The Life of Herbert Hoover, vol. 3, Master of Emergencies, 1917-1918.

• Author: Schaffer, Ronald

This volume, covering the period of American belligerency, examines Herbert Hoover's activities as he headed the United States Food Administration while continuing to oversee the Commission for Relief in Belgium. As in the earlier parts of this biography, George H. Nash carefully leads the reader through masses of intricate detail, evaluates his subject sympathetically and critically, and relates Hoover's behavior as a public figure to his personality as well as to circumstances he faced. What emerges is the picture of formidable bureaucrat, a believer in tempered market capitalism, grappling With the problems of a command economy. At the same time, Nash presents an enlightening, if not entirely inspiring, picture of the way Americans on the home front undertook the burdens of the Great War. His work should be of particular interest to scholars and general readers of presidential biography and history, to persons interested in economic mobilization during World War I, and to students of bureaucratic turf warfare.

Hoover's task was highly demanding. He had to create, staff, and run an organization that would feed the American army, supply the Allies with much of their meat and grain, and assure adequate food supplies to American civilians--all this after a poor harvest and with a defective transportation system and while German submarines were doing their best to keep food from crossing the Atlantic. The obstacles at home were formidable, too: "progressives" wary of allocating power to the businessmen who worked for the Food Administration; politicians and other bureaucratic leaders suspicious of Hoover himself; workers who Hoover feared might revolt if not given adequate supplies of bread; producers and middlemen who dealt With one another as adversaries; and large differences in the willingness of Americans to sacrifice for their country, with many people viewing the war as an opportunity to fill their pockets.

Although Nash does not say so, the food administrator's tactics were in many respects typical of the way the Wilson administration mobilized the American economy. Like the administration as a whole, Hoover created a system of centralized management, which he considered almost a variety of socialism, but with built-in mechanisms that would make it self-destruct when the war ended. For instance, he staffed his organization with borrowed business executives who would go back to their companies when the emergency had passed. Like other...