The Old Disorder Passes
The obit had not yet been written. But last week "Purp" was dead. It had strangled in its own bedclothes. Under sheets and sheets of its own reports the Production Requirements Plan had smothered. In its thrashing, its own statistics had finally knotted around its throat.
Last week the nation's manufacturers did not yet know the good news. But the new bosses of the War Production Board were working out a new plan for the distribution of materials. It was high time, too. Although actual shutdowns of war plants due to nonarrival of materials have been few and relatively brief, many a plant manager has been kept on tender-hooks.* Few are the war plants which have had enough materials to run at full capacity--50%, 60%, 70%, 80% is more like it. Even though Purp is done for, the mess that it made of materials distribution may be felt worse than ever during the next two months.
The next system is a plan to eliminate the statistical delays which kept Purp's allotments always weeks behind time; a plan to relieve WPB of the burden of trying to calculate how many brass screws each manufacturer in Kokomo, Ind. will need in the month of November; a plan to give producers assurance that when they get a war order they will also get the materials to fulfill it; a plan to give war factories a call not merely on materials that the Government fondly hopes they can have but on materials that they actually can get.
But first the final scene of the old priority farce had to be played. WPB announced a new quickie priority, label AA-2X. The supposedly top priority is Aia, but AA-2X rates ahead of it--to get war factories small amounts of critical materials when needed in a rush to keep production going (of course for still greater emergencies there were already two still higher ratings).
But the magic of obtaining more materials than exist by the simple device of inventing higher priority ratings has about lost its effectiveness as a stage illusion, even in Washington. AA-2x, it appeared, was only a stopgap measure until WPBoss Donald Nelson's new plan-it man Ferdinand Eberstadt (TIME. Sept. 28) got the new, more realistic allocations system under way.
This week Ferd Eberstadt's industry branch heads are each to lay on his desk their drafts for the better system. Washington dopesters thought they already saw its broad outlines: a "warrants" or "quota" system similar to the allocations system the British use.
Under such a plan Army, Navy, Maritime Commission and Lend-Lease' would attach to their contracts warrants for specific quantities of scarce materials each month and the sum total of all the warrants cannot total more than the scarce materials the Production Requirements Committee allocates to each service. Each month these warrants would be returned to WPB and, if they added up to more steel, copper, etc. than the Requirements Committee had allocated, WPB would order the guilty services to cut their production schedules. WPB will thus be a central score keeper without trying to be the central scheduler of all production.
To make such a plan work well, manufacturers will have to schedule material requirements on a flow basic (a new trick for many). And the Government will have to keep an accurate account of the materials actually available.
No one dared hint last week that the Eberstadt-streamlined plan would actually solve the materials mess. Too many other plans that sounded lovely on paper have flopped in practice. But last week there was a good augury for the birth of the new plan. The Production Requirements Committee met to allocate materials to each of the services for the fourth quarter. And for the first time in history the Committee actually allocated no more materials than were known to be available.
* On an occasion when TIME has discovered a plant turning out more than its schedule of production, the plant management has earnestly asked not to have the fact published lest their materials supply be reduced.
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