Office of the Alien Property Custodian

The United States entered the war in April 1917, and in October Congress passed the Trading with the Enemy Act, under which authority the office of the Alien Property Custodian was established. The APC was depu-... 

For the 1936 rules see Office of the Alien Property Custodian, Annual report 1944,28-29, and Royal Institute of International Affairs, The problem of international investment (London, 1937), 83nl. 

Annual Report of the Alien Property Custodian for the Year 1922. 67th Cong., 4th sess., January 24, 1923, H. Doc. 525. Washington, D.C. Government Printing Office, 1923. 

TWEA s most dramatic departure from past precedent, believed its authors, was Section 6, the provision that created the Alien Property Custodian (APC). Until just before TWEA passed in October 1917, legislators had plaimed to put the APC in Redfield s Department of Commerce (within its Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce), but their final wording left it to the president s discretion. Wilson instead placed the APC at the head of a new executive agency, the Office of Alien Property, which would report directly to him. 

Alien Property Custodian. By the end of the war, the office supervised an estimated 700 million in 30,000 trust accounts that belonged to foreign citizens and firms. 

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