The Allied purchasing was therefore completely controlled. The license to export was not issued by the War Trade Board until the application for the same had been approved by the Food Administration, and this approval would not be given if the rules of its Division of Cooerdination of Purchase had not been followed. It should be noted that the Food Administration did not actually complete the transaction of purchase and sale for any of the commodities. Its function was completed when buyer and seller had been brought together and the terms of sale agreed upon and approved by it. The total volume of purchases of all supplies made under the cooerdination of the various agencies set up by the Food Administration aggregated over seven and a quarter billion dollars during the course of its existence. CHAPTER XI AMERICAN FOOD ADMINISTRATION; GENERAL REGULATION, CONTROL OF WHEAT AND PORK; ORGANIZATION IN THE STATES In attacking the problem of food control by enforced regulation Hoover frankly repeatedly described his position as that of one who was choosing the lesser of two evils; the other and greater one was that of having no regulation at all. Political economists and others called his attention constantly to the fact that the old reliable law of supply and demand would take care of his troubles if he would but let it. If, because of the great demand, high food prices prevailed, their prevalence would automatically solve the problem of food shortage. They would stimulate production and curtail consumption; our people would buy less and there would be more of a surplus to send to the Allies. Hoover's answer was that unrestricted sky-rocketing of prices would certainly curtail consumption, but it would be the consumption by the poor, the hosts of wage-earners and the small-salaried. It would not cut down consumption by the rich, and it would promptly lead to sharp class feeling, widespread popular dissatisfaction and resentment, even revolt. War time was no time to force any such situation as this. The remedy offered by supply and demand was one which would only bring on another and worse illness. But Hoover realized and declared over and over again that even a necessary interference with the law of supply and demand was at best an evil. But it was less of an evil, under the circumstances, than not to interfere with it to some degree. These were not normal but abnormal times, and regulation by supply and demand is primarily a process for normal times. And it is a process that requires time to do its remedial work, and there was no time. But Hoover did not and does not believe in price-fixing or immediate government control of commerce where they can be avoided. In his statement before the Senate Committee on Agriculture in June, 1917, he said: