Goals in Sight

Donald Nelson had shaken off his gloom. A fortnight before he had been bogged down in his job's endless, exasperating detail. He had been worried about the bickering inside his War Production Board; for the first time he had seemed afraid that his work would never be done. Now, suddenly, from the accurate daily graphs on his desk, he could see that the production picture was taking powerful form.

The nation's Production Boss, after lunching with President Roosevelt, talked cheerily with reporters, whom he had recently avoided. Then he flew to Manhattan, spoke at an Army Day dinner, spreading his new optimism on the record:

Airplane production in March--for the first time--met the schedules set up under this year's new goal of 60,000 planes.

Garand rifles are turned out faster than 1,000 a day; there is a Garand for every soldier "who is supposed to have one." Tanks are ahead of schedule.

Shipbuilding is "rising rapidly," will probably reach this year's 9,000,000-ton goal.

There were still dark spots. Shortages of materials were crucial; the big bottlenecks were still in steel plate (for ships) and aluminum fabrications (for planes). The quarrel over dollar-a-year men stirred up by Robert Guthrie's resignation (TIME, March 23) still smoldered.

But the great, overmastering fact was that the goals were in sight, like land to shipwrecked men. Said Donald Nelson, holding his head high: "This is no time for easy optimism. . . . Yet I firmly believe that no American who sees the whole picture need give way to dark pessimism, either. . . . There is no insuperable obstacle in our way."

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