Organizing the Economy - Madison

               To manage the economy during World War I, Congress founded many new agencies to promote effective relationships between the federal government and America’s private corporations.  The War Industries Board was made in July 1917 to control the distribution of resources, construct more factories, and tell the factories what they should manufacture.  To make sure that the troops would receive plenty of food without the expense of the civilian’s starvation, the Food Administration was developed.   Daylight savings time was introduced to conserve the energy of the working factories, which was one of the goals of the Fuel Administration.  Even after Congress’s implementation of taxes and the government’s use of bonds, the U.S. still lost around $32 billion by the end of the war.

                The National War Labor Board was established in March 1918 to prevent worker strikes and involve more people in the workforce.  Factories and other workplaces began to hire women, and African Americans started to move north for work.  The Mexicans wanted to obtain more jobs, so they migrated north too to help extinguish the employee shortage.  To keep people supporting the war efforts, the Committee on Public Information advertised excessively for their noble cause.  The Espionage Act and Sedition Act were passed to prohibit people from stealing government information to aid the enemy and state your opposition to the war publicly.