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The "Clean Plate" Czar, March 16, 2003
This review is from: The Life of Herbert Hoover: Master of Emergencies, 1917-1918 (Hardcover)
It is hard to imagine today, but there was a time not so very long ago when America came perilously close to running out of food. Three years of World War I, European pestilence, international speculation, and the imbalance of American farming and processing interests had taken their toll on the globe's food supply. In the spring of 1917 President Woodrow Wilson became painfully aware that the projected output of American grain and meats would not meet domestic and allied needs for the coming year of the war as the United States entered the fray. Having made the fateful decision to enter the war, Wilson went on to assume even greater powers: the appointment of a czar who would, in effect, tell Americans what and how much they could eat.
It did not take long to identify the candidate for the job. Herbert Hoover, the self-made mining millionaire who coordinated emergency food relief services for Europe during the first three years of the war, returned to America a hero and accepted Wilson's invitation to manage American food. Hoover's personal credentials were impeccable: magnificent administrator, philanthropist, and friend of business. While Hoover the man was acceptable to the Senate, his mandate-outlined in legislation known as the Lever Act-was another matter. The Senate refused to accept price controls, and sent Hoover on his way to battle with what it believed were sufficient restraints.
When one takes the long view of this work, the third volume of Hoover's biography, what gradually dawns on the reader is the sense that Hoover, with an international sense of the size of the crisis, was prepared to execute war powers in ways that had not been seen since Lincoln. Neither the Senate nor the business community had truly taken the measure of this man, though biographer Nash strongly implies that Wilson knew exactly what he was doing and was pleased with the results. Hoover, for his part, saved the western world from starving with a three pronged attack: he essentially usurped the authority of several cabinet departments, he mobilized public opinion, and he stretched the Lever Act through bureaucratic legerdemain into a virtual Magna Carta.
If Congress had balked at price controls on staples such as wheat and pork, Hoover found another means to achieve the same end. Having calculated modest prices for food staples that would avoid inflation and speculation, Hoover found provisions in the Lever Act permitting him to issue government licenses to farmers, granaries, packinghouses, mills and even grocers. Those who refused to operate within the Hoover price structure were refused licenses. To attempt to do business without a license was risky, because Hoover, for all intents and purposes, was also acting secretary of transportation, controlling rail and water priorities. Unions, farmers, and particularly the meat packing trust howled, but Hoover had prepared for that eventuality.
Hoover's heavy-handed methods worked as well as they did because he had wisely joined food conservation to war fervor. One of his first acts as food administrator was a public awareness crusade, pitched specifically at women, to limit portions of food served at meals, to designate national meatless days, to establish new ratios of flours for breads, etc. Millions of households signed pledge cards to observe the Hoover guidelines, and for a time a "clean plate" ethic seized the country. In the face of this domestic crusade, the whining of Swift, Armor, Wilson, and other food producers over reduced profits seemed petty and even unpatriotic. There were a sizable number of Americans who found the entire concept hokey, but Hoover was able to hold together his pantry army just long enough to see through till the end of the war.
There were, of course, many factors Hoover could not control. The British were not pleased with Hoover's mandate that they buy up excess American pork and acquire a taste for it. The army demanded more shipping space for combat troops, limiting Hoover's capacity to export. The winter of 1918 was among the worst in American history, creating massive delays in rail and shipping traffic. And, curiously, the end of the war arrived sooner than Hoover had planned, causing a glut in food supplies. That the war ended when it did may have been a political blessing in disguise for Hoover, for his magnificent balancing act was beginning to crumble. Congress and industry could be caged only so long. But in his eighteen-month tenure the food czar had essentially done what he set out to do: feed the western world without interruption and speculation.
One immediate question is: how did Hoover get away with this? One gets the sense that a lot of government officials rolled over and played dead during Hoover's heyday, such as the Secretary of Agriculture, David Houston. One answer may be that while most officers of government were at least dimly aware of the magnitude of the crisis, they realized that to do what was necessary-usurp commercial powers to an unprecedented degree-would involve the political suicide of the perpetrator, and they were happy to oblige Hoover as he took the fall. Interestingly, Hoover never seemed to have considered his tenure a political risk. On the contrary, he evidently saw his government service as his emergence onto the American political stage, and of course events would show this to be fortuitous. In its description of this tenure of Hoover's public service, the book serves up questions for the volumes to follow: How did Hoover regain his credibility in with Republicans, and major business interests in particular, such that he could be nominated for the presidency in 1928? Another: how did Hoover's wartime experience impact his presidential management of the Depression? And finally, would America of the third millennium accept a "temporary czar" in a national crisis such as the unleashing of weapons of mass destruction? Put another way, is Hoover simply a historical anomaly or a paradigm for future crises?
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