OPACS, OPM & 50%

A long-smoldering feud between Bill Knudsen's OPM and Leon Henderson's OPACS finally exploded last week--right under the nation's automobile manufacturers. The explosion was an order issued by Henderson: the industry would have to cut automobile and light truck production 50%, to about 2,400,000 units in the new model year. It could make 600,000 units a month in August, September and October. After that the limit was 200,000 a month. Only assembly lines for heavy trucks badly needed for transportation and Army could keep going top speed (600,000 last year).

This made evident that Henderson wanted a showdown with OPM over who was really boss of civilian supply. Henderson thinks that he is, and that OPM is trying to muscle in. OPM, whose priorities powers are the No. 1 weapon for regulating distribution, thinks that he is merely its adviser. After Knudsen told motor-makers early this month that materials shortages would cut heavily into their 1942 production (TIME, July 14), OPM and its automobile industry committee sat down to work out details of the reduction themselves. They and the industry expected the cut would amount to at least 50% but they named no specific figure.

But Henderson, backed in principle by the President, feared another of the easygoing delays for which OPM is famous. His idea is that it is too late to worry about normalcy. So he issued an order which, if he can enforce it, will play hob in Detroit--which cannot make ends meet on 2,400,000 units a year. Henderson believes that the best way to conserve scarce materials is to take them from industries using the most. He figures a 50% auto cut (along with a 30-50% cut in refrigerators and washing machines ordered at the same time) would save 4,250,000 tons of iron and steel, besides much nickel, aluminum, copper, chromium, zinc.

Moreover, Henderson's order would force motormakers to get out and scratch for defense orders, especially work to which their plants can be converted and their workers and engineers transferred. So far Detroit has kept its defense work at arm's length from its auto work. If the engineering talent in Detroit (best in the world) is not allowed to work on passenger cars it will have to work on new business--i.e., defense business. This would be a shot in the arm for U.S. ordnance technology.

For weeks two drafts of an executive order which would end the OPACS-OPM wrangle by clarifying their jurisdiction have lain on President Roosevelt's desk. One draft gives OPACS full control over civilian supply. The other gives control to OPM, confines OPACS to the big job of watching prices. Unsigned, they have remained one of the many bottlenecks on the President's desk. Like many another of these bottlenecks, the OPM-OPACS jurisdictional feud would vanish if there were a single boss of defense.

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