ABSTRACT
The development of a government bureaucracy to oversee the wartime mobilization was gradual. In 1916, the first steps towards planning for economic mobilization were taken with the creation of the Council of National Defense (CND). The CND brought together experts from business, financial, and labor circles to advise public officials on mobilizing privately-held industrial resources for national defense. The growing difficulties that industrialists faced buying raw materials or transporting their goods made them more willing to consider centralized governmental direction of the economy. Business received its own version of the government’s carrot-and-stick approach. Civilian experts in the new fields of personnel management and psychology offered their services to help the army classify the professional skills and intelligence of the entire recruit population. The government had not met the challenge of protecting civil liberties as it mobilized all the country’s physical and emotional resources to fight a total war.
