Economic conditions generally had been shaped and dictated by the nation's entry into the war. The financial advantages which the country enjoyed in the two previous years through being neutral and not belligerent, disappeared with the war declaration; but the accumulated resources of the country's previous neutrality remained a continuing bulwark, and its distance from the theaters of war gave the country certain economic advantages of a neutral. The situation greatly changed upon the United States throwing its entire resources into the common stock of the Entente Allies. The Government's enormous advances of credits to them took place when its own war requirements were even larger. Shipments to the Allies of maximum consignments of food and equipment proceeded in face of heavy home demands for the same products. The abnormal efforts with which the Shipping Board set about building new ships to repair the ravages of the submarines coincided with unexampled calls upon the mills for domestic needs. Such developments could not occur without profoundly affecting American finance and production; especially in view of the intensified economic strain on belligerent Europe by the continuance of the war through another year and the reliance of the Allies on American aid. There came an immediate and violent rise in commodity prices, due largely to the Government's new demands, coming in the wake of the increased needs of the Allies. As a consequence maximum prices on many products were imposed either by imperative Government orders or by agreement between the Government and the producers. The wheat crop failed in volume, being barely eleven million bushels above the deficient yield of 1916, and except for that season was the smallest in half a dozen years. On the other hand, corn and oats yielded record-breaking crops, and there was such an excellent harvest of other cereals that the total out-turn of the five leading grains, including wheat, exceeded by 970,000,000 bushels that of 1916. Except for 1915 the general crops surpassed in yield that of any other year. The war, however, robbed the country of the fruit of its own fertility. The effect of full granaries was offset by a European wheat harvest worse even than that of 1916 and by the difficulty of sparing ships to bring Australia's wheat to Europe. The demand on American wheat for export became so urgent that the Government was compelled to place the wheat trade virtually in the hands of a paramount commission.