War's Weight

MANPOWER

The cry of the war was for men, men and more men. The demand for manpower threatened the widest disruption of business and family life the country had ever known. The call was for men for war factories, for the farms, for the services. The U.S. had registered all its men from the ages of 20 to 44; now it prepared to list the oldsters. Franklin Roosevelt announced that on April 27 the grey, the bald and the stooped, 45 to 64, would be registered, to be called where needed in nonmilitary war duties.

Among men already busy at war, in uniforms and in the confused civilian beehives of Washington, there had been a conviction that the nation had not yet waked up, that even now people did not understand what the war was going to do to their homes, their businesses. But a Gallup poll indicated that the people's eyes were open: 71% were in favor of the most drastic invasion of U.S. family life yet--drafting men with dependents into military service. Other signs of the transition:

> The older men in the third draft registration (36 to 44) would be called to military service, in proportion to the numbers of their enrollment. The first of this group would be in uniform some time in May.

> In the rolls of the first drafts (21 to 35), selective-service boards went back through the record of deferments. Men with new wives, or with wives capable of self-support, were going to be reclassified and drafted.

> In New York City, one of the most lenient areas of draft classification, Director Arthur V. McDermott announced that the time might soon come when children would not exempt a father from service. In Congress were bills to make additional money allowances to wives and children of drafted soldiers.

> Physical requirements were sharply lowered. The Army now would take men with substandard vision (20/200 if correctable with glasses to 20/40). A good set of teeth was no longer a requisite. The Army said it would take men with no teeth at all, if they looked able to keep up their weight on Army food.

> The Army announced a new rule on physical examinations: if men seem to draft-board doctors sound of wind & limb, they will be sent as needed to induction centers, where they will get a more thoroughgoing test. If they pass, they are soldiers.

> Workers in war plants are also due for more intensive scrutiny. Where they can be replaced, they will go off to service; their places will be taken by nondraftables and by women.

The picture was still incomplete. General Motors has announced that, with 170,000 men already at work in its plants, it will have 240,000 by fall. The aircraft plants, munitions factories, all the rest of the war's 50% of U.S. production will need more help, by the millions. And the farmers, encouraged to sow and reap the vastest harvest ever seen, have not yet been heard from. The weight of war was beginning to press on every U.S. home.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.