The People Win

The heat was on the White House. For a fortnight, dumpy, testy little Lord Beaverbrook had dug and prodded and needled the Administration with the sarcastic, leering politeness that makes him effective. Now, successively, the President had two callers who turned the trick.

First came Missouri's grey little Harry Truman, chairman of the Senate committee investigating the war program. Senator Truman told Mr. Roosevelt that he was going to rip the whole defense organization up the middle. His report would disclose that the production effort was an awesome mess.

Second caller was the G.O.P.'s big bear, Wendell Willkie. Visitor Willkie, who had demanded a single director for the war effort 87 times in the 1940 campaign and 37 times since, told the President he was going to make his 125th such demand in a speech that night, to the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

The burden of the patriotic dissertation by Messrs. Beaverbrook, Truman, Willkie was the same as that written in heart's blood on countless memos on the President's toy-cluttered desk: give the war effort a single director, give that director total powers. It was the chant of industry, the roar of the press. It was what the people had wanted since June 1940.

Knudsen Out, Nelson In. That afternoon, in the session of SPAB, top defense board, SPABsters leaned back in their chairs. Smoke curled overhead lazily. The day was tagging out; the indirect lights over the long walnut table had been clicked on. It was nearly 5 o'clock.

A door opened and a girl edged through. She handed a message to Donald Marr Nelson, SPAB's executive director. He read it, glanced at his watch, whispered to Vice President Henry Wallace. The two left hurriedly for the White House. There they stayed with the President 50 minutes. When Donald Nelson came out, he had been appointed boss of the world's greatest armament effort. Ten minutes later Press Secretary Stephen T. Early told reporters the big news. It was on the tickers within a minute or two. A bulletin was placed on the great glass-topped desk of William S. Knudsen.

Knudsen's secretary announced Donald Nelson. A slow, friendly smile spread over Knudsen's face. The door opened; tall, portly, spectacled Nelson walked in. "Hello, Bill." he said. Said Knudsen: "Hello, Don. Congratulations." There was a moment's silence, then Knudsen said: "Don--I guess this defense program is a relay race. I've carried the flag as far as I can go. You've got to carry it the rest of the way. I hand it to you."

Thus the Danish immigrant who started out as a shipyard worker at $1.75 a day, rose to the $350,000-a-year presidency of the nation's biggest manufacturing corporation, handed over command of the U.S. war effort to a locomotive engineer's son from Hannibal, Mo., who had wanted to be a professor of chemistry, but who became, as the $70,000-a-year manager of Sears, Roebuck & Co., the country's No. 1 mass-buyer.

Bigger Than Baruch. Nelson took over his enormous job with one enormous advantage: he had consistently avoided involvement in the endless internecine politics of Washington. He had avoided politics to such an extent that he had been criticized for pulling punches. But his 28 years of training as a middleman had helped fit him for the post of middleman of defense. Though some businessmen called him too New Dealish, no New Dealer thought him a hidebound reactionary.

The President abolished SPAB, gave Nelson, as head of the War Production Board, final authority--authority greater than any U.S. citizen except the President himself has ever had, greater than that wielded by sage old Bernard Mannes Baruch, World War I production tsar. For the first time under the New Deal, a top man was given power to hire & fire without a Presidential O.K.

By this unprecedented authority over the economy of the U.S., Nelson can wipe out existing businesses, start others, commandeer materials, seize plants. His orders take precedence over the orders of all Government departments. SPABsters, as members of the new War Production Board, are now only his advisers.

Next day the President gave big sporting Bill Knudsen another job, made him a lieutenant general in the Army* in charge of Army production (a salary rise from nothing-a-year to $9,872)--a post in which Production Man Knudsen may come into his own.

Nelson went into conference with himself. Perhaps he prayed. He had reason to: the Truman committee's report brought in evidence of such frightful all-around bungling--some of it involving himself--as to make lesser men despair of democracy. By & large the report was sound and thorough, though its value was lessened by the sensational and politically tinged charges made by Senator Truman in his summary of it to the Senate. The Missourian, perhaps out of his anxiety to get a new $100,000 appropriation to continue his probe, weakened his own work by resorting to claptrap generalizations, even by gross errors--such as an assertion that more than half of U.S. total pursuit-plane production in 1942 would be of mediocre models.

Donald Nelson knew better than Senator Truman about defense bungling. He had seen it from the start. He had worked valiantly against it some 18 hours a day for 18 months. Said he last week:

"There is only one thing to do--kick all of the old standards out of the window and go ahead. . . . Drop the idea that change comes slowly. . . . This is neither an old man's war nor a young man's war: it is a smart man's war. . . ."

The U.S., knowing that it had also become, to a great extent, Don Nelson's war, hoped that their long-awaited Production Boss was as smart as he seemed.

*The first civilian in U.S. history to be appointed to such rank without military experience, Knudsen will be one of only nine lieutenant generals now in the Army.

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