The Battle of Assumptions

'PRODUCTION

Donald Nelson had a polite but descriptive name for the war that was being fought last week in Washington. He called it "a failure to agree on assumptions." The assumptions were basic. In their extreme form, they were: an Army assumption that crisis shortages (radar, heavy trucks, bombs) are so great that this is no time to talk about reconversion; an assumption by one wing of WPB that war production is now well over the hump, and it is high time to begin retooling for peace.

Two minor men in WPB last week became the first casualties of this battle: chunky V. Lewis Bassie, 36, and short, thin Irving Kaplan, 43, WPB economists. Their job had been to prepare confidential reports of war-production progress for top WPB eyes. In their latest report, they made an audacious assertion: except for a few items, the Army has more than enougk materiel to fight the war. Samples: several years' supply of small arms; a year's supply of guns, fire-control equipment and ammunition; at least nine months' stockpile of ordnance equipment generally. When the Army got a look at the report, it ordered several sections censored. WPB agreed to the censorship; Bassie and Kaplan resigned in a huff. This skirmish was the Army's.

Obviously, two WPB statisticians--without knowledge of future battle plans --had no right to challenge the Army's own judgment of its needs. Just as obviously, they did have the right to report to WPB on massive Army stockpiles.

Cutback Jitters. But Donald Nelson won a victory of his own. This week his plan to resume limited civilian output went into effect, even though opposed by the Army & Navy, and delayed five weeks by War Mobilizer Jimmy Byrnes. It will mean only a trickle of goods, but it was a triumph, even though small, for his side of the Reconversion War. For Nelson, with many other officials, believes that war workers will stick to their high-pay jobs only if they are sure that peace will not come with a thud. And workers could see the end of war production coming.

Last week the Army ordered 20,000 aircraft workers laid off immediately, and another 80,000 by year's end. This news was concealed in an optimistic release which chose to stress increased production of long-range bombers--Boeing B-29s and the new super-Liberator, the B32. But what the War Department had mainly done was to cancel C46 cargo-plane production at Higgins in New Orleans, and cutback P47 output.

In doing so, the Army shifted some aircraft contracts from Southern California to Dallas to relieve the tight California manpower area (see Manpower), and eased the Akron rubber pinch (see BUSINESS) by transferring aircraft-parts contracts to Evansville, Ind. But this did not stop what United Automobile Workers' (C.I.O.) R. J. Thomas last week called "cutback jitters."

Seven Cents an Hour. "War's-almost-over" psychology was in the U.S. air. In the Midwest, 103 big trucking firms refused to pay drivers and handlers a 7-c--an-hour increase ordered by WLB, sending 25,000 men out on strike. Only after the President seized the trucking firms did the men go back to work. Neither management nor men were taking the war as seriously as they took the cost of living--for the strike delayed war deliveries.

To meet this psychology realistically and effectively was Washington's task. But the Reconversion War was being fought on rigid lines. The Army, in effect, argued that production be kept up by stern talk, and by denying the implication of the victory headlines. WPBsters wanted to assure workers that the transition to peace would be smooth, to keep men at war work. On this line, Nelson and the Army were prepared to fight it out all summer.

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