fresh
conviction and renewed strength. And their tasks were truly difficult,
their voluntarily assumed share of the decentralized administration was
a serious one. But they, too, decentralized parts of the administration;
they set up the district and county and city administrations. And they
and their many helpers were the ones who carried food administration
into every market and grocery store and bakery and home. The whole
country, all the people, became a part of the United States Food
Administration.
And that was what Hoover wanted and intended. For he knew that only the
people, all of them working voluntarily together, could really
administer the food of America, as it had to be administered in the
great war emergency that had come to the country.
On the day after the armistice Hoover addressed the Federal Food
Administrators, gathered in Washington, for the last time. In this
address he outlined his attitude toward the future work of the Food
Administration and, even more importantly, toward governmental food
control as a policy, in the following words:
"Our work under the Food Control Act has revolved largely around
the curtailment of speculation and profiteering. This act will
expire at the signing of the peace with Germany, and as it
represents a type of legislation only justified under war
conditions, I do not expect to see its renewal. It has proved of
vital importance under the economic currents and psychology of war.
I do not consider it as of such usefulness in the economic currents
and psychology of peace. Furthermore, it is my belief that the
tendency of all such legislation, except in war, is to an
over-degree to strike at the roots of individual initiative. We
have secured its execution during the war as to the willing
cooeperation of ninety-five per cent of the trades of the country,
but under peace conditions it would degenerate into an harassing
blue law.
"The law has well justified itself under war conditions. The
investigations of our economic division clearly demonstrate that
during the first year of the Food Administration farm prices
steadily increased by fifteen per cent to twenty per cent on
various computations, while wholesale prices decreased from three
per cent to ten per cent, according to the basis of calculation.
Thus middlemen's cost and profits were greatly reduced. This was
due to the large suppression of profiteering and speculation and to
the more orderly trade practices introduced under the law.
"It is my desire that we should all recognize that we have passed a
great milestone in the signing of the armistice; that we must get
upon the path of peace; that therefore we should begin at once to
relax the regulation and control measures of the Food
Administration at every point where they do not open a possibility
of profiteering and speculation. This we cannot and will not permit
so far as our abilities extend until the last day that we have
authority under the law. When we entered upon this work eighteen
months ago our trades were rampant with speculation and
profiteering. This grew mainly from the utterly insensate raids of
Europe on our commodities. I look now for a turn of American food
trades towards conservative and safe business because in this
period that confronts us, with the decreased buying power of our
own people, of uncertainty as to the progress of the world's
politics, with the Government in control of exports and imports, he
would be a foolish man indeed who today started a speculation in
food. This is a complete reversal of the commercial atmosphere that
existed when war began eighteen months ago, and therefore the major
necessity for law in repression of speculative activities is, to my
mind, rapidly passing. It is our duty, however, to exert ourselves
in every direction so to handle our food during reconstruction as
to protect our producers and our consumers and to assure our trade
from chaos and panic."
On the same day that this address was made Hoover began the canceling of
the Food Administration regulations, and this cancellation continued
rapidly through November and December. It had to be done with care to
prevent dangerous disorganization, and some continued control was
necessary during the winter and spring in order to carry out the
agreements of price stabilization entered into between the Food
Administration and the producers and handlers of certain commodities, as
hogs, sugar, rice, and cotton seed and its products. The wheat price
guarantee and control especially provided for by Congress and later
Presidential proclamation remained vested in the United States Grain
Corporation. It will expire on June 30, 1920.
But Hoover could not remain in America to see this demobilization of the
Food Administration through personally. Only ten days after the
armistice he left for Europe, at the request of the President, to direct
the participation of the United States in the imperatively needed relief
of the war-ravaged countries of Eastern Europe. Edgar Rickard, who had
been Hoover's chief personal assistant through all of the Food
Administration work, was appointed by the President as Acting Food
Administrator in Hoover's absence.