retailers doing a business of less than
$100,000 a year. It did not give any authority for a direct fixing of
maximum prices. It carried comparatively few penalty provisions. But it
did provide authority for three primary agencies of control: First, the
licensing of all food manufacturers, jobbers, and wholesalers, and of
retailers doing business of more than $100,000 annually, with the
prescription of regulations which the licensees should observe; second,
the purchase and sale of foodstuffs by the Government; and, third, the
legal entering into agreements with food producers, manufacturers or
distributors, which if made only between the members of these groups
themselves would have been violations of the anti-trust laws. All of
these powers contributed their share to the success of what was one of
the most important features of the food control and one to which Hoover
devoted most determined and continuous effort, namely, the radical
cutting out, or at least, down, of speculative and middleman profits.
But with the limited authority of the Food Administrator it was only
through the voluntary cooeperation of the people and food trades that
these three kinds of powers were made really effective.

The most conspicuous features of the voluntary cooeperation which Hoover
was able to obtain from the people and the food-trades by his
conferences, his organization of the states, and his great popular
propaganda, were those connected with what was called "food
conservation," by which was meant a general economy in food use, an
elimination of waste, and an actual temporary modification of national
food habits by an increased use of fish and vegetable proteins and fats
and lessened use of meat and animal fats, a considerable substitution of
corn and other grains for wheat, and the general use of a wheat flour
containing in it much more of the total substance of the wheat grain
than is contained in the usual "patent" flour.

It was with the great campaign for food conservation, too, that the Food
Administration really started its work, beginning it as voluntary and
unofficial war service. For although consideration of the Food Control
Act began before the House Committee on Agriculture about April 21, it
was not until August 10 that the bill became a law. On the same day, the
President issued an Executive Order establishing a United States Food
Administration and appointing Herbert Hoover to be United States Food
Administrator.