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Show General HUGH S. Johnson Jour: Washliiglun, D. C. WAR BASIS FOR INDUSTRY? Some of my columnar war crying colleagues say that American Industry Indus-try ought to be put on a war basis right now. Their argument Is that one reason why France fell was that, under a peace structure, she could not mobilize her industry for war production, had to declare war to pep up the nation and did it all leisurely and far too late. They say also that "business as usual" kept England from getting ready soon enough and, finally, they point to the snail-like slowness of our pres- ent rearmament program. With all that abutil France, England Eng-land and our slow progress, I agree. Perhaps I could agree also with the i conclusion about putting our industry indus-try on a "war basis," if I knew what 1 the words mean or if they did. Of that I am in doubt. If it means that American industry indus-try should now be put under industrial indus-trial amateurs. I know of no more certain way to slow or even paralyze para-lyze war production. If it means that we should get some dynamic and experienced leadership of the industrial war effort and give it appropriate ap-propriate authority, no comment was ever more significant or more correct. That kind of leadership and administration ad-ministration would not, however, as some of this comment suggests, be obliged just to set all peace-time production aside in a kind of adjournment ad-journment to make way for our war needs. There is plenty of industrial capacity in this country for both needs. Our industry needs an orchestra leader with a real baton who can keep it in harmony and rhythm for the new tune but it doesn't need to be chained to the benches of any slave galley with a sort of roman-Ized roman-Ized Simon Legree to increase the stroke with a cat-o'-nine-tails. Our trivial World war experience may be informing. Our speedup of shipbuilding, both of merchant and warcraft, approached the miraculous. miracu-lous. Charlie Schwab had charge of part of it In a plant where all parts of a fabricated ship were being assembled as-sembled and the engine department was far ahead of the co-ordinated schedule for it and other departments, depart-ments, he took time out for a short for- thf workers in the yards. There were no speeches but, when I the time for them came, Charlie pulled a surprise the complete engine, en-gine, mounted on truck wheels, gay with flags and preceded by a band came rolling out under a large transparency which read, "All dressed up and no place to go." That plant speeded up production immediately. imme-diately. ' . Of course, we can't do this job with ballyhoo, but baUyhoo is part of it We need every incentive and pressure of "go-get-it," unified, experienced ex-perienced and inspired leadership to get speed without confusion and waste We have one of this kind of leadership, only political leadership which insists on retaining personalized personal-ized control of everything. REARMAMENT Is the rearmament program proceeding pro-ceeding rapidly? Sidney Hillman of the national defense advisory commission "advises that no manufacturer manu-facturer who violates the labor laws can be 'awarded' a contract for work on the defense program and that the National Labor Relations board will decide, for this purpose, whether or not an employer is violating.' vio-lating.' " There are now only two members of N1.RB, Leiserson and Smith. The term of Chairman Madden has expired. ex-pired. Due to protests based on charges of his bias and unfairness the President has not reappointed him The vacancy has existed for weeks. Some observers guess that the president wants to wait until after the election and then reappoint Madden. Smith and 1 on very few disputed points Smith s an extreme eftrvger- Madden. Mad-den. Leiserson is middle-of-the-road. What they can't agree on is nut on ice untd appointment of a toid member with the deeding vote. .. Over in the selective service draft system, although the new orgamza-Uta orgamza-Uta under way, no administrator h been appointed. Some myste-rious myste-rious utner Ppressuresprobably the s ni e war minded Stimson-pre-vented a solution of this problem wh-ch was Perfection-the exper, Tnced and judicious veteran of the World war draft, Gullion, for ad-mhiistrator-the young, expert and vigorous Hershey as its chief execute execu-te Either alone would have been satisfactory. The team couldn t have been bettered. As in NLRB, no responsible head has been appointed. Hershey has l?en ''detailed" to go through in an ''g:'nCamaeCoTmere mediocrity. why. The big job in the draft The beginning-setting up the selec-! selec-! service system and selling t 0Vme peope. That requires exper, 10 uie v ,,even genius. Aft-"haTit Aft-"haTit is aSroeuLegmechanica. 6 Th s beginning also requires J .orestige or position in the ad-S ad-S ,trator It certainly requires Unquestioned authority and full re-; re-; cponsibi'.ity |