Too Much Toughness?

The U.S. people cheered last September when Elder Statesman Bernard M. Baruch's Special Rubber Inquiry Committee came up with proposals which sounded as if they would solve the rubber problem to the eventual satisfaction of the civilian and military alike. They sang hosannas when Union Pacific's tough William M. Jeffers was put in charge of translating that program into action. Bill Jeffers made the Baruch report his bible, dared one and all to cross his path. But last week it looked as if the Government had made up its mind that in demanding all the synthetic rubber the Baruch report called for, Czar Bill Jeffers was asking too much.

Point at issue was an anguished complaint from the Army and Navy that the building of synthetic rubber factories was eating up too many critical component parts also needed in the construction of Navy escort vessels and the manufacture of high-octane gas. They demanded a cut in the rubber program down to 55% of the 1943 goal. Said one War Department official: "If the . . . program is not held at a true 55%, we will be marvelously equipped to fight a war in the Mississippi Valley."

Bill Jeffers argued that the necessary parts could be obtained by breaking production bottlenecks, announced he would stick to his program. But the program, said the armed services, had already been outdated by the facts of war; and the Battle of the Atlantic was far from won. The bitter dispute finally went to Economic Czar James F. Byrnes for settlement. Washington heard that Jimmy Byrnes was prepared to cut rubber production; how much, no one knew. But since the fight cut to the heart of United Nations strategy, it seemed that this was a time when the Army and Navy should have their way.

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