A committee created before World War I whose task was to help mobilize the American economy for possible war. It began in 1916 as the Council on National Defense, a cabinet committee created by Congress. The committee functioned chaotically at first as a loose grouping of over 100 subcommittees, headed by various industrial executives who refused to work with each other, let alone the military. Wilson re-created it as the War Industries Board in the winter of 1917-18, but the Board did not become effective until prominent financier Bernard Baruch was appointed by the president to head the committee on March 4, 1918. Baruch delegated work efficiently and cajoled some measure of unified action between disparate groups of industry and the army. By Armistice Day, one quarter of industrial manufacturing had been converted to military use. The policies of the War Industries Board provided a template for the New Deal and the mobilization for World War II.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

The Oxford Essential Dictionary of the U.S. Military. Copyright © 2001, 2002 by Oxford University Press, Inc. All rights reserved.