Hoover accepted the appointment with the proviso that he
should receive no salary and that he should be allowed to build up a
staff on the same volunteer basis.

But long before this, indeed immediately after the May consultation
with Hoover for which he had been asked to come from Europe to
Washington, President Wilson had announced a tentative program of
stimulation of food production and conservation of food supply. The need
was urgent, and the country could not wait for Congressional action.
There was really a war on and there was an imperative need of fighting,
and fighting immediately and hard in all the various and unusual ways in
which modern war is fought. One of these ways which the President
recognized and which Hoover, by virtue of his illuminating experience in
Europe, knew as no other American did, was the food way. The President
wanted something started. So again, just as at the beginning of the
Belgian relief work in October, 1914, Hoover found himself in the
position of being asked to begin work without the necessary support
behind him; in the Belgian case he lacked money, in the present case he
lacked authority. But in both cases action was needed at once and in
both cases Hoover got action. He is a devotee of action.

Thus, before there was an official food administration there was an
unofficial beginning of what became the food administration's most
characteristic and most widely known undertaking, its campaign for food
conservation. It was the most characteristic, for it depended for
success entirely on popular consent and patriotic response. It was the
most widely known, for it touched every home and housewife, every man
and child at the daily sitting down at table. In planning and beginning
it Hoover had the special assistance of his old-time college chum and
lifelong friend, President Ray Lyman Wilbur, of Stanford University, who
brought to this particular undertaking a far-reaching vision, a
convinced belief in democratic possibilities, and a constructive mind of
unusual order.

It is well not to forget that the first appeal for food-saving was made
primarily to the women of the land. And theirs was the first great
response. From the very first days, in May, of general discussion in the
press of the certain need of food-saving in America if the Allies were
to be provided with sufficient supplies to maintain their armies and
civilian populations in the health, strength, and confidence necessar