Relief in Belgium

The Commission for Relief in Belgium HERBERT HOOVER, CHAIRMAN 42 Broadway, New York EXECUTIVE PERSONNEL BALANCE SHEET AND ACCOUNTS FRENCH GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTS BELGIAN GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTS SUPPORTING SCHEDULES STATISTICAL DATA Covering six years from commencement of operations, October, 1914, to 30th September, 1920 c Class. Author University of Colorado Library CIRCULATING BOOK Accession No. Form 273. 12-20-10M. The Commission for Relief in Belgium HERBERT HOOVER, CHAIRMAN 42 Broadway, New York City THE COMMISSION FOR RELIEF IN BELGIUM IN LIQUIDATION Tel. Broad 7210 THE C. R. B EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION, INC. THE C. R. B. FELLOWSHIP COMMITTEE July 15, 1921. ACCOUNTING AND STATISTICAL REPORT AS OF SEPTEMBER 30th, 1920. Herewith is a report of the Commission for Relief in Belgium covering the personnel, accounts and statistics of the relief work for the six years of its active operations. Included in this report is an explanatory foreword on the audited accounts by Herbert Hoover, the Chairman. The firm of auditors making this report was engaged by the Commission on the day of its organization and has continued to audit the accounts of the C. R. B. until the present time. These accounts are final and complete with the exception of certain minor outstanding items remaining from the liquidation of transactions amounting to over $923,000,000. This report summarizes and brings to date the previous annual reports of the Commission which have been distributed to all governments and persons in- terested and is presented that there may be available a record of the relief work of this American Commission in aid of Belgium and France during the world war. EDGAR RICKARD, HIT. B. POLAND, Joint Liquidators. The Commission for Relief in Belgium HERBERT HOOVER, Chairman 42 Broadway, New York EXECUTIVE PERSONNEL BALANCE SHEET AND ACCOUNTS FRENCH GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTS BELGIAN GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTS SUPPORTING SCHEDULES STATISTICAL DATA Covering six years from commencement of operations, October, 1914, to 30th September, 1920 THE COMMISSION FOR RELIEF IN BELGIUM. CONTENTS Page Foreword 5 Personnel (see index) 9 Balance Sheet and Accounts (see index) 49 Statistics (see index) 127 FOREWORD fT^HESE statements presented by the auditors represent their summation JL of the financial operations of the Commission during the six years, from September, 1914, to September, 1920. The detailed accounting information covering over 4,000 branch offices of the relief organization will require several volumes for publication and, with the slender resources available, some years may be needed for their issuance. The great moral responsibility for full accounting was realized by the Commission from its first day. Therefore the precaution was taken to engage one of the leading international firms to audit every ramification of expenditure and receipts, and to make doubly sure they were also engaged to undertake the unusual task of themselves actually keeping the books and furnishing their own accounting staff at all principal branches. The Commission was born as a purely philanthropic enterprise, dependent upon the charity of the world for support, conceived as a few months' emer- gency service to defend 10,000,000 people from certain starvation. However, it became evident that the war was not a struggle of months but of years, and that if these 7,500,000 people in Belgium, 2,500,000 in Northern France were to survive, it must be accomplished by much broader operation than public charity. The Commission, therefore, sought and ultimately received financial support from the Belgian, French, British, and later the American Governments. These official advances were, by consent of the Belgian and French Govern- ments, debited to them and were finally placed in the Reparations settlement for preferred payment under the indemnity. The organization thus rapidly grew to a great economic engine with an annual budget of Over $400,000,000 in all its different ramifications inside and outside of the invaded regions. Carrying on its operations with the moral support of the neutral powers, it came to have many attributes of a government in itself, possessing an agreed immunity from the restrictions placed by belligerent powers during the war, flying its own flag, issuing its own passports, operating a large fleet of ocean vessels, owning and operating a great number of canal boats, extending its offices into many countries, requisitioning the native food supplies, rationing the entire population, making full provision for the destitute, operating mills, factories and transportation, and, in fact, engaged in maintaining the whole economic cycle of a nation. An understanding of the accounts requires some conception of the method of the organization. A primary division in operations was established between the provisioning of the population and the care of the destitute. The basic theory of administration was to erect a system of food supply with all of its train of handling agencies, stretching from the interior of the United States, the Argentine, Australia, India, and other great food centers, focusing into Rotter- dam with a distribution through chains of primary and secondary warehouses, ultimately, through a ration card, reaching to the individual family, which paid for the food supplied at fixed prices. Destitution grew rapidly under the occu- pation and, of the 10,000,000 people, fully 5,000,000 were wholly or partially destitute before the end of the war. A separate branch of administration was organized for the care of these destitute giving them assistance to purchase ration cards and by charitable public eating and clothing establishments. Their needs necessarily extended further afield than the provision of imported food and clothing—because bare living requirements necessitated supplies of native foodstuffs, fuel, light, shelter, medical care, as well. The provisioning side was organized in the form of a commercial enterprise, transferring its cash receipts to the benevolent side of the adminstration for the use of the destitute. This plan of division greatly simplified the accounting and gained the administrative values of a separate personnel more adapted on one hand to commercial administration and on the other to charitable work. It further made possible the exaction of a small profit from the sale of food to those who could afford it, and thus swelled the resources of the benevolent branch. The whole plan of organization was a continuous chain of decentralization. Purchasers were decentralized into overseas branches. Shipping control was directed from London. Transportation inland to primary warehouses was directed from Rotterdam. A committee was erected in each of the ten Belgian Provinces and six French Districts, which may be compared to a wholesale distribution. These committees in turn supplied 4,500 Communal Committees which may be compared to retail distribution, they issuing food under the ration cards issued on a family basis and to the public eating places for certain classes of destitute. The rations were sold for cash by the Communal Committees, who in turn paid cash to the Regional Committees the Regional Committees paid cash to the National Committees at Brussels and Lille, and these cash receipts were transferred to the benevolent side. Three methods were employed in benevolent organization. First, existing charitable institutions were supported and, in the case of children, were extended to cover the whole child life of the country. Second, certain professions and trades were assisted to care for the members of their professions. Third, benevolent committees were set up in each Commune for the conduct of public eating places together with provision of ration cards to the destitute and to supervise other agencies and for the care of those not otherwise reached. Overlaid upon the whole structure were a series of checks and balances to determine the truth as to destitution, to maintain the morale and efficiency of the administration and honesty in accounting. Thus, keeping in mind this organization, it will be found that the C. R. B. accounts proper show debits to the National Committees at Brussels and Lille for the value of commodities furnished to them and show credits for the amounts allotted to them for benevolent purposes. At this point ends the actual balance sheet of the C. R. B. The National Committees, under the direction and as the agent of the C. R. B., in turn debited commodity values to the Regional and Provincial Committees and credited them with benevolent allowances, and at this point ends the accounting of the National Committees. Again, the Provincial District and Regional Committees set up the same accounting relation with the Communes. And over the whole, the C. R. B. maintained an audit, and also maintained membership in the whole committee structure of these organi- zations which acted as agents of the commission. In later years, the native food supply had to be requisitioned and to be impressed into the system of distribution. These forced purchases were carried out by the Communal Com- mittees for the account of the Provincial and District Committees and where a proven surplus in a given commodity existed in the hands of Regional Com- mittees, it sold its surplus to neighboring Provinces upon the direction of the central organization. Thus, the purchases of native food supplies do not reflect into the C. R. B. balance sheet, although they represent an expenditure of probably $400,000,000. If time and funds permit, a balance sheet of all branch offices will be consolidated and will be of interest from a historical point of view showing gross purchase and sale of foods and clothing of upwards of $1,300,000,000 during the period of operations. In the balance sheets are shown certain residues of funds remaining in the hands of the relief organization, accruing as a final balance after provision had been made for the care of the destitute.

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