Deferment Preferred

The U.S. saw in Washington last week one of the prettiest displays of conflicting statements and general-refusal-to-face-facts in quite a few weeks. They centered in the grave problem of a coming "shortage" of U.S. manpower. (The problem, as the Tolan Congressional committee had indicated, was partly a shortage of U.S. brainpower in using the available manpower. But there was abundant evidence of genuine shortages--see cut.)

At the week's start Manpowerman Paul V. McNutt announced that his commission had drawn up another plan--this time for occupational deferment, which would go into effect "soon." Details were vague. He also gave a routine plug for the enactment of a National Service Act, providing for compulsory service for all citizens. Details of this were vague, too.

Hershey's Black Christmas. Same day Colonel Lewis Sanders, chief of the Selective Service's Re-employment Division, warned a Senate committee that the manpower crisis would be grave between December and February, and that with enough funds the Selective Service could handily handle the whole problem. His chief, Major General Lewis B. Hershey, had made this warning many times, usually while giving the back of his hand to Mr. McNutt.

Next day Mr. McNutt "froze" manpower in the dairy, livestock and poultry industries, and sent a directive to Selective Service to send a directive to local draft boards to defer all such farm workers. (Week before the Tolan committee noted the testimony of General Hershey: "Of course, the local boards need not pay any attention to 99% of the things which we send out. It is a good thing they do not have to.")

McNutt's Black Hallowe'en. Next day the New York Times headlined: MANPOWER MOVES BY MCNUTT ARE HIT FROM THREE SIDES. What made this really newsworthy was that one of the main groups crunching Mr. McNutt was the Manpower Commission's own main policy-making body, a committee of labor and industry spokesmen. The committee was now in revolt against McNutt's pressure for a compulsory service law. Boss McNutt had already said that he deemed this group to be merely "advisory."

Next day the big guns spoke: A.F. of L.'s President William Green and C.I.O.'s President Philip Murray arm-in-armed in & out of the White House. Upshot: newspaper stories that the Administration had shelved compulsory manpower legislation "for the present."

Next day the President told a press conference that the national service law had not been permanently abandoned but was merely in the study stage, the President's well-worn phrase for business that has been pigeonholed until the psychological moment.

Same day Messrs. Green and Murray, up before the Senate Labor committee, wheeled into range of Mr. McNutt and laid down a barrage calculated to destroy every living thing for miles around. Murray shot the heaviest load, dismissing most of McNutt's proposals as "sheer nonsense," and saying flatly:

"On that type of foundation (planlessness) a discussion of a labor freeze or a labor draft is not merely futile nonsense, it is dangerous nonsense. If our manpower distribution today is planless and chaotic, a job freeze simply freezes chaos."

Such, apparently, was the honest indignation and general hauteur of Messrs. Green and Murray that no committeeman asked them about a point they ignored but which some observers think is basic in the so-called manpower crisis: that the U.S. could get a great deal more war production by merely extending the basic work week from 40 to 48 hours before overtime is paid. The Baltimore Sun's Frank Kent claimed that the average work week in Great Britain totals 56 hours; that in the U.S., counting overtime, the average work week is "still under 43"--although many extremes go to make up the average.

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