Wilson’s wartime executive orders built administrative machinery for public information, industrial coordination, food supply and control of enemy property. Their texts repeatedly connect presidential instructions to powers supplied by Congress. The result was a network of agencies and delegated responsibilities, rather than one comprehensive wartime order. War Industries Board order; Grain Corporation order.
The Archives describes the committee’s role as releasing government news, sustaining morale and administering voluntary press censorship. Its domestic records include motion pictures, photographs, publications and the speeches of the Four Minute Men. National Archives committee records.
Wartime production also affected working hours. EO 2605 suspended the Eight-Hour Act’s requirements for specified War Department contracts involving military buildings or public works judged important for national defense, citing authority in the Naval Appropriation Act. The order illustrates a recurring pattern in Wilson’s emergency administration: legislation established powers or exceptions, and a presidential directive told officers how to apply them to particular work. Eight-hour-law suspension order.
EO 2729A, issued October 12, 1917, distributed responsibilities under the Trading with the Enemy Act and related legislation. It gave the War Trade Board licensing functions, established an advisory War Trade Council and assigned duties to the Alien Property Custodian. It also assigned the Postmaster General responsibility for provisions concerning foreign-language publications and required translations. These were separate responsibilities under a common wartime legal framework, rather than a single general censorship agency. Delegation and regulatory provisions.
Other arrangements lasted through revision. The National Archives codification identifies Wilson’s EO 2859 of May 11, 1918 as the National Research Council framework and states that Eisenhower restated its provisions in EO 10668 in 1956. The codified text covers research cooperation, national defense and public welfare, and arrangements for government representation on the council. This is a concrete example of a later president updating an inherited structure; the codification is later amended text, not a transcript of Wilson’s original wording. National Research Council codification.
Wilson’s EO 2594, dated April 13, 1917, created the Committee on Public Information. Its members were the secretaries of State, War and the Navy and a civilian director, George Creel. The secretaries could assign officers to its work. The order’s brief text established the organization and leadership; the committee’s subsequent activities require the additional record preserved by the National Archives. Original committee order.
The War Industries Board had first been organized within the Council of National Defense in July 1917. EO 2868, issued May 28, 1918, gave it independent administrative status under presidential direction. The Archives records its functions as assessing industrial requirements, setting production and delivery priorities, arranging raw-material price agreements and supervising Allied purchasing. The sequence matters: the 1918 order reorganized an existing institution rather than creating industrial coordination from nothing. Independent-agency order; Board’s administrative history.
EO 2681, issued August 14, 1917, authorized the Food Administration Grain Corporation under the food-and-fuel control legislation. It was organized under Delaware law to purchase, store and sell commodities through familiar commercial methods. The United States was to own the stock, apart from qualifying shares held for its benefit. Wilson’s order therefore linked statutory emergency powers with a corporate structure, enabling the Food Administration to operate in markets while keeping the enterprise under federal ownership. Grain Corporation’s structure and authority.
Woodrow Wilson: 1913–1921; 1,803 orders. APP gives no numbered range. Compare totals in the presidential comparison table. APP executive-order statistics.
The foreign-affairs record adds an international dimension. The committee publicized America abroad as well as issuing information at home. Domestic activities stopped after the Armistice in November 1918, and foreign operations ended in June 1919. Committee’s foreign-policy records.
EO 2765 addressed a narrower question: what would count as a fair profit for food licensees? Wilson directed the Food Administrator to use the normal average profit obtained in the same business and place before July 1, 1914 under competitive conditions, and to take authorized legal steps against greater profits. This was an instruction for administering a statutory licensing program, not an unlimited power to set every business’s earnings. Profit-standard order.
EO 2741 shows how that framework affected staffing. Wilson permitted newspaper readers and translators selected for confidential Post Office work under the Trading with the Enemy Act to be appointed during the war with Germany without the usual civil-service examination. The order recorded the Postmaster General’s request and the Civil Service Commission’s concurrence. Personnel exceptions were part of the emergency machinery, connecting administrative recruitment with the government’s wartime information controls. Confidential-position appointment order.
In Stoehr v. Wallace, decided in 1921, the Supreme Court directly examined enemy-property administration under presidential orders dated October 12, 1917 and February 26, 1918. It upheld delegation to the Alien Property Custodian of the determination that property was enemy-owned. It also rejected the due-process challenge to seizure without an initial judicial hearing because the statute supplied a court remedy for eligible claimants to recover property wrongly taken. This was an assessment of specific statutory powers and safeguards, not approval of every wartime executive measure. Stoehr opinion.
Dakota Central Telephone Co. v. South Dakota, decided in 1919, supplies related context rather than a challenge to EO 2594. The Court sustained federal control of telephone rates under congressionally authorized wartime possession of the telephone systems. Wilson exercised that authority through a July 22, 1918 proclamation, which the opinion reproduces. The document classification matters: it was a proclamation, and its appearance in the history of emergency presidential power does not make it another executive order. Dakota Central opinion.
Wilson dismantled major wartime agencies during his own presidency. EO 3019-A abolished the War Industries Board on December 31, 1918, with liquidation completed in July 1919. EO 3154 abolished the Committee on Public Information on August 21, 1919 and assigned liquidation to the Council of National Defense. These are examples of executive orders ending earlier executive-order institutions, rather than evidence that a successor had to repeal every wartime measure separately. War Industries Board termination; Committee’s abolition.
This site’s historic collection is curated, with a detailed guide to the Committee on Public Information. It does not contain all 1,803 Wilson orders. The additional original documents linked here help readers place that guide alongside the industrial, food, personnel and property measures that formed the wider executive-order record.