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Show by JameS Preston Behind - the - hand whispers in Washington tell of new plans for a reorganization of the defense setup set-up in an effort to speed the rearmament re-armament drive. The present machinery, as nearly near-ly everyone admits, is hodge-podge, hit and miss, and particularly unwieldy un-wieldy because everything has to funnel through a bottleneck the White House. For example, OPM cannot decide de-cide whether to build new steel plants until the President makes up his mind whether they are need- ed; Leon Henderson and his price regulators cannot determine whether whe-ther legislaton is needed tS strengthen their powers until the president reaches a decision; and so on and on. The president naturally spends a large part of his time worrying over details of that kind. The truth is that William Knudsen is as right now as he was" a year ago when he said the only defense bottleneck is "time." Valuable time is lost while things drip through the White House funnel. With few exceptions and businessmen busi-nessmen at OPM are among those who agree there is little argument argu-ment against a change. But the important thing to some is that apparently those who are in charge of key phases of the program are not being consulted about the new plan. OPM businessmen have speeded production tremendously since the first new defense machinery was created a year ago. But today they know nothing about the proposed reorganization. As one strongly proposed businessman at OPM put it: "Somebody in an office or a bedroom bed-room (Harry Hopkins' office is a White House bedroom) blocks away from here is thinking up a new scheme. As usual, those involved in-volved will not hear about it until it is signed on the dotted line and sealed." OPMers might not be too surprised sur-prised at that if they had been in Washington longer. For after all, when the present defense machine was created, it was set up with almost al-most complete disregard for an industrial in-dustrial mobilization plan drafted by the war department after 20 years. Typical of the ways things are going and, in fact, an indication of a complete lack of understanding of what is happening, was a recent press release issued by the Office of Emergency Management (not the Knudsen OPM), which is the holding company for all defense agencies. This release summarzed what has happened in the last year, and included these sentences: "On March 19, the president set up the National Defense Mediation Board, and its prompt settlement of the 75-day-old Allis-Chalmers tie-up and a number of smaller strikes stemmed the tide. Public fears began to subside as industry and labor put their shoulders to the wheel. National defense again forged ahead." The very day that release was issued, this was the strike picture: Eleven thousand workers in the Pacific coast airplane industry voted to go on strike; Pacific coast shipyards were closed down by a strike; Production at the government's own $35,000,000 munitions plant in Ravenna, Ohio, was halted by a strike; AFL leaders warned that new shipyard strikes threatened in the Great Lakes area; And the threat of another disabling dis-abling strike hung over the coal industry. That was not an exceptional day. The government's own figures show that the number of disputes has increased since March, and the number of strikes actually adjust-i adjust-i ed has dropped in the last 20 days. In February, before the Mediation Media-tion board "stemmed the tide" of strikes, the U. S. Conciliation service ser-vice assigned its men to 327 strikes. In March, the total was 378, in April 439, and in the first four weeks of May. it had risen to 474. At the same time, the number of disputes adjusted by the Conciliation Con-ciliation service dropped from 102 in April to 98 in May. That's some "tide-stemming!" |