Background.

One of the goals of the progressive movement was to create an administrative state capable of regulating business and industry and controlling the business cycles that pitched the country into recessions or depressions with unsettling regularity. But it took a world war to make this goal even a temporary reality. One of the earliest and most ambitious attempts to create an institutional order was the War Industries Board (WIB). The WIB, created in July 1917, was established to mobilize the nation's resources for war while protecting the economy's basic structure and character for the peace that was to follow. The WIB continues to spark debate among historians and economists as a model of the proper relationship between government and the economy. It often elicited both extravagant hopes and exaggerated fears during the war even though it had little formal authority. Social and economic functions that had traditionally...