War Finance Corporation

The War Finance Corporation was created by Congress on 5 April 1918 to facilitate the extension of credit to vital war industries during World War I, primarily by making loans to financial institutions. During its six months of wartime existence, the corporation advanced $71,387,222. In 1919 it greatly assisted the director general of railroads and railroad companies, and until 1920 it served as the chief agency through which the Treasury purchased government obligations. With the return of peace, amendments to the corporation's charter greatly expanded its activities. After 1919 it actively financed the American agricultural and livestock industries until the Agricultural Credits Act terminated the corporation in 1924, after it had lent $700 million.

Bibliography

Gilbert, Charles. American Financing of World War I. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1970.

Leuchtenburg, William E. The Perils of Prosperity, 1914–1932. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.

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The War Finance Corporation was a government corporation in the United States created to give financial support to industries essential for World War I, and to banking institutions that aided such industries. It continued to give support to various efforts during the interwar period. The corporation was created by a Congressional act of April 5, 1918, and abolished on July 1, 1939.

Since government borrowing to pay for the war had attracted a majority of private capital, little capital was available for corporations to borrow; the War Finance Corporation was designed to make such capital available. After the armistice in late 1918, the Corporation assisted in the transition to peacetime by financing railroads under government control, and making loans to American exporters and agricultural cooperative marketing associations. The Corporation established agricultural loan agencies in farming areas, and cooperated with several livestock loan companies. Eugene Meyer, Jr., a wealthy and ambitious capitalist, Wall Street Banker, was its managing director.

External links

• Records of the War Finance Corporation at the National Archives and Records Administration

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