"Impossible Mess"?

For all of the Munitions Board's optimism (see above), there was still a question as to how swiftly and smoothly the U.S. could mobilize in an emergency. Last week, as Congress was winding up work on the Defense Production bill, which blueprints such a mobilization along with necessary controls, the New York Times's military pundit Hanson Baldwin sourly commented: "Our economic mobilization agencies may well become a cluttered and administratively impossible mess."

The defense bill provides for no such industrial czars as WPB's Donald M. Nelson in World War II.-Power will be placed in the hands of regular Government departments, and the lion's share of authority over U.S. industry will probably go to Commerce Secretary Charles Sawyer. The life & death power of industrial allocations and priorities, granted the President in the bill, are expected to be delegated to Sawyer; and he is already busy setting up a National Production Authority, headed by International Telephone & Telegraph Corp.'s President William H. Harrison (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS).

Bureaucratic Battle. This new agency will be the nearest thing to the old WPB --but still only a distant cousin, since many of the WPB powers will be spread among other departments. The Agriculture Department's Charles Brannan, for example, will control production of food, agricultural equipment, cotton, wool and other textiles. Interior's Oscar Chapman will regulate the production and distribution of electric power, gas, petroleum, coal and other minerals. Wage controls will probably be the special province of Secretary of Labor Maurice Tobin.

As might be expected, the bureaucrats were falling all over each other in the scramble for power. The Interstate Commerce Commission, for one, was battling the Commerce Department over who should control transportation. Meanwhile Defense Secretary Louis Johnson set up his own traffic organization, headed by Vice President Edward G. Plowman, of the U.S. Steel Corp. of Delaware to control the transportation of military personnel and defense equipment.

Pet Controls. There were other--and bigger--conflicts ahead. What would happen if Brannan wanted steel for farm machinery and the Munitions Board wanted the same steel for tanks? Or if Interior's Chapman refused to divert electric power to make aluminum Sawyer wanted? Under the law, the National Security Resources Board has power to referee interdepartmental squabbles, and NSRB Chairman Stuart Symington in effect speaks with the voice of the President. But since Cabinet members have the right of appeal from his orders, it seemed likely that most critical squabbles would land right in the lap of the President.

The Cabinet members said they intended to go slow on use of their new powers. Sawyer planned to start things off with a voluntary allocation program and only two broad orders--one to limit the building-up of inventories, the other a general priority edict directing manufacturers to fill military orders ahead of others. But few thought that such voluntary controls would work as the arms program picked up speed. And then, when every Cabinet member began to slap on his own pet controls, the U.S. might indeed find itself in an "impossible mess."

*But in some cases the new Defense Production bill is far broader than WPB ever was. Sample provision: Government loans (up to $2 billion) to producers of defense materials.

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