Friday, January 2, 2009: 1:40 PM
Concourse E (Hilton New York)
In February and March 1917, working class women in several U.S. cities violently protested a surge in food prices resulting from the wartime upheaval in global markets. Activists and journalists pointed to food exports as a cause of high prices and shortages, angrily criticizing U.S. suppliers for “profiteering” at the expense of American consumers. Although the non-governmental Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB) had enjoyed considerable public support since 1914 for feeding civilians in German-occupied Belgium and France, when American food prices spiked in 1917 the commission found it necessary to defend its export program.
As chairman of the CRB, Herbert Hoover stood up for the program as a humanitarian cause and claimed that his experience in food management could be of value to poor Americans. He and other reformers insisted that Americans should learn substitution based on calculations of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. Rice could replace potatoes in food value for about one-fifth the price, a suggestion received with animosity by those who believed that the malnourished poor were denied an American “standard of living” by suffering the burdens of substitution.
In addition, pacifists claimed that American food was “prolonging the world’s woe and destruction” and called for an embargo on American food exports. Congress debated the proposal in March alongside President Woodrow Wilson’s call for the arming of U.S. merchant ships. With the U.S. declaration of war on Germany in April, supplying food to the Allies and neutrals became a necessity of war, and, as head of the wartime U.S. Food Administration, Hoover declared substitution a patriotic duty.
As chairman of the CRB, Herbert Hoover stood up for the program as a humanitarian cause and claimed that his experience in food management could be of value to poor Americans. He and other reformers insisted that Americans should learn substitution based on calculations of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. Rice could replace potatoes in food value for about one-fifth the price, a suggestion received with animosity by those who believed that the malnourished poor were denied an American “standard of living” by suffering the burdens of substitution.
In addition, pacifists claimed that American food was “prolonging the world’s woe and destruction” and called for an embargo on American food exports. Congress debated the proposal in March alongside President Woodrow Wilson’s call for the arming of U.S. merchant ships. With the U.S. declaration of war on Germany in April, supplying food to the Allies and neutrals became a necessity of war, and, as head of the wartime U.S. Food Administration, Hoover declared substitution a patriotic duty.