But among the hundred million people of the United States there were some who did not justify Hoover's belief in American patriotism and American heart. Just as there were some among the seven million Belgians who tried to cheat their benefactors and their countrymen by forging extra ration cards. So when a measure to regulate some great food trade or industry, as the wholesale grocery business or milling, was agreed to and honestly lived up to by eighty-five or ninety per cent of the men concerned, and for these could have been left on a wholly voluntary basis, there were a few for whom the regulations had to be legally formulated and energetically enforced. They were the ones who made the reluctant gifts to the American Red Cross, which was the Food Administrator's favorite form of penalization, when he did not have to go to the extreme of putting persistent profiteers out of business. The Food Control Law, passed by Congress in August, 1917, under which the Food Administrator, acting for the President, derived his authority, was a perfectly real law, but it left great gaps in the control. For example, it exempted from its license regulations, which were the chief means of direct legal control, all food producers (farmers, stock-growers, et al.) and all retailers doing a business of less than $100,000 a year. It did not give any authority for a direct fixing of maximum prices. It carried comparatively few penalty provisions. But it did provide authority for three primary agencies of control: First, the licensing of all food manufacturers, jobbers, and wholesalers, and of retailers doing business of more than $100,000 annually, with the prescription of regulations which the licensees should observe; second, the purchase and sale of foodstuffs by the Government; and, third, the legal entering into agreements with food producers, manufacturers or distributors, which if made only between the members of these groups themselves would have been violations of the anti-trust laws. All of these powers contributed their share to the success of what was one of the most important features of the food control and one to which Hoover devoted most determined and continuous effort, namely, the radical cutting out, or at least, down, of speculative and middleman profits. But with the limited authority of the Food Administrator it was only through the voluntary cooeperation of the people and food trades that these three kinds of powers were made really effective.