WAR INDUSTRIES BOARD

WAR INDUSTRIES BOARD. The War Industries Board was a wartime agency of 1917–1918 designed to coordinate the war role of American industry. Its parent body, the Council of National Defense, enjoyed only advisory powers and could not compel anyone to accept its advice. There were five procurement agencies in the War Department, and they frequently competed for the same materials and manufacturing facilities, leading to shortages of transportation, labor, and material that seriously slowed the war program in the winter of 1917–1918.

The War Industries Board, formed in July 1917, was as powerless as the other agencies had been. When Congress discussed the extremely limited production of military equipment early in 1918, many leaders aimed to establish a munitions ministry on the English model. In order to forestall this thinly veiled censure, President Woodrow Wilson, on 4 March 1918, appointed Bernard M. Baruch as chairman of the War Industries Board and greatly augmented its powers. This enabled the War Industries Board to use all the agencies of the Council of National Defense, to mobilize industry, and to force adoption of its orders. This board controlled all available resources and manufacturing facilities, fixed prices, raised the volume of munitions produced, and brought order out of industrial chaos. It was terminated by executive order on 1 January 1919.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Baruch, Bernard M. American Industry in the War: A Report of the War Industries Board. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1941.

Leuchtenburg, William E. The Perils of Prosperity, 1914–32. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.