Food as Power (Part Two of a Three-Part Series)
Guest Contributor: Brian D. Reese
The departure from Woodrow Wilson’s policy, alongside of Herbert Hoover’s adherence and vision to using the tool of helping others through food supply, is also demonstrated in Hoover’s recollection of the American Peace mission after the First World War. Hoover denoted that as an American representative and member of a peace delegation at the Peace Conferences at Paris in 1918-1919, his mission held great political consequences, beyond the commitment to halt the human desperation and save so many millions from starvation. He argues that his mission had been one of protecting the post-war fledgling roots of attempted democracy in Europe against the factors of “the time, unemployment, anarchy or Communism.”[1] In elaborating on his support for democracy at the conference, Hoover asserts that if peace was to happen in the world, support would be needed for a representative government. Adding to that, Hoover implies that communism was the abyss “into which all governments were in danger of falling when their frantic peoples were driven by the Horsemen of Famine and Pestilence.”[2] These same “Horsemen” had been alluded to in the earlier warnings to Americans of impending dangers if the focus on peace and long-term stability were lost in ignorance of attention to the importance of agricultural production.
Simultaneously, Hoover also describes the attitude that prominent European statesmen had towards American idealism, as well as the views of Wilson during the conference. Hoover points out that he had advised Wilson against traveling to Europe, in spite of the president’s hope to create a “new order” from the New to the Old World and a conception that he possessed the moral ability to push that new order onto a “receptive Europe.”[3] Yet the European statesmen believed that Americans had little part in the war, and had not made an analogous blood sacrifice and were ultimately a “foolish people.”[4]
But Wilson had already expressed intended continual support from the American government in a letter to Hoover, just days before the war’s end in November 1918. Wilson indicates to Hoover, the U.S. Food Administrator, that he realized the need of a sustained program of relief in Belgium was imperative, and that he felt the American people would indeed support such a policy.[5] The president suggested that the effort should proceed as efficiently as possible, and have the spirit of a unified, single organization not intended for profit, but implies that the effort should create the sympathetic bond with the Belgian people, while he sensed the desire of the British and French to assist in the same effort.[6] Though not in complete agreement with Wilson’s international political visions, Hoover replied to the president that the United States Treasury should assist with further expenditures regarding continued work of the Committee for Belgian Relief (CRB), and that prevention of starvation had become and would continue to be critical in the midst of the armistice. At the same time, Hoover suggested that the Belgian government’s need to be involved in assessing the financial needs of materials within the future relief operations. Moreover, Hoover implied that Belgium, once out of danger of famine and beyond the danger of the current war, should be able to stand on its own aided by the temporary help of the food relief, and not continually rely on foreign support as Wilson would agree to do.[7]
Hoover articulated how he viewed the potential of the American position and perspective, through his essay American Individualism, that he penned shortly after his experience in the CRB, and his entrance into the political areas as United States Food Administrator under Wilson. Within the essay, Hoover points out the distinct individualism that Americans alone inherently possessed through the principles and ideology that the United States had developed and built upon, uniquely separating the nation from others. Upon defining this individualism, Hoover argues “If we would have the values of individualism, their stimulation to initiative, to the development of thought and spirituality they must be tempered with that firm fixed ideal of American individualism-an equality of opportunity.” Hoover continued, “If we would have these values we must soften its hardness and stimulate progress through that sense of service that lies in our people.”[8] How Hoover perceived the capacity of the United States culture and what he viewed as the distinct possibility of “individualism” and its resulting elements, provides a sense of understanding in what the nation could offer towards the stability of not only the world, but the human life and possibility.
Both Hoover and his wife Lou Henry had become extensive travelers by 1914, providing a basis of cultures apart from America. As a geological mining engineer, first working in several southwest American states upon graduating from Stanford University in 1895, Hoover would soon be in Australia under the British Berwick, Moreing and Company. By 1899, the couple were based in China, absorbing the culture and language and surviving the Boxer Rebellion while in Tientsin. Later, travels during his mining career between 1902-1913 included New Zealand, Tasmania, Burma, India, Egypt, Italy, Canada, and again the United States and London, England by 1914.
But it is in his time in London, as seen within Hoover’s memoirs of that period, that a strong distinction is indicated between American and British cultures. “The differences between American and Britain were deeper than those between individual citizens. They were differences in approach to life and society,” Hoover relates.[9] He argues that the centuries-long rule by the massive oligarchy, with the hierarchal structure, existed as a perpetual source of both “marvel-and grief.” The oligarchy, Hoover asserts, possessed the power, treasure, and culture and professed to have the God-given responsibilities that lay therein, that encompassed the institution of hegemony.[10] Hoover’s indignation towards the British society describe the predominant cause of “the Empire,” while they expressed the importance of moral conduct and sportsmanship, if interests of that Empire were involved, “often the end justified the means.” He also regularly witnessed the expression “the white man’s burden.”[11]
Hoover implies the exclusiveness and potential of the American culture, in comparison to the British restrictiveness of ascendency and oligarchy amidst their own democracy. This potential that Hoover expresses, through both his American Individualism essay and his description of British society contrasts with American culture, in supporting his view of using U.S. resources and ideology to leverage and implement long-term stability through their ability to supply food to those in need.
Historian David Burner asserts that Hoover in fact had been critical of a British blockade in August 1915 that essentially exasperated an already “war drained” Germany and instigated them to pursue increased aggression.[12] In this case the enemy demonstrated that through a lack of food supplies it would increase negative aims, in a situation of hungry desperation. At the same time, the British had become averse to the CRB operations, while the Germans actually had accommodated the relief organization, signaled by withdrawing from food rationing and non-violation of Belgian crops during 1915. Hoover fell under strong criticism from the British government, including derogatory names from figures such as Lord Kitchener and Winston Churchill, who implied that the Belgian relief had become a “military disaster.” Some favor did emerge however, in part from Walter Hines Page, who along with some other British leaders, liked Hoover, recognizing CRB’s restriction against profiteering and the apparent humanitarian motives.[13]
Relief from the CRB would come to two-million people of Northern France as well in 1915, but with much more ease, in spite of the French government’s refusal to publicly support the relief except through private banks.[14] Hoover expressed the scene of tragic human desperation which he witnessed, of the soldiers and German work camp prisoners returning to France at the conclusion of the war, increased by thousands of refugees from Holland and Belgium. Being the head of the CRB, he discusses in his memoirs how the approach to their relief was similar to that for the Belgians. In a request to the British Foreign Office, Hoover broke down the minimum food supply necessary to maintain human health and the shipping needs to support life, in the French situation.[15] The Allies by the end of the war, the British, French, and Italians, did contribute to a significant amount of finances to the tonnage of relief supplies, despite a continual difficulty in those allies attempting to manage operation apart from the CRB plans.[16] Hoover indicates as well that earlier in the war, the Allies were in constant conflict over both military strategy and food. The prevalent idea of the Allied forces, as Hoover describes, had become one of reducing the food supply to diminish morale. He reiterates his belief that starving women and children is not an effective weapon, pointing out that “stunted bodies and deformed minds in the next generation” were not a stable base to reconstruct a civilization.[17]
It had been obvious to Hoover at the time of the war that soldiers, government officials, munitions workers and farmers in the enemy nations would always be fed, and the main effect from a blockade would be aimed at women and children. Hoover pointed out that the war on the Allied side could never be won through a blockade of food for those women and children, but instead by inhibiting military supply and action for Germany. Realizing that the idea itself had been revolutionary and would not necessarily predominate, he still offered an opinion to offer food aid for Germany to President Wilson.[18] Simultaneously, Hoover specifies, there existed a need to supply the neutral countries who as he emphasizes, did not know from day to day where their food would be coming from. Hoover denotes that the six affected neutral nations disliked the allies just as much as they dreaded the Germans. Yet he had been insistent on providing these people the essential supplies that they lacked rather than letting them suffer from starvation. Making friends with these nations, Hoover implies, had been among the aims while also emphasizing that the Allies, through the food supply relief did not intend to force them into the war.[19]
Hoover asserts within his discussion about food relief and help to the future of both the Allied long-term cause with international relations, the refugee issues of all European nations, and even the foresight of enemy people’s domestic welfare, that unless the present and potential lack of food could be resolved, the issue of millions of malnourished people would perpetually be a menace to mankind. In describing his experience within the CRB and later the American Relief Administration (ARA), he again stresses the importance and worth of the American entity with this relief. He states that his original request to the Red Cross to undertake the Belgian relief had been perceived as too great a burden and in taking on the job himself in 1914, he became determined to accomplish the food supply to Europe, calling it a “free gift of the American people.”[20]
The efforts of America on the domestic front had become imperative in this same effort, not only to convey a national image, but to indeed produce the food relief supply for Europe. Hoover signified that important responsibilities existed at home with coordinating the famine relief supplies during the war. There had to be guarantees for farmers along with prevention of profiteering, he reiterated, and contended that American organization, under his guidance could accomplish this goal.[21] The disciplining of the American citizenry became a priority as well as historian Nick Cullather describes, as Hoover had determined that wheat would be the most important commodity that could endure export, because of its portability, while he also had initiated a drive for Americans to conserve sugars, fats, and other grains. He realized that the export of twenty million bushels of wheat would result in a morale deficit in the Unites States that could only be averted through a social discipline.[22] Farmers initiated strikes, but Hoover urged American women, or as Cullather signifies as his “police force,” to implement wheatless Wednesdays or flourless “victory meals.”[23] Hoover again emphasized the entity of the calorie in his effort that war rationing such as this created both effects on body image as well as the development of national sovereignty. Added to this had been Hoover’s urging of the relation between the “test” of body discipline and the short and long-term crisis of the war.[24]
The focus on efficiency that Hoover continually advocated for, as a Progressive thinker and an element of the popularizing of efficient industrial practices in the early twentieth century, had become largely demonstrated in his adherence to the calorie regulation. The calorie, defined as a unit of energy by Nicolas Clément in 1824, and its ability to be measured being developed by Wilbur O. Atwater in the late 1890s, became a form of “instructional tool” crucial in setting food rations, food substitutes, and outlining perimeters of self-control of American citizens. Consuming surplus calories was simply viewed as “overeating” and took away from both national and personal efficiency.[1] The campaign became massive, involving not only housewives but fraternal groups, women’s organizations, and state defense councils relying on temporary volunteer efforts that included Hoover’s not taking a salary for any wartime objectives while in the position of Food Administrator.[2] “War,” Hoover stated, “is a losing business, a financial loss, a loss of life and economic degeneration….It has but few compensations and of them we must make the most. Its greatest compensation lies in the possibility that we may instill into our people unselfishness….”[27]
Most U.S. citizens did perceive the Food Administration as an organization of encouragement, largely from the intense poster art that employed slogans like “Food Will Win the War,”[28] But the operation did not always proceed smoothly, and generated opposition from some government figures. The New York Times in 1917 describes a Senator Reed of Missouri violently accusing Hoover of exploiting the Belgian Relief funds to “rig” wheat and other markets in the United States to force a price increase to the American consumer. Reed urged the U.S. Senate to pass proposed legislation that year against, as he put it Hoover becoming a “food controller out of a gambler.”[29]
By 1919, Hoover indicates to Wilson that Bulgaria, Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Mahomedan population of Turkey deserved to receive relief, if the prime objective of the president’s peace aims were to be met. Hoover wrote to Wilson reminding the president that those nations were in the process of forming democratic governments, and in his view, seemed to be making sincere and honest efforts towards “respectability.” The recent $100,000,000 Relief Bill passed by the Senate for Europe had excluded these nations in the process. But Hoover believed that the necessity existed to extend relief to these regions, demonstrating his openness to support even the one-time enemy forces a means for rebuilding through utilization of relief in food supply rather than be potential vacuums for alternative hostile governments.[30]
[End of Part Two.]
[Editor's note: the author references the Committee for Relief in Belgium in this article. The correct name of the organization was the Commission for Relief in Belgium.]
[Brian D. Reese is a historian and postsecondary history instructor, with a research emphasis on Herbert Hoover and other U.S. presidents. He earned a BA in History at Western Oregon University and an MA in History at Portland State University, and currently lives in Salem, Oregon.]
Notes:
[1] Herbert Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: Years of Adventure, 1874-1920 (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1961) 433.
[2] Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover, 433.
[3] Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover, 433.
[4] Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover, 438.
[5] Woodrow Wilson to Herbert Hoover, Washington D.C., 7 November 1918 in Herbert Hoover: An American Epic, Vol. 1 (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1959) 390-391.
[6] Wilson to Hoover, American Epic, Vol. 1, 390-391.
[7] Herbert Hoover to Woodrow Wilson, Washington D.C., 9 November 1918 in Hebert Hoover: An American Epic, Vol. 1 (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1959) 391-392.
[8] Herbert Hoover, American Individualism (West Branch: Herbert Hoover Presidential Library Association, Inc., 1921) 34.
[9] Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover, 124.
[10] Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover, 125.
[11] Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover, 126.
[12] David Burner, Herbert Hoover: A Public Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979) 83.
[13] Burner, Herbert Hoover: A Public Life, 82.
[14] Burner, Herbert Hoover: A Public Life, 84.
[15] Herbert Hoover to British Foreign Office, 21 December 1915, in Herbert Hoover: An American Epic, Vol. 1 (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1959) 182.
[16] Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover, 302-303.
[17] Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover, 257.
[18] Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover, 257-258.
[19] Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover, 258.
[20] Hoover, The Memoirs of Herber Hoover, 321.
[21] Herbert Hoover, Herbert Hoover: An American Epic, Vol. 2 (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1959) 300.
[22] Nick Cullather, The Hungry World: America’s Cold War Battle Against Poverty in Asia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010) 20.
[23] Cullather, The Hungry World, 21.
[24] Cullather, The Hungry World, 22.
[25] Cullather, The Hungry World, 21.
[26] Burner, Herbert Hoover: A Public Life, 100, 97.
[27] Burner, Herbert Hoover: A Public Life, 99.
[28] Burner, Herbert Hoover: A Public Life, 102.
[29] “Attacks Hoover as Arch Gambler: Rigged American Food Markets for Benefit of Belgium,” The New York Times, July 17, 1917, 3.
[30] Herbert Hoover to Woodrow Wilson, 27 January 1919, in Organization of American Relief in Europe, 1918-1919: Including Negotiations Leading Up to the Establishment of the Office of Director General at Relief at Paris by the Allied and Associated Powers, ed. Suda Lorena Bane and Ralph Haswell Lutz (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1943) 217.
Bibliography:
Bane, Suda Lorena and Ralph Haswell Lutz ed. Organization of American Relief in Europe 1918-1919: Including Negotiations Leading Up to the Establishment of the Office of Director General of Relief at Paris by the Allied and Associated Powers. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1943.
Burner, David. Herbert Hoover: A Public Life. New York: Albert P. Knopf, 1979.
Cullather, Nick. The Hungry World: America’s Cold War Battle Against Poverty in Asia.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010.
Herbert Hoover. American Individualism. West Branch: Herbert Hoover Presidential Library Association, Inc., 1922.
------Herbert Hoover: An American Epic, Volume 1-4. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1959.
------The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: Years of Adventure, 1874-1920. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1961.
The New York Times: “Attacks as Arch Gambler: Rigged American Food Markets for Benefit of Belgium.” July 17. 1917. 3.