← New Books Network
New Books Network
Nathan K. Finney, "Orchestrating Power: The American Associational State in the First World War" (Cornell UP, 2025)
00:33:53
Loading summary
Transcript42 lines
- [00:00]
A
At first, I didn't think it was real. I woke up to this blinding light and I was transported to another place. Pluto tv. Then I heard a voice.
- [00:11]
B
Come with me if you want to live.
- [00:12]
A
There were thousands of movies and shows and they were all free. Truth is, it's just so Beautiful on Pluto TV. Free streaming of Terminator 2, Fringe, Arrow, the 100 and the X Files may cause excitement, loss of sleep and sudden belief in extraterrestrials. No credit cards or alien encounters necessary. Pluto TV Stream now pay Never.
- [00:30]
B
Hi, diva. It's Rachel and Jordan.
- [00:33]
A
Yeah, hi. Quick question.
- [00:34]
C
Why are you not spending your Venmo balance?
- [00:36]
A
Yeah, we're concerned you can, like, buy stuff with it.
- [00:38]
B
You love buying stuff and earn cash
- [00:40]
C
back on eligible purchases.
- [00:42]
A
You love purchasing eligible things.
- [00:44]
C
So the money your friend sent you yesterday, that's today's ramen or rideshare or
- [00:48]
A
eye patches, the skincare kind, not the pyro kind.
- [00:51]
B
Spend with Venmo and you can earn cash back with Venmo stash.
- [00:54]
C
Venmo stash bundle terms and Exclusions apply. Max $100 cash back per month. See terms at Venmo Me Terms, Idaho.
- [00:59]
A
Verification required to use a Venmo balance. Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:06]
C
Hello, and welcome to another episode on the New Books Network. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Miranda Melcher, and I'm very pleased today to be speaking with Dr. Nathan Phinney about his book titled Orchestrating Power the American Associational State in the First World War, published by Cornell University Press in 2025. Now, obviously, when we talk about the state and organizing in a big way, we often are thinking in the US about the Second World War, and obviously there's a lot to talk about there. What therefore, however, maybe gets overlooked is that it turns out, as this book explores, there's quite a lot of orchestrating of power going on in the First World War II when it comes to the US, so lots of those things that we might be used to thinking about later on in terms of mobilisation, in terms of kind of who gets power over what sorts of decision making turns out are here much earlier than maybe we think. There's all sorts of coordination that has to happen, tensions about kind of, well, if you move people away from here, then how do you fill that gap? All sorts of interesting things for us to discuss. So, Nathan, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
- [02:14]
B
Thanks, Miranda. It's a pleasure to be here.
- [02:16]
C
Could you start us off, please, by introducing yourself a little bit and tell us why you decided to write this book. What kinds of questions did you want to investigate with this project?
- [02:26]
B
Yeah, so as you said, I'm Nathan Finney. I'm actually a serving US army officer, but also a historian. Got my PhD from Duke University in 2022, and this book is actually an outgrowth of that dissertation for that PhD program. And the reason I came to this project is actually back to my professional life in the Army. Back in 2014, on the backside of the war in Iraq and the ongoing war in Afghanistan and here in the United States, we had this Congressional budget sequestration that was kind of hampering defense spending. The U.S. army was under significant pressure to decrease its overall end strength. And this concerned our leadership, who believed such cuts would challenge its ability to address current missions, let alone any emerging issues. The US Army Chief of Staff of the time, General Ray Odierno, tasked a team to conduct research in the historical examples of when the army had to quickly expand its size to address the need for war. And as a part of the team, I worked with U.S. army and U.S. joint Staff historians to look at underlying trends and contributing factors to how the army expanded for the Spanish American War, both the World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, and even up to Operation Iraqi Freedom. Each of these cases helped inform that study. But honestly, the First World War spoke to me more than any of the others. There were just elements that jumped out at me as intriguing in their own right and spoke to what I was seeing in my own time, such as trends in the similar to trends in the First World War. Such trends were progressive ideas about American society and where government should expand, including discussions about the military and society and foreign policy. Given the recent Spanish American War and the beginning of the First World War in Europe, another trend was that there were few mechanisms and absolutely no desire by civilian leaders or society to expand the military services at that time. Previous mass mobilizations focused on volunteer regiments that abrogated manning, training and control of those new forces to the states and to their elites. There was absolutely no appetite for conscription and honestly, only fear and contempt for the idea throughout all of the United States at that time. And finally, there was an inability of US industrial capacity to support the needs of the war being fought in Europe, even to the point where the army chief in the run up to the American entry into the war, General Tasker Bliss, assessed a lack of seaborne lift to give the paltry 160,000 person army overseas, let alone the larger force needed for the US to enter the war. So when I was lucky enough to get picked up to go to duke for a PhD. I knew I wanted to stay the first world war and specifically to understand how the army grew from that 160,000 person force up to 4 million in uniform within a year and a half and what that meant for army and for American society.
- [05:24]
C
Okay, so that's really helpful to have the context of kind of the massive projects that this came from and even honestly, the massive questions you just raised there around the World War II time, or, sorry, the World War I time period. Why did you decide to focus on North Carolina to investigate what was going on here?
- [05:42]
B
Yeah, that's a great question. One that I get pretty frequently. And there's actually kind of two answers to that. So first, first, as I was going through my PhD work and just kind of doing the research, I was very interested in the more granular detail like a regional and local look could provide. There were already tons of analyses on national mobilization from the US Federal perspective. And as I dug through the archives in Raleigh, here in North Carolina, the State capitol in Washington D.C. i saw that there was a different story to tell at the lens. Where was at the American state or city level and not just the federal level. And second, and just research is contingent, just like history is contingent. Covid hit when I was doing this research and closed all the archives for 18 plus months. I was lucky that I already had some material to work with, both from Raleigh and Washington. And more importantly than I had made friends with the military archivist at the North Carolina State Archive, a guy named Matthew Peek, who was very kind to me and would digitize and share material even when the archive itself was not open to the public. So both interested in the local lens, but also just kind of spoke to what I was able to get at.
- [06:59]
C
Yeah, and that's, I think, really helpful because of course, many decisions in projects like this come down to that combination of factors. Right. What's intellectually interesting and what's logistically feasible. So thank you for giving us a sense of both of those, those factors. In this case, the other then I think foundational aspect we want to cover early in our conversation. So why, you know, World War I? Why North Carolina? Why associational state. Right. It's in the subtitle of the book. It's a very key term. What does it mean?
- [07:29]
B
Absolutely. So this is a concept that describes an element of American governance that while elements of it exist in other contexts, other governments, it's peculiarly potent and important for the US and specifically the US in the 19th and early 20th century. At that time, governance was very decentralized, loosely connecting the federal government, the state government's localities, and even to the citizens themselves. And as I searched through the archives for the makeup of American wartime governance that drove the mobilization for the First World War, I found it in a lot of work on federalism, which detailed how the 48 states wielded far more domestic authority in the American system because they had the power to coerce through their police powers at the state level. And this was a tool that was unavailable to the federal government, particularly the post reconstruction federal government. Instead, the federal government had to encourage cooperation through kind of the rule of law, policymaking and its ability to act. As an example, this disparity between a broad police power on the one hand. And persuasion toward a common good on the other. Privileges that state police power in Americans everyday lives over that of the federal government. These concepts were also further captured by a guy named Brian Ballo, who described the power of American governance in what he called intermediary institutions that connected the public and the private in a remarkably strong associational model. And that what led to the phrase associational state, these intermediary institutions bridged and connected or associated governmental institutions at all levels with business, educational institutions and civic groups. This drew in individual citizens from society to their government through a more indirect means. This associational connection in turn created the extension of governance through private and semi public organizations that were perceived as less threatening to liberty, while also allowing the government to enact desired policies. One of the main contentions of orchestrating power is that these intermediary institutions of the associational state were integral to the mobilization of the United States for the First World War. Particularly through these things called the State Councils of defense, which integrated state, local and individual mobilization efforts. As I dove into the archives and local historical societies in North Carolina and Washington D.C. as I said, but also places like Maryland and even was able towards the end of COVID to get out to California and Wyoming. It became clear the real work of mobilizing the American people for military service, resource mobilization and even social action all occurred at the local to state level. And would not have worked without these intermediary institutions as a part of this associational state.
- [10:22]
C
Okay, so let's talk then about one of these institutions that you focus a lot on in the book. So the North Carolina Council of Defense. How, when, why was this created?
- [10:34]
B
Yep. So it's really started with the unprecedented scale of the mobilization, specifically of military manpower as America entered the First World War after April 1917. In fact, the Secretary of War invited all of the governors of all the states and territories of the United States to come to Washington, D.C. in May of 1917 to have essentially like a conference on how we could do this. And after that meeting, they created, essentially every one of the state and territories, created these councils of defense at that state or territory level. And so North Carolina was one of those. Shortly after that May meeting, they stood up a council of defense, mostly focused on how they can support the national conscription under the Selective Service Act. And it's interesting, we're talking on the 18th of May, that today is actually the anniversary, 109th anniversary of the enactment of the Selective Service Act. So it's appropriate that we're talking today. Anyway. So Selective Service act required not only the young men of North Carolina to register and possibly be conscripted to enter the military war, but it also established a sprawling, multi layered system of boards and committees to choose men for conscription, hear appeals for the relief of service, and ensure that those that were drafted went to training. And so for that reason, military mobilization was an aspect of the war that impacted all of American society, down to the individual family level. And it was also a key element of that America's associational state in wartime, which we just talked about. It integrated efforts that included governmental institutions from the national to local level, and employed individuals and interest groups from society. And how the military mobilization was structured, the capacity and capability it provided to the national and state governments, and who was allowed, prevented, or forced to support military conscription directly impacted the outcomes of that mobilization. At the heart of generating that military manpower was the councils of defense. In this case, the North Carolina Council of Defense. It was integral to try and plus up the National Guard by recruiting at the very beginning of the war. And then it built the state Selective Service system by selecting individuals to register and draft into the national army, the drafted army. But it also established training bases in the state, and it created measures of control to constrain both kind of federal overreach into the state, but also threats internal to the state's sociopolitical order. And so the North Carolina Council of Defense was that primary intermediary institution for military mobilization.
- [13:27]
C
Got it. Okay. That helps us sort of place the institution in the wider context, getting then into sort of more specifics about what mobilization looks like. Like, how does having this Council of Defense make mobilizing soldiers actually happen?
- [13:44]
B
Yeah. So in addition to, like I said, creating the bases, they also set up each of the boards at the state level, the registration board. So they made sure all the Right. Men were registering and then once they were selected, they managed appeals for people who didn't think that they should be drafted. And then they used their power to help send men out to training. Now, the federal government didn't have the kind of police powers to be able to do that, so they relied upon the state to ensure their men who had been drafted were collected up and they were sent off to training at different bases, both in the state and outside of the state. And beyond that, they also helped coordinate the manufacturing, the industrial base in the state, the agricultural power in the state to support those soldiers both as they went to training with clothing, training, weapons and food, but also aggregated that stuff to support the overall war effort over in France.
- [14:51]
C
Yeah, I want to talk about those things that are happening kind of beyond just the. You've now become a soldier, come to this base and train. Like, there's all these other things that go into the war effort. What was the role of the Council of Defence in. In coordinating that? You know, how much kind of direct control did they have over various aspects? And how did they deal with the fact that, on the one hand, part of their job is recruit lots of soldiers to go fight. On the other hand, if your job is also, like, have factories churn out things, well, don't you need the men to be in the factories and not be soldiers? That sounds sort of like competing objectives. So kind of, what can you tell us more about what they were up to and how they managed to keep all the plates spinning? I suppose.
- [15:32]
B
Yeah, absolutely. And there was definitely a balance to be had. And sometimes that balance wasn't terribly great during the war, but in general, the way they balanced was a couple of ways. One was through the rules and the regulations they set up for the draft itself. So really, particularly the beginning of the draft, they only conscripted men of a certain age over college age, so 23 to 35. So those were kind of the key men who could fight, but also men who were single. So those who were drafted first, all men in that age bracket who were single. And you could get exemptions for things like key industrial work. If you were working on munitions and things like that, you were categorized a different category that put you lower on the list for being drafted. So that was just the management of the manpower for military versus, like industrial or agricultural manpower, though, there was a challenge. And North Carolina's governor in particular, pushed back quite heavily on the Secretary of War because agricultural workers were not exempted. And he worked very hard to try and get agricultural Workers exempted to keep them on the farm. And ultimately was unsuccessful. So there was some management that had to be done. When it came to the growing of food. And to that point, aside from the military manpower itself, the councils of defense helped manage a lot of kind of resource management. Think food, fuel, and funding. Each council included committees or boards or organizations. They created and spun off out of the councils that for food, Help citizens conserve food through new agricultural techniques. And canning and jarring of vegetables. As well as encouraging the reduced use of food. Just eating different foods or eating less of it to support the war effort. When it came to fuel, they very much directed conservation. Through local fuel administration and the rationing of fuel, Particularly like coal and gasoline, which wasn't too bad at the beginning of the war when we entered in April and May. But became more of a challenge as we got into the winter of 1917. But that was critical because coal and gasoline, particularly coal, were needed for war industries. And then when it came to funding, they helped coordinate and organize the manpower to sell what were called liberty bonds or war stamps. Liberty bonds spent a little bit more money. War stamps, you could spend cents instead of dollars. And we're tailored to focus on even the poor citizens to be able to support. So they kind of organized the manpower to sell them. But they also pushed very hard for their citizens to be able to buy those things in order to fund the war. So really, other than the military mobilization, the main focus of these councils was on resource management.
- [18:37]
C
Which, as you've described, is definitely a complex effort there. And of course, men were at the center of much of this. But did women have any role in this organizing?
- [18:48]
B
They absolutely did. But one thing, a phrase that I use in orchestrating power Is called the politics of inclusion and exclusion. And in the case of women, it was specifically like a politics of partial inclusion. In mobilization activities. Throughout the war. And indeed, kind of before the United States even entered the war. The people of North Carolina and the elites who drove wartime mobilization. Made distinctions between different groups of women. Based on class, race, other factors, marital status, things like that. These distinctions would come to shape how and where women would be or would not be included in mobilization activities. Despite elite rhetoric about building an organization of women throughout the state. That allowed every citizen to give their best. The partial inclusion of women in work time activity. Led to a bifurcation of work along gender lines. However, women of all classes and races. Were able to make some gains in supporting efforts. That fit within what was called the female dominion. Activities like that, management of food. We talked about or care of families, preservation of the home, relief work, both for families but also for soldiers themselves. But they were stymied in other areas, Specifically those that kind of intruded into the areas men believed were there, such as industrial work. Her labor policy and this kind of partial inclusion Is actually best seen in the activity of a woman called Laura Holmes Riley. And she was a member of the state North Carolina state council and the chair of the state women's committee of the North Carolina Council of defense. She had been a leader in women's groups in North Carolina for many years, including leading the North Carolina federation of women's clubs. And she worked diligently to convince the men on the North Carolina council to defense of the value of what she called woman power, a term women used during the war to describe the potential resource women could provide to identify and organize and employ half the population to meet wartime needs. Riley embodies how women in the state experienced and perpetuated different treatment in mobilization activities. The state women's committee itself participated in the use of inclusion and exclusion among the women of the state. It was mostly run by middle class and wealthy white women, Tied frequently through marriage to the state social, economic and political elites. The women coordinating mobilization constrained who could participate in which activities based on class and race themselves, Upholding pre war political norms. The actions taken to circumscribe the ability of women to participate in all wartime activities inhibited the overall capability of the state to support national requirements. But they did have a huge impact mostly on that resource management, Setting up canning and jarring drives and doing relief for soldiers. Everything from collecting up books to take them to training, as well as sharing food and encouraging the men to support them with things like life insurance and stuff like that.
- [21:53]
C
So you mentioned that when it came to women, there were differences in terms of, for example, race. What about for men? Were African American men involved in any of this?
- [22:04]
B
Absolutely. Again, that politics of inclusion exclusion absolutely applies to African American citizens as well, Honestly, Particularly in North Carolina, it was mostly the exclusion of black citizens from doing any kind of mobilization activities. At the beginning of the war, both the state and federal government struggled to address the potential role of African Americans in the war effort. But by the winter of 1917, 1918, the federal government began to put pressure on the states, including North Carolina, to more fully integrate black citizens into the mobilization requirements. And the North Carolina Council of defense, however, used its intermediary role between the state and the national government to inhibit the integration of black North Carolinians. Where the national council Viewed the integration of black Americans into wartime activities, the state council only saw the possibility of social and political breakdown. White elites feared the former enslaved would acquire economic and political power, threatening their hold on government and society. And the sphere was heightened by the uncertainty and possible upheaval caused by the US Entering the First World War. Therefore, the North Carolina council excluded black citizens from state level mobilization activities and only really gave limited ground. Later, by allowing local and county councils of defense to employ black citizens to act as spokesmen back to their communities, despite the exclusion from any substantive integration into these mobilization activities, black leaders were able to use their intermediary position between white elites and their local communities to advance the interests and the overall position of black citizens in the state. These efforts eventually carved out specific areas for which black North Carolinians were able to participate in mobilization activities to varying degrees, most especially as participants of resource management, like women, as it related to food, labor and fundraising. Resource mobilization was one area that was particularly ripe for black North Carolinians. Ultimately, they were able to mobilize black communities in the state for agricultural improvements, the raising of funds for liberty bonds and more, saving stamps and working with things like the Red Cross and others, and honestly helping to mobilize black Americans to support the draft.
- [24:29]
C
Got it. Interesting to see these politics of inclusion and exclusion, as you've mentioned, kind of coming across all these different sorts of identity and community markers. And obviously some of that is specific to North Carolina or at least North Carolina and perhaps its neighboring states. But North Carolina is not like some weird, ridiculous outlier. Right. Like there's all sorts of things that looking at the North Carolina Council of Defense can help us understand about larger politics. Right?
- [24:56]
B
Absolutely. And that's honestly the follow up of why North Carolina. Usually the next follow up question is what does North Carolina tell us about the. The rest of the country during the mobilization? And honestly, the evolving relationships and nature of the American state in this period was built on that associational order, the associational state we talked about earlier, that were the same across all of those councils of defense. They all focused on things like military mobilization, resource management. Of course, those differed depending on the region. And North Carolina is very much an agricultural state. So a large focus on food resource management, where others, like the more industrialized Illinois or New York's focus much more on the labor issue or the industrial labor issues. And all of them also had some of the similar kind of drawbacks or challenges, things like issues with race and gender. So it wasn't just in the south that you had Racial issues when it came to the mobilization that happened throughout the country, and the same thing with women. So each of these little elements that I was looking into in North Carolina were very much extant in other states as well. Additionally, what an analysis of the North Carolina council of defense showed was this intermediary institution that kind of managed the public, private, and individual efforts was the same in every other state. So being able to assess why things happen the way that they did in North Carolina was instructive for other states throughout the union.
- [26:40]
C
All right, well, that's definitely helpful too. As you know, we've done big picture, then zoomed into detail. Now zooming out a bit more in terms of kind of, I suppose, lessons that can be learned from this. I wonder if we can maybe dive for a moment into your process of figuring all of this out out. Was there anything that you came across in the research or writing of all of this that really surprised you?
- [27:03]
B
Yeah, one of the things that I tried very hard to research and put in the book, and there's only like a passing mention of it because of just my inability to really describe a mechanism for why it happened, was why governor Bickett, the North Carolina governor, and the state leadership, who very much overtly talked about this issue, going to war, entering the war as being an emergency, why they didn't actually resource it as such. And I came down to. It all came down to kind of the structure of governance, particularly in the state. Even in a one party state like North Carolina, the structure dramatically drove choices such as resourcing the war effort. Despite recognizing the entry into the first world war as an emergency, Governor Bickett did not call a special session of the state legislature to create policies or provide resources to support the mobilization effort. And I just couldn't figure out why that was the case. But I think structure tells a story. So North Carolina's system of one party governance belied the challenges and disparate powers inherent in the state's political structure. The democratic party managed or influenced all appointed or elected positions in the state, and such a configuration reduced the avenues of reform other party members might pursue. But structurally, the state leaders were also challenged by one of the most fractionalized state executive branches in the nation. Since 1899. The top 10 executive positions were independently elected by the people of North Carolina, allowing for the creation of different political power bases in the executive branch. Additionally, many of the powers of the governor, the titular head of the state government, including the ability to convene the state general assembly and borrow money, required the consent of the Council of State, which was a body codified in the state constitution. That Council of State in 1917 included the governor, the Secretary of State, the State Auditor, the State Treasurer, and the Superintendent of Public Instruction, each independently elected and able to stymie executive decision making. Additionally, unlike every other state chief executive, North Carolina's governor did not possess the power of the veto. As long as the members of the House and Senate could agree, North Carolina's General assembly could pass legislation adverse to the governor's agenda and he could not prevent it. This inherently created factional groups within this Council of State and seems for external parties, particularly economic elites in the state, to exploit to shape their own personal interests. This came into play in the mobilization, resulting in an informal system built around this Council of Defense versus a centralized state mobilization, as the Governor was the only power broker among many, only one power broker of many in the state leadership. Much as the overall book looks at the structure of American governance, what it meant for mobilization, this in a smaller form shows how like the structure of governance at the state level really kind of drove the mobilization as well.
- [30:13]
C
Definitely interesting the sorts of things that one can find even if they don't sort of get a huge section of the book. So thank you for sharing that with us and of course anyone who wants more details. The book is of course out in the world and available, but that also means Nathan, it's off your desk. So is there anything you're currently working on you want to give us a sneak preview of?
- [30:33]
B
Absolutely. And it is very nice to be off my desk. It's wonderful to be able to talk about the book, but it is good to be done, definitely. So at this point I'm kind of working on two projects somewhat interrelated and having nothing to do with World War I, to be honest. So a book project which is going to be a long term project on Cold War Taiwan, specifically the United States and Taiwan in the Cold War and what it meant for overall American strategy. And then kind of tied to that, but separate is looking at escalation dynamics focused on the kind of triangle between the us, China and Taiwan.
- [31:06]
C
Well, different indeed. So best of luck with the project. And of course while you are pursuing those new areas, listeners can read the book we've been discussing titled Orchestrating Power the American Associational State in the First World War, published by Cornell University Press in 2025. Nathan, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
- [31:26]
B
It was a pleasure. Thanks for having me.
- [31:27]
D
Miranda, thank you for listening to this episode of the New Books Network we are an academic podcast network with the mission of public education. If you liked this episode, please share it with a friend and rate us on your preferred podcast platform. You can browse all of our episodes on our website newbooksnetwork.com Connect with us on Instagram and BlueSky with the handle ew booksnetwork, and subscribe to our weekly Substrac newsletter at newbooksnetwork.substack.com to get episode recommendations straight to your inbox.