Get in Line, Don't Push

This week National Association of Manufacturers announced that in a May survey of over 500 defense manufacturers, 82% (v. 64% in January) reported shortage of materials as a major obstacle. This week it was also clear that those businessmen who have not yet felt the pressure of shortages have not long to wait.

Robert E. McConnell, emergency-conscious chief of OPM's Conservation & Substitution Section, made a list of 16 important industrial raw materials, with the ratio of apparent civilian demands to available supply (after defense needs) at month's beginning:

Aluminum . . 15 to 1

Copper 5 to 2

Alloy steels . . 2 to 1

Nickel 2 to 1

Tungsten ... 2 to 1

Chromite ... 3 to 2

Manganese. . . 3 to 2

Mercury 3 to 2

Plastics 3 to 2

Tin 3 to 2

Zinc 3 to 2

Rubber 10 to 7

Nitrates 8 to 7

Power 10 to 9

Steel 10 to 9

Lead . . . 1 to 1

Some of these materials were already under priority control; those that were not soon will be. Same day, OPM's priorities division released a summary of its rulings to date:

Under industry-wide mandatory priorities, which means that no supplier can sell them except to customers who have priority rating, were 14 materials: aluminum, borax (and boric acid),* copper, cork, ferro-tungsten, machine tools, magnesium, nickel, nickel-steel, polyvinyl chloride (for plastics), rubber, synthetic rubber, tungsten high-speed steel, zinc. Pig iron was soon to be added. So were some heavy chemicals--sulfuric acid and possibly ammonia.

> Under "a mild form" of inventory control were 15 other metals: antimony, cadmium, chromium, cobalt, ferrous alloys, iridium, iron & steel products, lead, manganese, mercury, molybdenum, nonferrous alloys, tin, vanadium. Users of these must file statements monthly that they are not increasing their inventories.

> Steel is also subject to a special Preference Delivery Order. This means those who can get it can have it; but 60% of current steel output is going to defense, and these orders carry priority ratings.

> On a Priorities Critical List are some 300 other items, on which Army and Navy orders get first call.

OPM's priorities machinery was just getting oiled this week. It began to open offices throughout the country, train a field staff, hold meetings to explain itself to businessmen. It announced three weapons to enforce compliance with its orders: publicity, restriction of supplies, lawsuits. Manufacturers of peacetime goods did well to contemplate the growth. Leon Henderson, waiting for new legislation on the price front, turned his attention to civilian supply. First move: obtaining (from OPM, which administers all priorities) priority status for such essential civilian industries as transportation, communication, utilities, food processing, farm equipment, mining. That means that orders of a bus line, for example, for zinc for gears and battery rods will come ahead of an organ maker's order for pipes.

Defense orders are not the only criterion of priorities. The U.S. cannot afford to starve whole industries or throw men out of work. During the last war, a Baruch committee found only 25 industries (such as jewelry, ice cream, phonographs) that it was willing to call nonwar producers, and none that it wanted to prohibit as nonessential. Leon Henderson is on record as thinking that candy is not a luxury industry. And OPM (see col. 3) has if anything been more lenient than OPACS on peacetime industries to date.

A conservation campaign, aimed by OPM's McConnell against extravagant material users (whether defense manufacturers or not), will ease the strain on many scarce materials. But as shortages pile up, every U.S. businessman will have to get along with less of something, and stand in line to get it at all.

-Where a shortage has been created by i) a nearly four months' C.I.O. strike at American Potash & Chemical Corp., 2) 1940 exports of 128,626,162 lb., 18% to Japan.

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