Under the Layers

WPB slew a red-tape dragon last week. The dragon was called "layering." This is how it worked: if a toiler in WPB's vineyard wanted to get in touch with an Army procurement man, say, he was expected to write a memo which filtered through layers of top executives up and over to the War Department, down through layers again to the procurement man he wanted to reach. Then his answer would boggle back through the same layers, days or weeks later, smothered with seals, O.K.s, stamped approvals and question marks. Henceforth he had WPB and Army instructions to use a simple little method: pick up a telephone, get his man right on the wire.

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