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WWI Supplying The American And Allied Armed Forces

Armaments, equipment, provisions, and other supplies required a massive commitment of finances and raw materials. American agriculture and industry focused on increasing productivity, while civilians conserved scarce resources in support of the war effort.

Government And Industry

Wartime demands did not replace private enterprise with socialism, but they did force a significant increase of government intervention in the economy and private lives of citizens. This expansion was gradual and required the forging of a close partnership between government and industry. In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson established a Council of National Defense. This panel of experts from business, finance, and labor functioned in a purely advisory capacity. After U.S. entry in the war in 1917, however, the increased demand for war material made both government and industry willing to consider centralized coordination of production.

In July 1917, Congress created the War Industries Board (WIB). The President soon gave it the power to rank manufacturers so that those most essential to the war received raw materials first. The WIB also set prices, wages, and production standards. The WIB was abolished when the war ended, but the federal government later expanded on this model of government-industry cooperation and coordination during the Great Depression with the National Recovery Administration and during World War II with the Office of War Production and a host of new agencies. In addition to profits from war production, defense manufacturers benefited from generous government loans and credits extended to them through the new War Finance Corporation (WFC). Taxes partly funded the WFC's subsidies, but Treasury bonds, sold in nationwide Liberty Loan drives, financed the bulk of the war effort.

The government exercised considerable direct authority over the production and distribution of food, fuel and other vital raw materials. In the most extreme case, the federal government temporarily took control of the railroad lines in the winter of 1917-18 and the telegraph lines in the summer of 1918. Both of these were emergency measures necessary to fend off shutdowns of the nation's transportation and communication systems. Short of a crisis, however, the Lever Food and Fuel Act of 1917 gave the President near dictatorial powers to regulate the nation's farms, coal mines, and the industries that would consume these resources. The National Food Administration and the National Fuel Administration rejected strict rationing in favor of higher prices to stimulate production. They also relied on patriotic appeals to citizens and workers in and owners of nondefense industries to voluntarily conserve food and fuel that could be diverted to the war effort.

In addition to industrialists and farmers, organized labor was also an important partner in the war effort. Established unions, especially affiliates of the American Federation of Labor, signed a "no strike" pledge in exchange for promises of government protection of minimum wages, maximum hours, and the right to organize and bargain collectively. President Wilson instituted these protections by executive order in April 1918, creating the National War Labor Board (NWLB). The Board intervened repeatedly in several sectors of the economy to mediate disputes and help draw up new contracts, which increased the leverage of workers. The end of the war brought an abrupt end to the NWLB. Federal and state governments and industry reverted to their prewar, often antiunion, policies. Union continued to grow through the 1920s across the country, however, in addition, the NWLB of World War I served as precedent for the permanent National Labor Relations Board created in 1935 during the New Deal.

World War I represented a turning point in Americans' views on the proper role of government. In the short-term, the war represented the climax of the nationwide Progressive era regulatory impulse. By the time of World War I, Progressives had won federal legislation to restrain industry for the sake of competition, the interests of workers, and the safety of consumers. While the necessity of wartime mobilization required significant government coordination, in general, a cooperative partnership between government and capital replaced punitive regulation. This does not mean that either the overall scope of bureaucracy or public expectations about the proper role of government necessarily returned to what they had been before the war. On balance, while Americans may have tired of wartime taxation and restrictions, by the end of the war, they had also come to accept and expect a greater role for government in their everyday lives. The question was not so much if the federal and state governments would be active, but rather in what areas and on whose behalf they would act. In the 1920s, while the federal government slashed the military budget, lowered taxes, and gave business a freer hand, it also created new subsidies and protective tariffs on imports to help American agriculture and industry, enforced the Eighteenth Amendment's prohibition on alcohol, and ratcheted up restrictions on immigration and political radicalism.

The Red Cross

Private charitable organizations helped federal and state agencies sustain the comprehensive and well-coordinated campaign to support the war. These organizations did more than the government could on its own. They raised funds, collected raw materials, sent care packages to the doughboys, cared for the wounded in stateside hospitals, and dispatched volunteers to France to tend to Allied and American troops and the war-weary civilian population. The outbreak of war inspired a wave of voluntarism, but in so doing, it added greater urgency and legitimacy to a decades-long Progressive social reform crusade. Since the turn of the century, middle and upper class white men and women, fearing the consequences of modernization and urbanization, had devoted themselves to the eradication of vice and the edification of the population. Reformers cracked down on prostitution and gambling in the booming cities.

Middle class white women had been the backbone of prohibition and public education movements. They did the bulk of the charitable work during the war. On the one hand, such charitable work was consistent with the turn of the century gender expectations, which viewed women as natural "mothers" of society. On the other hand, wartime service allowed women to assume more publicly visible roles of authority and thus stretch traditional boundaries.

The Red Cross was the principle wartime charitable organization. Clara Barton, a former Civil War nurse and international philanthropist, had founded the American branch of International Red Cross in 1881. The Red Cross's mission was to care for the wounded and sick in times of war and natural disaster. Upper class women joined the ranks of the Red Cross prior to World War I, but the organization became a truly powerful force with the outbreak of the conflict. Most of these volunteers were from the economic and social elite of their communities. They were able to contribute time and money and had the prestige to persuade others to do the same. The Red Cross also received a boost from government propaganda posters exhorting viewers to "Help the Red Cross". The Red Cross also encouraged the purchase of Liberty Bonds.

Funding The War Effort

One of the main challenges for charitable organizations and government agencies was to raise the enormous sums of money needed to fund the war effort. During the war, the United States spent $35.5 billion, or 9 percent of the Gross Domestic Product to pay farmers and industrialists for everything the American and Allied Armies needed. In part, the revenue came from state and federal taxes, especially the federal income tax, recently authorized by the Sixteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1913. Wartime taxation, however, only accounted for one-third of the $35.5 billion budget. Civilian purchases of U.S. Treasury Liberty and Victory Bonds and War Savings Stamps accounted for the other two thirds of revenue. The Treasury issued the bonds and stamps and used the proceeds to provide loans to defense-related industries. Generating funds through bond sales rather than taxation seemed more expeditious and politically palatable. It also gave Americans a way of directly contributing to the war effort. The Treasury sponsored national Liberty Bond drives and recruited sports heroes, movie stars, and the "Four Minute Men" to extol the virtues of Liberty Bonds.

The most effective advertisement, however, were the propaganda posters promoting bonds, with patriotic images and slogans such as "For Home and Country" and "Halt the Hun". Americans clearly got the message. Private individuals, banks, and small businesses purchased more than $21 billion worth of bonds and savings stamps between 1917 and 1918. The government's approach to finance met the immediate goal of funding the war, but it also had two unintended economic consequences. First, relying on public borrowing in the form of government bonds, rather than taxation, contributed to the inflationary spiral that plagued the American economy during and immediately after the war. This was exactly the opposite of what government planners had hoped would happen. They theorized that if citizens invested in bonds rather than buying consumer items, that would help prevent shortages of goods and dampen inflationary pressures. In practice, however, private citizens and businesses used bonds as collateral to obtain bank loans. As a result, demand for scarce consumer goods increased. The country's money supply ballooned, a sure recipe for inflation, skyrocketing prices, and devalued currency. The second and most lasting effect of the system of wartime finance was to accustom Americans to a permanently expanded federal budget and to the income tax rather than excise or consumption taxes as the means to pay for it.

Adding Coal And Gasoline To The Menu

Since the Napoleonic era, generals have quipped that an army runs on its stomach. In World War I, military planners added coal and gasoline to the menu. Indeed, food and fuel topped the list of raw materials that Americans had to produce and conserve to sustain the American, British, and French war machines. The military also consumed tons of textile goods in the form of uniforms, socks, blankets, tents, and medical dressings. All the while, the civilian population of America also had to be fed, clothed, and kept warm. Managing the supply of food and fuel were such important tasks that the federal and state government came to exercise more direct control over those commodities than they did with other elements of the mobilization effort. In August 1917, Congress passed the Lever Food and Fuel Act, which gave President Wilson near dictatorial authority, had he chosen to exercise it, to regulate supplies and prices of food and fuel. It also permitted him to compel civilian and industrial rationing of food and fuel.

Wilson delegated regulatory responsibility to the new U.S. Food Administration and the U.S. Fuel Administration, both of which had branches in every state. With few exceptions, the federal and state Food and Fuel administrations preferred to rely on voluntary cooperation by farmers and industry. The government also encouraged the general population to join in the patriotic emphasis on production and conservation. Propaganda poster with titles like "The Seeds of Victory Insure the Fruits of Peace" and "Uncle Sam Need That Extra Shoveful" convinced Americans that by planting a garden of Victory cabbage or saving a shovelfull of coal they could be a vital part of the war effort. Full-scale rationing was limited to sugar, and this did not happen until the last months of the war. Food service businesses using more than three barrels of flour per month also had to be licensed. On balance, however, the emphasis was on a voluntary "Feed Yourself" campaign aimed at farmers and other citizens.

In addition to growing more food, Americans learned to preserve comestibles by preserving them and by substituting less expensive alternatives for scarce ingredients. Institutional cafeterias went to great lengths to eliminate waste and reuse garbage. At home, women dried, pickled, and canned all the produce. They also created "Liberty" versions of breads, cakes, and other creations that substituted molasses and honey for sugar, oatmeal for flour, and lard for butter.

During the winter of 1917-18, cold weather, a coal shortage, and a near breakdown of the east coast rail system combined to threatened a disaster for the national economy and the war effort. In response, the Fuel Administration closed all nonwar industries, including many factories and businesses, between January and March 1918 in order to save coal and to free up rail cars.

Academic Affairs Library (2002). North Carolinians and the Great War. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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