eference to which each industry was entitled.
Some were especially favored, in order to stimulate production in a line
that was of particular importance or was failing to meet the exigencies
of the military situation; shipments to others of a less essential
character were deferred. Committees of the Board studied industrial
conditions and recommended the price that should be fixed for various
commodities; stability was thus artificially secured and profiteering
lessened. The Conservation Division worked out and enforced methods of
standardizing patterns in order to economize materials and labor. The
Steel Division cooeperated with the manufacturers for the speeding-up of
production; and the Chemical Division, among other duties, stimulated the
vitally important supply of potash, dyes, and nitrates. Altogether it has
been roughly estimated that the industrial capacity of the country was
increased by twenty per cent through the organizing labors and authority
of the War Industries Board.

The success of this Board would have been impossible without the building
up of an extraordinary _esprit de corps_ among the men who were brought
face to face with these difficult problems of industry and commerce.
Their chairman relied, of course, upon the cooeperation of the leaders of
"big business," who now, in the hour of the country's need, sank their
prejudice against governmental interference and gave freely of their
experience, brains, and administrative power. Men whose incomes were
measured in the hundreds of thousands forgot their own business and
worked at Washington on a salary of a dollar a year.

The same spirit of cooeperation was evoked when it came to the conservation
and the production of food. If steel was to win the war, its burden could
not be supported without wheat, and for some months in 1917 and 1918
victory seemed to depend largely upon whether the Allies could find enough
to eat. Even in normal times Great Britain and France import large
quantities of foodstuffs; under war conditions they were necessarily
dependent upon foreign grain-producing countries. The surplus grain of the
Argentine and Australia was not available because of the length of the
voyage and the scarcity of shipping; the Russian wheat supply was cut off
by enemy control of the Dardanelles even before it was dissipated by
corrupt officials or reckless revolutionaries. The Allies, on the verge of
starvation, therefore looked to North America.