made; eighteen per cent. on November 15; forty per cent. on December 15, 1917, and a like amount on January 15, 1918. They might be paid for in installments of a dollar a week or so much a month. This was a plan used by banks and trust companies and by great corporations for their employees.

On the first day of the campaign bonds to the amount of $50,000,000 were taken. Expecting that the $3,000,000,000 offered would be oversubscribed, the Secretary had announced that half the oversubscription would be taken; but he now asked for offers up to $5,000,000,000 that at least as much as $4,000,000,000 might be obtained, and this enormous sum, $5,000,000,000, became the goal which the workers sought to reach under an extension of time to November 1.

When ten days had passed and the subscriptions, great as they were, fell short of what they should have been, the Secretary of the Treasury made an appeal in the form of a statement. After making due allowance, he said, for unreported amounts the fact remained that if the $5,000,000,000 was to be obtained in the twenty-four working days which remained up to the first of November the daily average must be $208,000,000, whereas it had been but $36,000,000. To the first Liberty Loan there had been in round numbers some 5,000,000 subscribers. Better organization which now existed, and the large amount of educational work which had been done ought to bring subscriptions from 10,000,000 persons and corporations. "Shall we be more tender with our dollars than with the lives of our sons?" said the Secretary on another occasion.

On Saturday, October 27, at midnight, subscriptions ceased. On November 7 the Secretary of the Treasury announced upwards of 9,400,000 subscribers had offered to take bonds to the amount of $4,617,532,300, an oversubscription of 54 per cent. This was $1,617,532,300 more than the Secretary had agreed to take. Why not, he asked, take all that was offered? Because, was his answer, the Government must never change the basis of subscription after the subscription is closed. Having offered to take one-half of all above $3,000,000,000 his agreement must be kept, and $3,808,766,150 was accepted.

The drive for the Liberty Loan was hardly under way when,

October 6, Congress closed its memorable session. Never before had a Congress dealt with war issues of such magnitude or enacted laws of such far-reaching consequences. The passage on April 6 of the joint resolution declaring a state of war with Germany to exist was followed before the month ended by the first Liberty Loan act, and the act increasing the number of midshipmen at the Naval Academy. In May came acts authorizing the Allied Governments to recruit from their peoples in our country; authorizing the President to take over enemy vessels in our ports; providing for the drafting of the National Army and increasing the strength of the active list of the navy from 87,000 to 150,000 and of the Marine Corps from 17,400 to 30,000. In June came the war appropriations act providing $3,281,094,541 for the needs of the army and navy, a sum greater than the National debt at the end of the Civil War; and the Espionage Act. The Aviation Act carrying an appropriation of $640,000,000 was enacted in July; the priority in Shipments Act, the Food Survey Act and the Food Control Act in August; the Second Liberty Loan Act in September; and on the last days of the session the Revenue Act, imposing war taxes on incomes and excess profits; the Trading with the Enemy Act, the Soldiers' and Sailors' Insurance Act, and the Urgent Deficiency Act carrying the enormous appropriation of $5,356,666,016.93. During the first session of the 65th Congress the total of appropriations was $18,879,177,014.96, of which $7,000,000,000 was to meet loans to the Allies, to be repaid by the Governments to which the advances were made. To this should be added $2,511,553,928.50 contract authorizations, making a total of $21,390,730,940.46.

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CHAPTER XVI

RATIONING AND FIGHTING

THESE acts having been approved by the President, steps to put them in force were promptly taken. By one proclamation November 1 was named as the day whereon, under the provisions of the Food-Control Act, cold storage warehouse owners, operators of grain elevators, warehouses, and other places for storing grain, and sellers of a long list of food products whose gross sales exceeded $100,000 a year must obtain licenses to carry on their business. By another the provisions of the Trading-with-the-Enemy Act were put in force and the War Trade Board, the War Trade Council, and the Censorship Board to control all communication between the United States and foreign countries by cables, telegraph or mail were established. Under this Act a custodian was appointed to take care of all property in the United States owned by enemies, or allies of enemies. Each enemy or ally of an enemy doing business in the United States was required to obtain a license to continue in business; citizens of the United States were forbidden to trade without a license with any person there was reason to believe was an enemy or an ally of an enemy; and every newspaper printed in a foreign language must furnish to the Postmaster General English translations of all it printed concerning the war, unless a license not to do so was obtained.

The provision touching newspapers the Postmaster General at once put in force; but assured them that none need fear suppression unless the bounds of fair criticism of the President, the Administration, the army, the navy, the conduct of the war were passed. He would, he said, take great care not to let criticism, personally or politically offensive to the Administration, affect his action. But if newspapers attacked the motives of the Government and thereby encouraged insubordination they would be dealt with severely. They would not be allowed

to say that Wall Street, or munition makers, or any other spe cial interest controlled the Government. Publication of anything intended to hamper the prosecution of the war; campaigns against conscription, enlistment, sale of bonds, or collection of the revenue would not be tolerated. The policy of foreign language newspapers would be judged by past utterances, not by newly announced intentions. Copies of all such newspapers were on file in the Department and on the examination of these files would depend their licenses. German language newspapers when not licensed must publish English translations. Socialist newspapers, unless they contained treasonable or seditious matter, would not be barred from the mails. In a few weeks The Call, a Socialist journal published in New York, was deprived of its second-class mail privileges.

A third proclamation put all bakeries in the country under license, and a fourth shut out alien enemies from the District of Columbia and the Panama Zone. They were forbidden to ascend into the air in a balloon, airplane, airship or flying machine; were required to register; were ordered not to come within one hundred yards of any wharf, pier or dry dock used by any vessel of over five hundred tons engaged in the foreign or domestic trade, nor within one hundred yards of any warehouse shed, elevator, railroad terminal operated in connection with such wharf, or pier, and, save on public ferries, were warned not to be found on any ocean, bay, river, or other waters within three miles of the shore line of the United States or its possessions, nor on any of the Great Lakes, their connecting waters or harbors. In a little while placards were posted along the water fronts of the seaboard cities giving notice in English and German to alien enemies not to go within one hundred yards of the river front, and calling on ail good citizens to notify the United States Marshal of any violation of the warning.

The President forbade, after November 15, and during the war with Germany, the manufacture, distribution, storage, use or possession of explosives or their ingredients save as provided by the Act of October 6, 1917. The Food Administrator announced that on and after November 1 no retailer or other dealer who put excessive prices on necessary foods should obtain

supplies, and that no wholesaler or other handler of food would be allowed to sell to any retailer anywhere in our country who made unreasonable profits or bought large quantities of food for speculative purposes. Speculation in butter and eggs was ordered to be stopped on the exchanges until after the war, and the price of sugar was fixed, for many causes, all produced by the war, had produced a shortage. The nation-wide canning of fruits in the summer and fall had greatly increased consumption. Hundreds of thousands of tons of sugar were shut up in Java for want of vessels to carry it away. At least a third of the world's production came from the Central Powers of Europe and had been cut off since the war began; the western battlefront passing through the sugar producing territory of Belgium and France had reduced the supply still further, and had forced England and France to compete with us for the cane sugar of Cuba. When the shortage became known to the people a rush on the retail grocery stores in the eastern cities followed and sugar rose to twenty cents a pound.

Sugar was the first article in which the people experienced a shortage. Coal soon followed. As early as May, 1917, the Council for Defense appointed a committee on coal production which called a meeting of some four hundred operators who, through a committee, finally fixed the price of coal at three dollars a ton for the region east of Pittsburgh and at two dollars and three-quarters to the west of that city. This the Secretary of War, as Chairman of the Council of Defense, repudiated as oppressive and until late in August the price of coal was unregulated; consumers put off buying, and orders for millions of tons were canceled and little coal was moved. In August the President appointed Mr. Garfield coal administrator, and late in September by his order the price of coal was fixed at two dollars a ton. Then orders for coal, increasing in volume as the cold weather approached, came pouring in; but the shortage of cars and the congestion of freight at the terminals, held there for want of ships to take it abroad, greatly hindered the movement of coal from the mines to the consumer, and by January 1 the situation, especially in New England, was serious. Meantime, in December, the Government took over all the railroads and the President appointed the Secretary of the