ministrative organizations and the uncertainties or difficulty of the work itself. Before the execution of the programme was far advanced further necessity for coordination was seen, as experience developed shortages in capital, labour, raw materials and transportation, and as it came to be recognized that the whole programme would stand or fall upon the proper adjustment of priorities among war and civilian needs. The disrupting haste due to the imminence of invasion was never present, but the object was to make the American addition to the Allied force suf- ficient in volume to crush the enemy armies.
The General Munitions Board and the various committees on special commodities erected by the Council of National Defense proved themselves less than adequate before midsum- mer, 1917. A common ground for complaint was the fact that many of the committee-men were loaned to the Government by firms that were bidding for contracts, thus placing the committee- men in the embarrassing position of awarding contracts to them- selves. Disappointed bidders complained that there was favour- itism in the granting of awards. More than this, the powers of the General Munitions Board were too small to enable it to have the full knowledge essential to a scheme of priorities.
Purchasing Commission for the Allies. Among the difficulties was the presence in the American market of buyers for all the Allies, spending funds loaned by the United States (under Act of April 24 1917), and bidding both against themselves and against the American army and navy. Allotments of the avail- able supply of raw material were made, not according to needs but upon a competitive basis that produced uneven distribution and rising prices. In Aug. 1917 an agreement was reached with the Allies whereby their buying in the United States was con- centrated in a Purchasing Commission (Bernard M. Baruch, Robert S. Brookings, and Robert S. Lovett), and discussions were started that led eventually to the creation of the Inter-Allied Council on War Purchases and Finance, which began work in London, Dec. 1917. Meanwhile the General Munitions Board had been reorganized upon a broader scale.
War Industries Board. As early as July 1917 President Wilson served notice that price-fixing powers would be needed by the Government, and Congress conferred the necessary authority upon him by Act of Aug. 10 1917. On July 28 the War Industries Board superseded the General Munitions Board, under Frank A. Scott, head of the defunct organization. In addition to the chair- man, the War Industries Board included men active on the Council of National Defense, and the whole personnel of the Purchasing Commission for the Allies. Baruch specially repre- sented raw materials, Brookings was in charge of prices, Lovett concerned himself with priorities, Hugh Frayne represented labour, and there were additional representatives from army and navy. A great change in the civilian conduct of the war followed this reorganization. In Nov. Scott, who retired because of bad health, was succeeded by Daniel Willard, chairman of the Ad- visory Commission of the Council of National Defense; and Willard was in turn succeeded in March by Baruch. The terms of Baruch's authority were conveyed in a letter of March 4 1918 in which President Wilson directed him to make the War In- dustries Board the agent of the Government in all matters of supply. Between March and Nov. 1918 the War Industries Board became a sort of munitions ministry. It continued a part of the Council of National Defense until after the passage of the Over- man Act, May 20 1918. This Act was demanded by the President in Feb., at a time when his critics were calling for a minister of munitions. He insisted that the full control of the war must be left in the hands of the executive, but urged that he be given power, for the good of the cause and the duration of the war, to make rearrangements in existing bureaus, to re-group or create new bureaus, and to transfer appropriations from one agent of Government to another as needed. The War Industries Board was instantly cut loose from the Council of National Defense upon passage of the Act; the Chemical Warfare Service was launched as an independent agency, and the aviation functions of the Signal Corps were transferred to new bureaus of Aircraft Production and Military Aviation, and later to the Air Service.
The chief divisions of the War Industries Board revolved around the Requirements Division, to which representatives of army, navy, emergency fleet, railway administration and Allies reported their programmes of requirement. In order to solve problems of priority m delivery, the board created a great series of Commodity Sections, under the direction of civilian experts who were required to divorce themselves from business, and these Commodity Sections encouraged the creation of War Service Committees by the manufacturers in every line of industry. More than five hundred such committees were finally organized, and brought their testimony as to the capacity of their industries to the Commodity Sections, and thence to the Priorities Division of the Board. After the several requirements were cleared by the Clearance Division, upon order of the Requirements Division, the Price-Fixing Committee was brought into action in cases where it was necessary to hold prices down or to raise them enough to stimulate the needed production. This committee, though interlocked with the War Industries Board, was not a part of it but was a separate creation by the President. The work of determining cost of production, as an element in the fixing of prices, was done for the Price-Fixing Committee by the statisticians of the Federal Trade Commission. A Conservation Commission was created to consult with Commodity Sections and War Service Committees upon the proper distribution of the raw materials remaining for civilian use after the military needs were met. A War Finance Corporation (April 5 1918) was created by Congress and authorized to advance funds to banks to cover loans made by them to munitions makers, in order that these might convert their factories or expand them in the public service. A Resources and Conversion Division made surveys of industries that could be converted to war use; a Facilities Division studied the possibilities of creating new establish- ments for the same purpose. Before the end of the war new construc- tion for non-war use was stopped except in case of minor repairs, and Capital Issues Committees, attached to the Federal Reserve banking system, received authority to pass upon and veto private applications for loans of capital for non-war use. Other sections or divisions were added to complete the war organization of industry under the general supervision of the War Industries Board. (Hand- book of Economic Agencies of the War of 1917, prepared in the His- torical Branch, War Plans Division, General Staff, 1919.)
Other War Boards. Except in the army and navy, the great agencies of procurement grew up outside the permanent depart- ments of Government. The Shipping Board was the first of the new war boards to begin to function. It was followed by the Food Administration (Aug. 10 1917), under the direction of Herbert Hoover, who had conducted a voluntary Food Ad- ministration after May 19, while Congress was debating the pro- jected Food and Fuel Control Act. On Aug. 23 1917, Harry A. Garfield became head of the Fuel Administration. The War Industries Board (July 28) was by no means as pervasive as it became in 1918, but was active from its creation. Under the Trading with the Enemy Act (Oct. 6 1917) the President created on Oct. 12 the War Trade Board, with Vance McCormick as chairman. The function of this body was to supervise imports and exports for the purpose of conserving tonnage, securing the necessary raw materials for the munitions programme, and preventing the enemy from deriving any advantage out of American foreign commerce. The Alien Property Custodian (Oct. 6 1917) transferred alien enemy property into the hands of a trust administrator to prevent the enemy from deriving advantage from American industry. The Railroad Adminis- tration (Dec. 26 1917) was the last of the great war boards to be created. During the spring and summer of 1918 the President held frequent conferences with the heads of the six great boards and the Secretaries of War and Navy, this body being spoken of informally as the " War Cabinet."
Centralization in the War Department. The Navy Department made few changes in its basic organization during the war, but the War Department was in continuous readjustment. The several independent buying agencies were rearranged by func- tions, so that given commodities might be procured for the whole army by a single purchaser, and all military finance pass under a single eye. In Dec. 1917 Maj.-Gen. George W. Goethals was taken into the War Department as Director of Storage and Traffic of the General Staff. The General Staff did not find its wartime chief until Gen. Peyton C. March took charge (March 4 1918), being sent back for that duty from the A.E.F. His im- mediate predecessor as chief-of-staff was Gen. Tasker H. Bliss, who remained in France at the Supreme War Council; Bliss was preceded by Maj.-Gen. Hugh L. Scott, who was in office at the
