Nelson Takes Over

It would have been more spectacular to swing with both arms, hire & fire, tear down and rebuild. But Donald Nelson, the nation's new Production Boss, the man on whom the black blame or the golden praise for the U.S. war effort would now fall, did not work that way. Said Nelson: "We have got to make haste, but make it in the right direction."

Quietly working long hours in his plain office in Washington's grey stone Social Security Building, Donald Nelson made haste. On the wall still hung the motto he had put up there in the early days of the defense program: "A year from now, what will we wish we had done today?" He felt the pressure, but it did not affect his breathing.

By week's end Donald Nelson had mapped his organization, explained it at a press conference, issued his first orders, taken his first steps. The old Office of Production Management was tossed out the window; the new War Production Board was at work.

There were no sensational changes in the personnel of WPB. Its division heads were all chosen from OPM and SPAB; some dated back to the old National Defense Advisory Commission. The great change was in function. OPM had failed in part because of its leaders' divided authority and lack of full responsibility. WPB, as set up by Nelson, was to be a straight-line organization where every man had a duty, every man had the authority he needed, every man's successes or failures could be gauged at a glance.

No. 2 Man. As his second in command, Nelson chose craggy, red-faced Engineer William Batt Sr., former president of big S.K.F. Industries (ball bearings). Able, levelheaded Bill Batt has worked with Nelson since NDAC, was one of the first men to recognize that Washington's defense sights were too low, one of the first to warn of approaching bottlenecks in aluminum and steel.

Plain-spoken and informal, Bill Batt is the best-liked of all defense officials. Among his friends are such diverse characters as Harry Hopkins, Jesse Jones, Russian Ambassador Maxim Litvinoff, Sir Clive Baillieu of the British Purchasing Commission. Nobody calls him Mr. Batt; he is always referred to as Bill Batt--pronounced as if it were one word. When he called Jesse Jones last week, a warmhearted Texas girl in Jones's office said: "Jus' a minute, honey." All Washington thought that Bill Batt and Donald Nelson would make a good team.

Next Nelson set up six main divisions of WPB :

Production--the job of getting armament built--remains under big, silver-topped William H. Harrison, a genial Irishman who talks out of the side of his mouth like a Brooklyn politician. Blue-eyed Bill Harrison started his career climbing telephone poles for $6 a week, worked up to vice president of American Telephone & Telegraph, got into the defense program by sheer accident. One day in 1940 Bill Knudsen, in search of a construction expert for OPM, called A.T. & T. President Walter Gifford, was switched to Harrison because Gifford was out of town. Harrison took the job, moved up to OPM's production chief.

Many a critic of OPM considered Bill Harrison too easygoing, too unimaginative to do a bang-up production job; and Nelson himself recently complained that Harrison was a disbeliever in conversion. But Nelson holds that Harrison was a victim of OPM's faulty direction, has faith that he will deliver the goods. Into Harrison's lap also falls the ticklish problem of subcontracting--with Financier Floyd B. Odium, who made the most recent unsuccessful attempt to solve it, moving to a nebulous post as "adviser."

Purchases--the job of placing armament orders--remains under able Douglas C. MacKeachie, a sharp-eyed Yankee trader who learned how to buy goods cheap and fast as New England manager for A.& P. Scraggly, balding Doug MacKeachie joined the defense program as adviser to the Army Quartermaster Corps, taught the Army many a moneysaving short cut, moved on to OPM as Donald Nelson's assistant.

Materials--the job of finding enough of them--remains under Batt, who also heads a new Requirements Committee. This committee will survey existing supplies of raw materials, allocate them among Army, Navy, Lend-Lease and civilians.

Industry Operations--a new division--will handle conversion of U.S. factories to war production, industry-labor committees, priorities. Its chief: handsome, brusque James S. Knowlson, president of Stewart-Warner Corp. (radios), one of the first big manufacturers to go after defense orders in 1940. An old friend of Donald Nelson in Chicago, Knowlson has been helping handle priorities since last September. All members of the all-out war-effort school swear by him.

Labor--the job of finding workmen for arms plants--remains under curly-headed Labor Statesman Sidney Hillman, formerly half of OPM's Knudsenhillman.

Civilian Supply remains in the capable hands of Leon Henderson, who also doubles as the Administration's Price Boss.

First Acts. WPB's first official actions made good sense. It officially stopped automobile production, curtailed radio production by 45%, virtually ended civilian use of rubber and aluminum. It began a hard-boiled survey of copper inventories, to try to find leaks of that vital metal from arms production. It ordered automobile graveyards turned into scrap, badly needed for steel production.

Nelson sent former Ford Executive Ernest C. Kanzler off to Detroit to speed auto-plant conversion. Bill Batt bluntly told the Navy (which, with the Army, has wasted many a ton of scarce metal in froufrou) that he would cut down its aluminum supply.

No one, not even Donald Nelson, knew yet whether WPB could do the job. But for its first week it had moved fast.

At week's end Nelson gathered his entire staff around him, closed the doors, read them a little lecture:

"I promised the country that I would do this job or step out. That same rule goes for everyone else in this organization. . . .

"You may . . . have the same functions you had before; you may sit in the same offices, direct the same staffs, do the same work and remain the same people--but you're in a new organization. . . . Now we have the authority, all the authority any man could ask for. We have smoothed out the organizational kinks. The rest is up to us. Any failure from now on is a failure of men."

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