Victory Over the Phone

WPBoss Donald Nelson, a weak and weary pneumonia convalescent, won a big battle by telephone last week. Nelson had issued the first WPB directive permitting the resumption of civilian production. A majority of his lieutenants, backed solidly by the Army & Navy, had pigeonholed the order, in his absence (TIME, July 17).

To break the deadlock, home-front Czar Jimmy Byrnes intervened last week--and it was on Jimmy that Don Nelson did his selling job over the telephone. The Services had argued that manpower was already short in war industries. Peace-goods production would drive even more workers to the security of peace-plant jobs.

Over the phone, Don Nelson persuaded Byrnes that idle workers could not be forced into areas where manpower was short. Such jobs, he insisted, are in the low-paid, hardworking, bad-working-condition industries.

Pots & Pans. Jimmy Byrnes agreed, Nelson won, the first of the peace directives was issued. (Three others will come by Aug. 15. They will release machinery and equipment, allow the development of postwar models and approve civilian production when manpower and materials are available.) Under Nelson order No. 1, manufacturers can start making a fairly wide variety of aluminum products--especially kitchen utensils. Regulations specify that production of pots & pans (and any other items made of aluminum) must be limited to the total previously made with cast iron or other metals.

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