Big Bill's Answer

Last week in Manhattan, the Army's No. 1 draftsman, studious, able Brigadier General Lewis Elaine Hershey, sat down with labor-union men at a conference sponsored by the left-wing National Lawyers Guild. Subject of discussion: "Labor's Rights and the Defense Program."

General Hershey heard National C. I. O. Secretary James Barron Carey and General Counsel Lee Pressman defend labor's right to strike in defense industries, heard them oppose any move to abridge the right to strike, for whatever reason. He heard other speakers cry for more representation of labor on draft boards. But diplomatic Lewis Hershey confined him self to a cogent generality that was buzzing that day, as it had for weeks past, in many a citizen's mind. The U. S. must have unity in national defense, said he significantly, "Lest we each hang separately." Evidence that that unity was lacking had cropped up with increasing frequency in recent weeks. It was plain in the strike at the Vultee plant, which for twelve days stopped delivery of badly needed basic trainers to the Army Air Corps. It was plain in the formal, written protest (later swallowed) of President John G. Pew of Sun Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Co. that his company could not answer charges of unfair labor practice, and at the same time go ahead with a $69,000,000 Navy building program. It was plain in the demand of Defense Commissioner Sidney Hillman that Henry Ford settle his differences with labor (before a final decision by the Supreme Court) or go without a $2,000,000 contract for Army automobiles.

What's Wrong? Who was holding up the defense program -- capital or labor? --was a question many a citizen could not answer to his own satisfaction.

There was no unequivocal answer. But the U. S. public knew that something was slowing down defense. What that some thing was was answered in scores of ways by columnists, reporters, editorial writers. But, by & large, the nation's interest was in the forest, not the trees. The average citizen knew that because of shillyshally, lack of compromise between capital & labor, failure to see what was ahead, France had ceased to exist, Poland was in chains, Britain had its back to the wall. What was wrong with U. S. defense?

Last week a big part of the answer came from the best possible and most unexpected source : hulking, close-mouthed William S. Knudsen. who gave up the $300,000-a-year presidency of General Motors last summer to join the National Defense Advisory Commission (for nothing) as head of its production section. Big Bill Knudsen had kept his mouth shut while the press reported instances of slow delivery on airplanes, tanks & guns, of scrambled priorities for defense orders, of unexpected delays in such vital things as production of the Army Air Corps's Allison aircraft engine. But last week he sounded off. The occasion was the National Association of Manufacturers' annual convention; the place was the ballroom of Manhattan's swank Waldorf-Astoria. In Big Bill's audience sat the heads of U. S. industry.

"The defense job," said he bluntly, ". . . has not been sufficiently sold to Industry and Labor as yet. The public generally is sold on defense--letters that I get clearly indicate that the man in the street is for defense 100% and wants to see a lot of material turned out before he feels secure.

"But have the two most important elements, Industry and Labor, been fully sold on the serious side of the job? Conditions abroad change rapidly from day to day. The European war is gradually taking in more and more territory and most of us hope we will have the time necessary to get prepared for defense and thus avert attack. Well, that might be all right . . . but after all a war depends just as much on what the other fellow thinks, as on what we think ourselves."

In U. S. plants, as Knudsen spoke, were U. S. orders of close to $10,000,000,000, British orders of over $2,500,000,000--for 50,000 airplanes, 130,000 engines, 42,000 large and small guns, 13,000 trench mortars, 33,000,000 loaded shells, 9,200 tanks, 700,000 machine guns and auto matic rifles, 1,300,000 Garand rifles, millions of rounds of ammunition, 380 Navy ships, 200 mercantile ships, 210 camps for soldiers, 40 Government factories, clothing and equipment for a U. S. Army of 1,200.000 men. It was the biggest production problem of any country in modern times, and that was what Bill Knudsen called it. But--

"Friday night," said he, "has become the big night in most of our industrial picture. It used to be Saturday night--we have cut 20% off our machine time. Can we afford to do this? Can't we stop this blackout, this lack of production from Friday to Monday. . . . Isn't it possible to put the defense job on a war basis even if we are at peace?"

Quick was the Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce to deny that there was any general Friday-night blackout for the airplane industry. Bill Knudsen had said that the Commission's (and the air industry's) estimate of 1,000 planes a month by next Jan. 1 had had to be scaled down to 700. But he had added that the industry would be in the expanding stage until spring, that production troubles were to blame. And he named no other names. But the U. S. public knew that slow building of Army camps had forced the Army to postpone calling up 96,000 more National Guardsmen. It knew that the Army in the field was ill-equipped, ill-housed, short of clothing and equipment. Even conceding lackadaisical supervision by the Quartermaster Corps, these matters were the responsibilities of big, established industries. And some, perhaps all, had been going along with little urgency, no feeling for the obvious fact that U. S. capital and labor had better knuckle down and work by lamplight, while there was still time.

Wanted: A Head Man. Somehow both arms of the U. S. production machine had to get together, work without strikes and lockouts, work if necessary beyond the 40-hour week on some basis that would be a compromise for both sides.

It was plain for anyone to see that this situation could not be fixed up by the Defense Commission. It is an advisory body without executive power, with a chairman who is busy being President of the U. S. The defense program had two major defects plain to any member of the Defense Commission, and frankly discussed (off the record) by some, that a director with plenary powers could repair in five minutes.

One was the scramble in priorities. Set by a joint Army-Navy board, priority orders are rubber-stamped by Defense Purchase Coordinator Donald Marr Nelson, sent out to industry. Last week many an industry, hoping to get to work first on the orders needed most, found that A-1 priority was marked on the bulk of its orders. Tool plants in Ohio found A-1 priority marked on 90% of their work, came to the rueful conclusion that such priority meant no priorities at all.

Another scrambled problem was procurement, now managed by the two services, which first select products and sellers, then hand their orders (over $500,000) for material to the Commission to be approved. Plain and understandable to many an industrialist last week was the fact that the services, particularly the Army, do not know how to buy on 1940's national defense scale. Most egregious example was a recent $300,000 Army order for underwear of a 1917 type, and not manufacturable on 1940 machines. Obvious remedy: organization of a procurement agency with power to receive Army-Navy specifications, lay down the orders out of industrial experience that no service officer can be expected to have.

These were but two of many holes in the U. S. defense program. But NDAC could not fill them. Without authority to enforce its will on industry and labor, without a boss on the job 24 hours a day with full power to cut red tape, simplify procedure, settle rows, it has done its first job as well as it could. The orders are let production has begun. Whether NDAC will get a boss, whether it gets the power it needs, only one man can decide: Franklin Roosevelt.. This week, as the President got back from his Caribbean vacation, Bill Knudsen released the text of letters he had sent to machine-tool men--bosses and workers--pleading for more production. Most pregnant line: ". . . If you could see ... the terrible urgency of the situation you would understand why the Defense Commission is making this appeal. . . ."

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