ems was destined to bring a storm of
protest upon the entire Administration. Thomas W. Gregory, the
Attorney-General, had gained entrance into the Cabinet by means of a
railroad suit which had roused the ire of the transportation interests.
The other members were, at that time, little known or spoken of. Wilson
spent much time and effort in defending his Cabinet members from attacks,
and yet it was believed that he rarely appealed to them for advice in the
formulation of policies. Thus the Cabinet as a whole lacked the very
qualities essential to a successful organizing committee: ability to
secure the cooeperation and respect of the industrial leaders of the
country.

Titular functions of an organizing character, nevertheless, had been
conferred upon six members of the Cabinet in August, 1916, through the
creation of a "Council of National Defense"; they were charged with the
"cooerdination of industries and resources for the national security and
welfare." The actual labor of cooerdination, however, was to be exercised
by an advisory commission of seven, which included Howard E. Coffin, in
charge of munitions, Daniel Willard, president of the Baltimore and Ohio
Railroad, in charge of transportation, Julius Rosenwald, president of the
Sears-Roebuck Company, in charge of supplies including clothing, Bernard
M. Baruch, a versatile financial trader, in charge of metals, minerals,
and raw materials, Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation
of Labor, in charge of labor and the welfare of workers, Hollis Godfrey
in charge of engineering and education, and Franklin H. Martin in charge
of medicine. The commission at once prepared to lay down its programme,
to create sub-committees and technical boards, and to secure the
assistance of business leaders, without whose cooeperation their task
could not be fulfilled.

Following plans developed by the Council of National Defense, experts in
every business likely to prove of importance were called upon to
cooerdinate and stimulate war necessities, to control their distribution,
to provide for the settlement of disputes between employers and
wage-earners, to fix prices, to conserve resources. Scientific and
technical experts were directed in their researches. The General Medical
Board and the Committee on Engineering and Education were supervised in
their mobilization of doctors and surgeons, engineers, physicists and
chemists, professors and graduate students in the univ