There was, of course, danger that the wholesale outpouring of ex-soldiers upon an industrial field already complaining of a labor surplus would precipitate a business crisis; yet it seemed certain that a wise guidance of the internal affairs of the nation could avert such a calamity. The world was short of almost everything which man consumes, and it seemed evident that it would take several years of brisk production in every field to build up the reserves wasted by war and overtake industrially the demands of the consuming public. It was evident, in short, that there was plenty of work for all, if business did not become hysterical in the face of a difficult transition. The part for the Government to play was to conduct a skillful graduation of war industry into the pursuits of peace and at the same time to take the lead with its own agencies in infiltrating the demobilized troops into the ranks of trade and industry. Fortunately, for this latter purpose, the Government possessed an agency at hand--the United States Employment Service, a branch of the Department of Labor. The war had built up this organization to great size and usefulness. Its branches covered the United States. Before the armistice it had been instrumental in staffing some of the more important war industrial establishments, particularly the new shipyards and the government powder plants. This agency would have been competent alone to secure employment for all discharged soldiers, but for the circumstance that, in the spring of 1919, there came into office a Congress of a political complexion the opposite to that of the administration. This Congress at once adopted a program of economy, but it was a spurious economy to the extent (which was considerable) that it arbitrarily cut down appropriations needed for important projects. The United States Employment Service received a scant $5,000,000 with which to finance the work of securing civilian employment for 4,000,000 men, when twice that sum would not have been overabundant. The result was that in this final scene of the war the Government was forced to call upon outside and volunteer aid in the conduct of an essential war activity.