ABSTRACT
Modern war was expensive, and Americans needed to fund their own war effort and continue lending money to the Allies. America could not mobilize an army, supply, and feed it without granting new powers to the federal government. Before the war, Progressive reformers had initiated a drive for increased governmental regulation of the economy to contain the growing economic and political influence of corporations and banks. The War Industries Board was created in July 1917 and charged with managing the wartime economy. Government contracts for war goods were quite profitable. Steel, copper, petroleum, and meat-packing industries, for instance, enjoyed an increase in profits ranging from 24 percent to 320 percent once they began selling their products to the government. The government used incentives, threats, direct action, and patriotic appeals to ensure that industrialists and labor served the nation’s war needs.
