War Finance Corporation - Definition and Overview

The War Finance Corporation was created by an congressional act of April 5, 1918, to give financial support to industries essential to the WW1 war effort and to banking institutions that aided such industries. US Goverment borrowing to pay for the war had attracted a majority of private capital and so little capital was available for corporations to borrow. After the armistice in 1918, the Corporation assisted in the transition to peacetime by financing railroads under Government control, and making loans to American exporters and agricultural cooperative marketing associations. The Corporation established agricultural loan agencies in farming areas, and cooperated with several livestock loan companies. Eugene Meyer, Jr., a wealthy and ambitious capitalist, Wall Street banker, was its managing director. The Corporation was abolished on July 1, 1939.

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