rence with the law of supply and
demand was at best an evil. But it was less of an evil, under the
circumstances, than not to interfere with it to some degree. These were
not normal but abnormal times, and regulation by supply and demand is
primarily a process for normal times. And it is a process that requires
time to do its remedial work, and there was no time.

But Hoover did not and does not believe in price-fixing or immediate
government control of commerce where they can be avoided. In his
statement before the Senate Committee on Agriculture in June, 1917, he
said:

"The food administrations of Europe and the powers that they
possess are of the nature of dictatorship, but happily ours is not
their plight.... The tendency there has been for the government to
take over the functions of the middleman, first with one commodity
and then with another, until in the extreme case of Germany
practically all food commodities are taken directly by the
government from the producers and allotted by an iron-clad system
of ticket distribution to the consumer. The whole of the great
distributing agencies, and the financial system which revolved
around them, have been suspended for the war or destroyed for good.
That is the system which is dictatorship, and which, so far as I
can see, this country need never approach.

"In distinction from this, our conception of the problem in the
United States is that we should assemble the voluntary effort of
the people, of the men who represent the great trades; that we
should, in effect, undertake with their cooeperation the regulation
of the distributing machinery of the country in such a manner that
we may restore its function as nearly as may be to a pre-war
basis, and thus eliminate, so far as may be, the evils and failures
which have sprung up. And, at the same time, we propose to mobilize
the spirit of self-denial and self-sacrifice in this country in
order that we may reduce our national waste and our national
expenditure."

The primary basis of the commodity control, that is the control of the
manufacture, wholesale selling, storage, and distribution of foodstuffs
lay in the licensing provisions of the Food Control law. Any handler of
foods, not an immediate producer or a retailer whose gross sales did not
exceed $100,000 a year, could be forced to carry on his busines