Addams signs on as spokesperson and fund-raiser for the United States Food Administration

The United States Food Administration is established in August of 1917 for the purpose of relieving starvation in war-torn Europe. President Wilson appoints Herbert Hoover, the former head of the Belgian Relief Organization, to run the effort. (In 1914, Hoover, an American living at the time in England, founded the Belgian Relief Organization as a neutral body for the purpose of purchasing and distributing food to the people of German-occupied Belgium.) Hoover recruits Addams as a spokesperson and fundraiser for the Food Administration office. Dispirited by the negative public response to her opposition to the war, Addams throws herself into this new task and finds a reason to draw a connection between it and her quest for lasting peace, economic interdependence, and morality. She writes in Peace and Bread in Time of War: "I believe that a generous response to the world situation might afford an opportunity to lay over again the foundations for a wider international morality...a new powerful force might be loosened in the world when the motive for producing and shipping food on the part of the great nations was no longer a commercial one but had for the moment shifted to a desire to feed the hungry" (82-83). Addams undertakes a national speaking tour on behalf of the United States Food Administration.

1917-11-02

“The Food Administration Bill.” The New York Times: 4 June 1917, vol. LXVI no. 21,681: 10. The New York Times Company. NYTimes Search. Web. 10 June 2017.