Food draft
A food-Draft (English. Food draft , food replacement) was after the First World War, one in the United States their European, affected by food shortages relatives and friends could be a food parcel to get American to be purchased voucher that allows citizens.
The check, which had to be cashed at an American Relief Administration Warehouse within 90 days of being issued, offered four different grocery parcels at $ 10 or $ 50, known for example in Austria as the “ dollar parcel ”. The procedure, first handled from January 1920 to mid-1921, was explained to the courted financial institutions by Herbert Hoover in a letter "To the Bankers of America". The buyer of a food draft would pay the production costs of the food and the transport, and any surpluses, as specifically noted on the check, went to the European Children's Fund. The challenge for the American Relief Administration was to inform all American banks about the system and to guarantee an unchanged price-performance ratio for at least one year. In the end, 4827 banks in North, Central and South America as well as in Great Britain, France, Denmark and Australia sold these grocery orders without making any profit. Within a year bills of exchange were sold for $ 8 million, earning the Children's Fund a $ 600,000 grant. During the relief operation started in autumn 1921 on the occasion of the hunger catastrophe in Russia, the process was revived, food drafts for 9 million dollars found their buyers.
proof
- Frank M. Surface / Raymond L. Bland: American Food in the World War and Reconstruction Period. Operations of the Organizations Under the Direction of Herbert Hoover 1914 to 1924 , Stanford University Press, Stanford 1931, p. 91 f. and p. 246
- Hermann Stöhr : This is how America helped. The Foreign Aid of the United States 1812-1930 , Ökumenischer Verlag, Stettin 1936, p. 164 f.
- Herbert Hoover: Memoirs (Vol. 2). The Cabinet and the Presidency 1920–1933 , Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag, Mainz 1952, p. 22