Stalin Comes First

Washington issued Special Allocation Order No. i last week--first move in the new program of switching from priorities to outright allocation (TIME. Nov. 17).

The industry: machine tools. The beneficiary: U.S.S.R.

Under Order No. i the Office of Production Management will approve Russian requests for machine tools, set delivery dates. To about 35 machine-tool plants have gone instructions to place these orders ahead of everything else, get them delivered on the dates specified. In this way OPM expects to allocate $10,000,000 to $15,000,000 worth of tools to U.S.S.R.

in the next twelve months.

Thus the Soviet Union, which last spring could get only tools which nobody in the U.S. wanted, now stands at the head of the line--ahead of Great Britain, ahead even of U.S. firms.

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