Hoover's Twelve Points

In a simple speech Elder Statesman Herbert Hoover last week offered twelve principles to guide civilian economy in total war. To 4,000 people at the Manhattan convention of the National Association of Manufacturers (see p. 91) Herbert Hoover said: "From our own experience and the experience of all other countries ... we can distill some principles or policies of organization of civilians. I do not offer them as criticism, but as recommendations for adoption where they have not been applied in this war." The principles:

>Civilians should direct all civilian activities--"otherwise we shall be a military dictatorship with all its implications."

>There should be single-headed administration--"leadership comes from individual men; we can no more administer civilian activities in war with a committee than we could direct a battle with a committee."

>All functions in a particular activity must be concentrated in one administrator's hands.

>Head administrators of major groups (munitions, food, labor, fuel, shipping, transportation, finance, War, Navy) should comprise a war council under the President, the final umpire in conflicts and overlaps.

>To get maximum production of war essentials, the first civilian necessity, it is necessary to bring high-cost producers into action; levy drastic excess-profits taxes so "the low-cost producer does not get away with anything consequential"; ditch labor rules (beyond the health safeguards) that restrict effort.

>"We can better appraise our manpower if we calculate the male manpower available and assume that women can do the rest. ... If we compute the males necessary to carry on the Government, the professions, the farms, the transportation, the mines, the skilled crafts and to fight, we will find certain limitations on what we can do. We have to divide our available male power between these fields. And we must choose which of these jobs we will give priority for the long view of winning the war."

>Attempts to fix prices by general retail and wholesale ceilings were made by every nation in the last war and proved failures because of mounting confusion, shifts in production costs, etc. The alternative--to fix prices of a given commodity or raw material at the source of production and to regulate the subsequent percentage addition for processors and the markup for merchants--retards price rises, avoids stifling production, is easier to police.

>Do no more regulating than is needed to attain major objectives.

>The Government's normal bid-and-contract practice of buying commodities and services must give way to a system of allocations (used in the last war) that will avoid a multitude of priorities and sustain small business.

>The enthusiastic cooperation of civilians with the Government is needed, to mobilize their abilities, skills and sacrifice with the least bureaucracy and force.

>"Reforms for making America over, no matter how attractive, cannot but dislocate the war effort. If we lose or delay the winning of the war, social gains will be scarce for a generation."

>"A major principle is to organize all these activities so as to assure the return to economic and personal liberty the moment the war is over. Civilian war organization is economic Fascism itself, and if Democracy is to live, these measures must be dissolved."

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