Hoover came over to Brussels and, together, we started for Berlin. We discovered von Bissing's chief political adviser, Baron von der Lancken and his principal assistant, Dr. Rieth, on the same train. These were the two men who, after the armistice, proposed to Hoover by wire through our Rotterdam office, to arrange with him for getting food into Germany and received by prompt return wire through the same intermediary: "Mr. Hoover's personal compliments and request to go to hell. If Mr. Hoover has to deal with Germany for the Allies it will at least not be with such a precious pair of scoundrels."

When these gentlemen, who had helped greatly in making our work and life in Belgium very difficult, saw us, they were somewhat confused but finally told us they were called to Berlin for a great conference on the relief work. When we reached Berlin we found three important officers from Great Headquarters in the Hotel Adlon. Two of them we knew well; they had always been fairly friendly to us. The third was General von Sauberzweig, military governor of Brussels at the time of Miss Cavell's execution, and the man of final responsibility for her death. As a result of the excitement in Berlin because of the world-wide indignation over the Cavell affair he had been removed from Brussels by promotion to the Quartermaster Generalship at Great Headquarters!

The Berlin conference of important representatives of all the government departments and the General Staff had been called as a result of the influence of zu Reventlow and the jingoes who wished to break down the Belgian relief. We were not invited; we just happened to be there. We could not attend the conference, but we could work on the outside. We went to Ambassador Gerard for advice. The Allies were pressing the Commission to get the concessions on the 1916 native crop. Our effort to get the food for the children was entirely our own affair. Mr. Gerard advised Hoover to rely entirely on the Commission's reputation for humanity and neutrality; to keep the position of the Allies wholly out of the discussion. But this was indeed only the confirmation by a wise diplomat of the idea of the situation that Hoover already had.

Most of the conference members were against the relief. At the end of the first session Lancken and one of the Headquarters officers told us that things were almost certainly going wrong. They advised Hoover to give up. What he did was to work harder. He forced the officials of the Foreign Office and Interior to hear him. He pictured the horrible consequences to the entire population of Belgium and Occupied France of breaking off the relief, and painted vividly what the effect would be on the neutral world, America, Spain, and Holland in very sight and sound of the catastrophe. He pleaded and reasoned—and won! It was harder than his earlier struggle with Lloyd-George, already entirely well inclined by feelings of humanity, but in each case he had saved the relief. Not only did the conference not destroy the work, but by continued pressure later at Brussels and Great Headquarters we obtained the agreements for an increase of the civilian allotment out of the 1916 French crop and for the importation of some of the Dutch food for the 600,000 suffering children. It was a characteristic Hooverian achievement in the face of imminent disaster.

Hoover and the C. R. B. were in Belgium and France for but one purpose, to feed the people, to save a whole nation from starvation. To them the political aspects of the work were wholly incidental, but they could not be overlooked. So with the Germans disagreeing among themselves, it was the impossibility of France's letting the two and a half million people of her own shut up in the occupied territory starve under any circumstances possible to prevent, and the humanitarian feeling of Great Britain and America, which Hoover, by vivid propaganda, never allowed to cool, and the strength of which he never let the diplomats and army and navy officials lose sight of, that turned the scale and enabled the Commission for Relief in Belgium to continue its work despite all assault and interference. Over and over again it looked like the end, and none of us, even the sanguine Chief, was sure that the next day would not be the last. But the last day did not come until the last day of need had passed, and never from beginning to end did a single commune of all the five thousand of Occupied Belgium and France fail of its daily bread. It was poor bread sometimes, even for war bread, and there were many tomorrows that promised to be breadless, but no one of those tomorrows ever came.



CHAPTER IX

THE RELIEF OF BELGIUM; SCOPE AND METHODS

I have dropped the thread of my tale. Our narrative of the organization of the Commission for Relief in Belgium had brought us only to the time when the Commission was actually ready to work, and we have leaped to the very end of those bitter hard four years. We must make a fresh start.

First, then, as to money. And to understand about the money it is necessary to understand the two-phased character of the relief of Belgium. There was the phase of ravitaillement, the constant provisioning of the whole land; and the phase of secours, the special care of the destitute and the ill and the children.

The ring of steel did not immediately make beggars of all the Belgians enclosed within it. Many of them still had money. But, as I have already said, the Germans would not allow any of this money to go out. It could buy only what was in Belgium. And as Belgium could produce only about half the food it needed to keep its people alive, and only one fourth of the particular kind of foodstuffs that were necessary for bread, and as it was arranged, by control of the mills and bakeries, that these bread-grains should be evenly distributed among all the people, it meant that even though banker this or baron that might have money to buy much more, he could really buy, with all his money, only one fourth as much bread as he needed. There had to be, in other words, a constant bringing in of enough wheat and flour to supply three fourths of the bread-needs of the whole country, and another large fraction of the necessary fats and milk and rice and beans and other staples. This was the ravitaillement.

But even with the food thus brought in there were many persons, and as the days and months and years passed they increased to very many, who had no money to buy this food. They were the destitute, the families of the hundreds of thousands of men thrown out of work by the destruction of the factories and the cessation of all manufacturing and commerce. And there were the Government employees, the artists, the lace-making women and girls, and a whole series of special kinds of wage-earners, with all wages suddenly stopped. To all these the food had to be given without pay. This was the secours.

To obtain the food from America and Argentina and India and wherever else it could be found a constant supply of money in huge amounts was necessary. Hoover realized from the beginning that no income from charity alone could provide it. His first great problem was to assure the Commission of means for the general ravitaillement. He solved the problem but it took time. In the meanwhile the pressure for immediate relief was strong. He began to buy on the credit of a philanthropic organization which had so far no other assets than the private means of its chairman and his friends.

The money, as finally arranged for, came from government subventions about equally divided between England and France, in the form of loans to the Belgian Government, put into the hands of the Commission. Later when the United States came into the war, this country made all the advances. Altogether nearly a billion dollars were spent by the C. R. B. for supplies and their transportation, at an overhead expense of a little more than one half of one per cent. This low overhead is a record in the annals of large philanthropic undertaking, and is a measure of the voluntary service of the organization and of its able management.

For the secours, fifty million dollars worth of gifts in money, food and clothing were collected by the Commission from the charitable people of America and Great Britain. The Belgians themselves inside the country, the provinces, cities, and well-to-do individuals, added, under the stimulus of the tragic situation and under the direction of the great Belgian National Committee, hundreds of millions of francs to the secours funds. Also the Commission and the Belgian National Committee arranged that a small profit should be charged on all the food sold to the Belgians who could pay for it, and this profit, which ran into millions of dollars, was turned into the funds for benevolence. All this created an enormous sum for the secours, which was the real "relief," as benevolence. And this enormous sum was needed, for by the end of the war nearly one-half of all the imprisoned population of over seven million Belgians and two and a half million French were receiving their daily bread wholly or partly on charity. Actually one half of the inhabitants of the great city of Antwerp were at one time in the daily soup and bread lines.

Of the money and goods for benevolence that came from outside sources more than one third came from England and the British Dominions—New Zealand gave more money per capita for Belgian relief than any other country—while the rest came chiefly from the United States, a small fraction coming from other countries. The relief collections in Great Britain were made by a single great benevolent organization called the "National Committee for Relief in Belgium." This Committee, under the chairmanship of the Lord Mayor of London and the active management of Sir William Goode as secretary and Sir Arthur Shirley Benn as treasurer, conducted an impressive continuous campaign of propaganda and solicitation of funds with the result of obtaining about $16,000,000 with which to purchase food and clothing for the Belgian destitute.

But in the United States the C. R. B. itself directly managed the campaign for charity, using its New York office as organizing and receiving headquarters. Part of the work was carried by definitely organized state committees in thirty-seven states and by scattered local committees in almost every county and large city in the country. Ohio, for example, had some form of local organization in eighty out of the eighty-eight counties in the state, and California had ninety local county and city committees all reporting to the central committee.

The American campaign was different from the English one in that instead of asking for money alone, the call was made, at first, chiefly for outright gifts of food, the Commission offering to serve, in connection with this benevolence, as a great collecting, transporting and distributing agency. This resulted in the accumulation of large quantities of foodstuffs of a wide variety of kinds, much of it in the nature of delicacies and luxuries and most of it put up in small packages. Tens of thousands of these packages were sent over to Belgium, but the cry came back from the Commission's workers there that food in this shape was very difficult to handle in any systematic way. It was quickly evident that what was really needed was large consignments in bulk of a few kinds of staple and concentrated foods, which could be shipped in large lots to the various principal distribution centers in Belgium and thence shipped in smaller lots to the secondary or local centers, and there handed out on a definite ration plan.

A number of states very early concentrated their efforts on the loading and sending of "state food ships." California sent the Camino in December, 1914, and in the same month Kansas sent the Hannah loaded with flour contributed by the millers of the state. In January and March, 1915, two Massachusetts relief ships, the Harpalyce (sunk by torpedo or mine on a later relief voyage) and Lynorta, sailed. Oregon and California together sent the Cranley in January, 1915, loaded with food and clothing, and several other similar state ships were sent at later dates. A gift from the Rockefeller Foundation of a million dollars was used to load wholly or in part five relief ships, and the "Millers' Belgian Relief" movement organized and carried through by the editor of the Northwestern Millers, Mr. W. C. Edgar, resulted in the contribution of a full cargo of flour, valued at over $450,000, which left Philadelphia for Rotterdam in February, 1915, in the steamer South Point. The cargo was accompanied by the organizer of the charity, who was able to see personally the working of the methods of the C. R. B. inside of Belgium and the actual distribution of his own relief cargo. His Good Samaritan ship was sunk by a German submarine on her return trip, but fortunately the philanthropist was not on her. He returned by a passenger liner, and was able to tell the people of America what was needed in Belgium, and what America was doing and could further do to help meet the need.

Later, when it became necessary to obtain food from other primary markets in addition to those of America, appeal was specifically made for gifts of money in place of goods. In response to this call various large gifts from wealthy individual donors were made, among them one of $210,000, another of $200,000, and several of $100,000 each, and various large donations came from the efforts of special organizations, notably the Daughters of the American Revolution, the New York Chamber of Commerce, the Cardinal Gibbons' Fund from the Catholic children of America, the Dollar Christmas Fund organized by Mr. Henry Clews, the "Belgian Kiddies, Ltd.," fund, organized by Hoover's brother mining engineers of the country, and, largest of all, the Literary Digest fund of more than half a million dollars collected by the efforts of Mr. R. J. Cuddihy, editor of the Digest, in sums ranging from a few pennies to thousands of dollars from children and their parents all over the land.

By far the greater part of the money that came to the Commission through state committees or through special organizations, or directly from individuals to the New York office, was made up from small sums representing millions of individual givers. And it was a beautiful and an important thing that it was so. The giving not only helped to save Belgium from starvation of the body, but it helped to save America from starvation of the soul. The incidents, pathetic, inspiring, noble, connected with the giving, gave us tears and smiles and heart thrills and thanksgiving for the revelation of the human love of humanity in those neutral days of a distressing pessimism.

But finding the money and food and clothing was but the first great problem for the resourceful C. R. B. chairman to solve. Next came the serious problem of transportation, both overseas and internal. Ships were in pressing demand; they constantly grew fewer in number because of the submarine sinkings, and yet the Commission had constant need of more and more. Some way Hoover and his associates of the New York and London offices got what it was necessary to have, but it was only by a continuous and wearing struggle. Altogether the C. R. B. delivered seven hundred and forty full ship cargoes and fifteen hundred part cargoes of relief food and clothing into its landing port, Rotterdam. The seventy ships under constant charter as a regular C. R. B. fleet crossed the seas under guarantees from both the Allies and Germany of non-molestation by sea raiders or submarines. A few accidents happened, but not more than twenty cargoes were totally or partly lost at sea. Most of the losses came from mines, but a few came from torpedoes fired by German submarines which either did not or would not see the C. R. B. markings on the ships. The signals were plain—conspicuous fifty-foot pennants flying from the mast-heads, great cloth banners stretching along the hull on either side, a large house flag, wide deck cloths, and two huge red-and-white-striped signal balls eight feet in diameter at the top of the masts. All these flags and cloths were white, carrying the Commission's name or initials (C. R. B.) in great red letters. Despite all these, a few too eager or too brutal submarine commanders let fly their torpedoes at these ships of mercy.

Hoover's most serious time in connection with the overseas transportation, and the most critical period as regards supplies in the whole course of the relief was just after the putting into effect by the Germans, in February, 1917, of the unrestricted submarining of all boats found in the so-called prohibited ocean zones. These zones covered all of the waters around the United Kingdom, including all of the English Channel and North Sea. This cut us off entirely from any access to Rotterdam from the West or North. But it also cut Holland off. And between our pressure and that of Holland the German authorities finally arranged for a narrow free, or "safe," north-about route extending from the Dutch coast north to near the Norwegian coast, thence northwest to the Faroe Islands, and thence west to the Atlantic beyond the barred zone. At one point this "safe" zone was only twenty miles wide between the German and English mine-fields in the North Sea and any ship getting a few rods across the line either east or west was in great danger from mines and was exposed to being torpedoed without warning. Imagine the state of mind of a skipper who had not seen the sun for three or four days in a North Sea fog, trying to make out his position accurately enough by dead reckoning to keep his boat in that "safe" channel.

But even this generous concession to the Commission and Holland was not arranged until March 15, and in the six weeks intervening between February 1 and this time we did not land a single cargo in Rotterdam. Belgium suffered in body and was nearly crazed in mind as we and the Belgian relief heads scraped the very floors of our warehouses for the last grains of wheat.

Another almost equally serious interruption in the food deliveries had occurred in the preceding summer (July, 1916), when, without a whisper of warning, Governor General von Bissing's government suddenly tied up our whole canal-boat fleet by an order permitting no Belgian-owned canal boat—although chartered by us—to pass out from Belgium into Holland without depositing the full value of the boat in money before crossing the frontier. The Governor General had reason to fear, he said, that some of the boats that went out would not come back, and he was going to lose no Belgian property subject to German seizure without full compensation. As the boats were worth, roughly, about $5,000 each, and we were using about 500 boats it would have tied up two and a half million dollars of our money to meet this demand, and tied it up in German hands! We simply could not do it. So we began negotiations.

Oh, the innumerable beginnings of negotiations, and oh, the interminable enduring of negotiations, the struggling against form and "system," against obstinate and cruel delay—for delay in food matters in Belgium was always cruel—and sometimes against sheer brutality! How often did we long to say: Here, take these ten million people and feed them or starve them as you will! We quit. We can't go on fighting your floating mines and too eager submarines, your brutal soldiers and more brutal bureaucrats. Live up to your agreements to help us, or at least do not obstruct us; or, if you won't, then formally and officially and publicly before the world kick us out as your arch-jingo, Reventlow, demands.

But we could not say it; we could not risk it; it was too certain to be starving rather than feeding. So we did not say it, but went on with the negotiations. In this particular case of the canal boats we finally compromised by putting up the value of five boats. If one did not come back the Germans were to take out its value and we were to replace the money so as to keep the pot full. Of course all the boats did come back, and now the Belgians and not the Germans have them.

Thus, guarded by guarantees and recognition marks, there came regularly, and mostly safely, across wide oceans and through the dangerous mine-strewn Channel or around the Faroe Islands, the rice from Rangoon, corn from Argentina, beans from Manchuria, and wheat and meat and fats from America at the rate of a hundred thousand tons a month through all the fifty months of the relief. At Rotterdam these precious cargoes were swiftly transhipped into sealed canal boats—a fleet of 500 of them with 35 tugs for towing was in service—and hurried on through the canals of Holland and across the guarded border, and then on to the great central depots in Belgium, and from there again by smaller canal boats and railway cars and horse-drawn carts under all the difficulties of carrying things anywhere in a land where anything and everything available for transport was subject to requisition at any time by an all-controlling military organization, to the local warehouses and soup-kitchens of every one of the 5,000 Belgian and French communes in the occupied territory. And always and ever through all the months and despite all difficulties on water or land the food had to come in time. This was the transportation undertaking of Hoover's C. R. B.

Finally when the food was brought to the end of its journeying it had to be protected from hungry Germans and divided fairly among hungry Belgians. Always the world asked: But don't the Germans get the food? and it still asks: Yes, didn't they? Our truthful answer then and now is: No. And you need not take our answer alone. Ask the British and French foreign offices. They knew almost as much as we did of what was going on inside of the steel ring around Belgium and occupied France. Their intelligence services were wonderful. Remember the guarantees of the German government to us and our protecting ministers and ambassadors, the diplomatic representatives of neutral America and Spain and Holland. The orders of von Bissing and the General Staff were explicit. Official German placards forbidding seizure or interference by German soldiers or officials were on all the canal boats and railway cars and horse carts and on all the warehouses used by the Commission.

Of course there were always minor infractions but there were no great ones. The Germans after the early days of wholesale seizure during the invasion and first few months after it, got but a trifling amount of food out of Belgium and almost none of it came from the imported supplies. Every Belgian was a detective for us in this ceaseless watch for German infractions and we had our own vigilant service of "Inspection and Control" by keen-eyed young Americans moving ceaselessly all over the country and ever checking up consumption and stocks against records of importation.

And this brings us to the American organization inside of Belgium. The New York and London and Rotterdam C. R. B. offices had their hard-working American staffs and all important duties but it was those of us inside the ring that really saw Belgian relief in its pathetic and inspiring details. We were the ones who saw Belgian suffering and bravery, and who were privileged to work side by side with the great native relief organization with its complex of communal and regional and provincial committees, and at its head, the great Comite National, most ably directed by Emile Francqui, whom Hoover had known in China. Thirty-five thousand organized Belgians gave their volunteer service to their countrymen from beginning to end of the long occupation. And many thousands more were similarly engaged in unofficial capacity. We saw the splendid work of the women of Belgium in their great national organizations, the "Little Bees," the "Drop of Milk," the "Discreet Assistance," and all the rest. My wife, who was inside with us, has tried to tell the story of the women of Belgium in another book, but as she rightly says: "The story of Belgium will never be told. That is the word that passes oftenest between us. No one will ever by word of mouth or in writing give it to others in its entirety, or even tell what he himself has seen and felt."

But the Americans inside know it. Its details will be their ineffaceable memories. It is a misfortune that so few Americans could share this experience. For we were never more than thirty-five or forty at a time; the Germans tried to limit us to twenty-five. We were always, in their eyes, potential spies. But we did no spying. We were too busy doing what Herbert Hoover had us there to do. Also we had promised not to spy. But it was a hard struggle to maintain the correctly neutral behavior which we were under obligation to do. And when the end of this strain came, which was when America entered the War, and the inside Americans had to go out, they all, almost to a man, rushed to the trenches to make their protest, with gun in hand, against German Kultur as it had been exemplified under their eyes in Belgium.

Altogether about two hundred Americans represented the C. R. B. at various times inside of Belgium. They were mostly young university men, representing forty different American colleges and universities in their allegiance. A group of twenty Rhodes Scholars whom Hoover hurriedly recruited from Oxford at the beginning of the work was the pioneer lot. All of these two hundred were selected for intelligence, honor, discretion, and idealism. They had to be able, or quickly learn, to speak French. They had to be adaptable and capable of carrying delicate and large responsibility. They were a wonderful lot and they helped prove the fact that either the American kind of university education, or the American inheritance of mental and moral qualities, or the two combined, can justly be a source of American self-congratulation.

They were patient and long-suffering under difficulties and provocation. Ted Curtis, whose grandfather was George William, did, on the occasion of his seventeenth unnecessary arrest by German guards, express his opinion of his last captor in what he thought was such pure Americanese as to be safely beyond German understanding. But when his captor dryly responded in an equally pure argot: "Thanks, old man, the same to youse," he resolved to take all the rest in silence. And it was only after the third stripping to the skin in a cold sentry post that Robert W., a college instructor, made a mild request to the C. R. B. director in Brussels to ask von Bissing's staff to have their rough-handed sleuths conduct their examinations in a warmer room.

The relation of the few Americans in Belgium to the many Belgian relief workers was that of advisors, inspectors and final authorities as to the control and distribution of the food. The Americans were all too few to hand the food out personally to the hosts in the soup lines, at the communal kitchens, and in the long queues with rations cards before the doors of the bakeries and the communal warehouses. They could not personally manage the children's canteens, the discreet assistance to the "ashamed poor," who could not bring themselves to line up for the daily soup and bread, nor the cheap restaurants where meals were served at prices all the way from a fourth to three fourths of their cost. The Belgians did all this, but the Americans were a seeing, helping, advising, and when necessary, finally controlling part of it all.

The mills and bakeries were all under the close control of the Commission and the Belgian National Committee. The sealed canal boats were opened only under the eyes of the Americans. The records of every distributing station were constantly checked by the Americans. They sat at all the meetings of National and Provincial and Regional committees. They raced about the country in all weathers and over all kinds of roads in their much-worn open motor-cars, specially authorized and constantly watched and frequently examined by the Germans, each car carrying the little triangular white and red-lettered C. R. B. flag, that flapped encouragement as it passed, to all the hat-doffing Belgians.

I am constantly asked: What were Hoover's personal duties and work in the relief days? It is a question one cannot answer in two words. His was all the responsibility, his the major planning, the resourceful devising of ways out of difficulty, the generalship. But the details were his also. He kept not only in closest touch with every least as well as greatest phase of the work, but took a personal active part in seeing everything through. Constant conferences with the Allied foreign offices and treasuries, and personal inspection of the young men sent over from America as helpers; swift movements between England and France and Belgium and Germany and America, and trips in the little motor launch about the harbor at Rotterdam examining the warehouses and food ships and floating elevators and canal boats; these were some of his contrasting activities through day following day in all the months and years of the relief.

Hoover had to make his headquarters in London at the Commission's central office. Here he could keep constantly in touch by cable and post with the offices in New York, Rotterdam, and Brussels. The Brussels office was allowed to send and receive German-censored mail three times a week by way of Holland, and we could do a limited amount of censored telegraphing to Rotterdam over the German and Dutch wires and thence to London by English-censored cable. But Hoover came regularly every few weeks to Brussels, taking his chances with mines and careless submarines. These were no slight chances. A Dutch line was allowed by England and Germany to run a boat, presumably unmolested, two or three times a week between Flushing and Thamesmouth. These jumpy little boats, which carried passengers only—the hold was filled with closed empty barrels lashed together to act as a float when trouble came—were the only means of bringing our young American relief workers to Belgium and of Hoover's frequent crossings. After seven of the ten boats belonging to the line had been lost or seriously damaged by mines the thrifty Dutch company suspended operation. We had then to cross secretly by English dispatch boats, protected by destroyers and specially hunted by German submarines.

On the occasion of one of Hoover's crossings two German destroyers lying outside of Flushing harbor ordered the little Dutch boat to accompany them to Zeebrugge for examination. This happened occasionally and was always exciting for the passengers, especially for the diplomatic couriers, who promptly dropped overboard their letter pouches, specially supplied with lead weights and holes to let in the water and thus insure prompt sinking. As the boat and convoying destroyers drew near to Zeebrugge, shells or bombs began to drop on the water around them. Hoover thought at first they were coming from English destroyers aiming at the Germans. But he could see no English boats. Suddenly an explosion came from the water's surface near the boat and the man standing next to him fell with his face smashed by a bomb fragment. Hoover seized him and dragged him around the deck-house to the other side of the boat. Another bomb burst on that side. He then heard the whir of an airplane and looking up saw several English bombing planes. Their intention was excellent, but their aim uncertain. The anti-aircraft guns of the German destroyers soon drove them away, and the convoy came into Zeebrugge harbor where the Dutch boat and passengers were inspected with German thoroughness. On Hoover's identity being revealed by his papers, he was treated with proper courtesy and after several of the passengers had been taken off the boat it was allowed to go on its way to Tilbury.

Hoover enjoyed an extraordinary position in relation to the passport and border regulations of all the countries in and out of which he had to pass in his movements connected with the relief. He was given a freedom in this respect enjoyed by no other man. He moved almost without hindrance and undetained by formalities freely in and out of England, France, Holland, occupied Belgium and France, and Germany itself, with person and traveling bags unexamined. It was a concrete expression of confidence in his integrity and perfect correctness of behavior, that can only be fully understood by those who had to make any movements at all across frontiers in the tense days of the war.

Governor General von Bissing once said to me in Brussels, apropos of certain charges that had been brought to him by his intelligence staff of a questionable behavior on the part of one of our men in Belgium—charges easily proved to be unfounded: "I have entire confidence in Mr. Hoover despite my full knowledge of his intimate acquaintance and association with the British and French Government officials and my conviction that his heart is with our enemies." As a matter of fact Hoover always went to an unnecessary extreme in the way of ridding himself of every scrap of writing each time he approached the Holland-Belgium frontier. He preached absolute honesty, and gave a continuous personal example of that honesty to all the C. R. B. men inside the steel ring.

Each time he came to Brussels all of us came in from the provinces and occupied France and gathered about him while he told us the news of the outside world, and how things were going in the New York and London offices. And then he would talk to us as a brother in the fraternity and exhort us to forget our difficulties and our irritations and play the game well and honestly for the sake of humanity and the honor of America. After the group talks he would listen to the personal troubles, and advise and help each man in his turn. People sometimes ask me why Hoover has such a strong personal hold on all his helpers. The men of the C. R. B. know why.

The Belgian relief and the American food administration and the later and still continuing American relief of Eastern Europe have been called, sometimes, in an apparently critical attitude, "one man" organizations. If by that is meant that there was one man in each of them who was looked up to with limitless admiration, relied on with absolute confidence, and served with entire devotion by all the other men in them, the attribution is correct. No man in any of these organizations—and Hoover gathered about him the best he could get—but recognized him as the natural leader. He was the "one man," not by virtue of any official or artificial rank but by sheer personal superiority in both constructive administrative capacity and effective practical action.

Whenever Hoover came, he tried to keep his presence unknown except to us and Minister Whitlock and the heads of the Belgian organization and the German Government with whom he had to deal. He would not go, if he could help it, to the soup lines and children's canteens. Like many another man of great strength, he is a man of great sensitiveness. He cannot see suffering without suffering himself. And he dislikes thanks. The Belgians were often puzzled, sometimes hurt, by his avoidance of their heart-felt expression of gratitude. Mr. Whitlock was always there and had to be always accessible. So they could thank him and thank America through him. But they rarely had opportunity to thank Hoover.

I remember, though, how their ingenuity baffled him once. He had slipped in quietly, as usual, at dusk one evening by our courier automobile from the Dutch border. But someone passed the word around that night. And all the next day, and for the remaining few days of his stay there went on a silent greeting and thanking of the Commission's chief by thousands and thousands of visiting cards and messages that drifted like snowflakes through the door of the Director's house; engraved cards with warm words of thanks from the nobility and wealthy of Brussels; plainer, printed ones from the middle class folk, and bits of writing paper with pen or pencil-scrawled sentences on them of gratitude and blessing from the "little people." My wife would heap the day's bringing on a table before him each evening and he would finger them over curiously—and try to smile.

When the Armistice had come the Belgian Government tried to thank him. He would accept no decorations. But once again Belgian ingenuity conquered. One day just after the cessation of the fighting he was visiting the King and Queen at La Panne in their simple cottage in that little bit of Belgium that the Germans never reached. After luncheon the members of the Cabinet appeared; they had come by motors from Le Havre. And before them all the King created a new order, without ribbon or button or medal, and made Hoover its only member. He was simply but solemnly ordained "Citizen of the Belgian Nation, and Friend of the Belgian People."

I have spoken only of Belgium. But of the ten million in the occupied regions for whom Hoover waged his fight against starvation, two and a half million were in occupied France. Over in that territory things were harder both for natives and Americans than in Belgium. Under the rigorous control of a brutal and suspicious operating army both French and Americans worked under the most difficult conditions that could be imposed and yet allow the relief to go on at all.

The French population, too, was an especially helpless one, for all the men of military age and qualifications had gone out as the Germans came in. They had time and opportunity to do this; the Belgians had not. Each American was under the special care—and eyes—of a German escort officer. He could only move with him at his side, could only talk to the French committees with his gray-uniformed companion in hearing. He had his meals at the same table, slept in his quarters. The chief representative of the Commission in occupied France had to live at the Great German Headquarters at Charleville on the Meuse. I spent an extraordinary four months there. It is all a dream now but it was, at the time, a reality which no imagination could equal. The Kaiser on his frequent visits, the gray-headed chiefs of the terrible great German military machine, the schneidige younger officers, were all so confident and insolent and so regardless, in those early days of success, of however much of the world might be against them. One night my officer said at dinner: "Portugal came in today. Will it be the United States tomorrow? Well, come on; it's all the same to us." When the United States did come in we Americans were no longer at Headquarters, so what my officer said then I do not know. But I am sure that it was not all the same to him.

And so the untellable relief of Belgium and Northeast France went on with its myriad of heart-breaks and heart-thrills following quickly on each other's heels, its highly elaborated system of organization, its successful machinery of control and distribution, and all, all centering and depending primarily on one man's vision and heart and genius. He had faithful helpers, capable coadjutors. One cannot make comparisons among them, but one of these lieutenants was so long in the work, so effective, so devoted, so regardless of personal sacrifice of means and career and health, that we can mention his name without hesitation as the one to whom, next to the Chief, the men of the C. R. B. and the people of Belgium and France turned, and never in vain, for the inspiration that never let hope die. This is William Babcock Poland, like his chief an engineer of world-wide experience, who served first as assistant director in Belgium, then as director there, and, finally, after Hoover came to America to be its food administrator, director, with headquarters in London, for all the work in Europe.

In April, 1917, America entered the war, and Minister Whitlock came out of Belgium with his shepherded flock of American consuls and relief workers, although a small group of C. R. B. men, with the director, Prentis Gray, remained inside for several weeks longer. In the same month Herbert Hoover heard his next call to war service. For almost immediately after our entrance into the war President Wilson asked him to come to Washington to consult about the food situation. This consultation was the beginning of American food administration. It did not end Belgian relief for Hoover, for the work had still to go on and did go on through all the rest of the war and even for several months of the Armistice period, with the C. R. B. and its Chief still in charge, although Dutch and Spanish neutrals replaced the Americans inside the occupied territory. But the new call was to place a new duty and responsibility on Hoover's broad shoulders. Responding to it, he arrived in New York on the morning of May 3, 1917, and reached Washington the evening of the same day. On the following day he talked with the President and began planning for the administration of American food.



CHAPTER X

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.



CHAPTER XI

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."