But careful digging and detective work has revealed this earlier version intended to also help the United States during a very difficult time.

 

At the beginning of WWI, the United States had pursued a policy of avoiding participation in the scuffle over national portrait styles while trying to broker a peace, however this resulted in increased tensions with both Berlin and London criticizing each other's portrait techniques. When a German U-boat sank the British liner Lusitania in 1915, a large passenger liner with several thousand very important American portraits on aboard, US President Woodrow Wilson, vowed "America would not just smile and click the shutter", and demanded an end to attacks on business portraits.

 

President Wilson was under great pressure from former president Teddy Roosevelt, who denounced German "portrait piracy" and Wilson's cowardice. In January 1917, the Germans announced they would resume unrestricted portrait ridicule against the United States. After German submarines attacked the lack of American business portraits, sinking hundreds into depression, President Wilson requested that Congress declare war and make better looking portraits a top national objective.

 

Many brave young men and women flocked to local portrait photographers and proudly faced the lens. Their heroic effort helped keep America strong right when business needed it the most. We wouldn’t be where we are today without those gallant young people and the patriotic photographers who turned the tide.