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Show jpl General HUGH S. ljJOHNSON :f Jour: Uniud Falun WNU 5cnM Washington, D. C. MANPOWER PROBLEM . A group of 240 distinguished educators, edu-cators, clergymen, writers and business busi-ness leaders have just declared against any "peacetime" conscription. conscrip-tion. They say it is un-American, totalitarian, un-democratic and that it would disrupt business and industry. in-dustry. They say that highly skilled men needed for any new mechanized, motorized war can be had by voluntary volun-tary enlistment "under pay schedules sched-ules sufficiently attractive." This protest springs from incomplete understanding un-derstanding of the principle of selective selec-tive service. There are three steps in the selective selec-tive process registration, classification classifica-tion and induction. Only the last is in any sense conscription. Registration Regis-tration is universal enrollment of the manpower of the nation. Classification Clas-sification is an examination of them all to see what are the special education, educa-tion, skills and aptitudes of each man, and which can be classified for military or other service with the least possible inconvenience to himself, the greatest consideration for his own wishes, the slightest disturbance dis-turbance to our economic system industry, commerce, agriculture education ed-ucation and, above all, domestic relations and the dependency of omers. Class 1-A, at the beginning at least, should comprise all men who could serve with none or the very slightest impairment of any of these standards. When that class is determined, de-termined, the order of their going or "induction," is determined by a national lottery or "drawing" already al-ready conducted in Washington covering cov-ering all men ' registered. At this point, and especially during peace, or before the drain of war has created cre-ated any real manpower problem, a provision used during the latter part of the 1917-18 draft preserves all the virtues of the volunteer system, with none of its disruptive and sometimes hateful consequences. We called it "volunteering within call A-l." Class A-l, in our present situation situa-tion would contain many times the number we need. It would be made up of the most available men of this nation men who are best fitted for service and who, in the balance of responsibilities between national and private obligations have the least of the latter. Regardless of the ultimate ulti-mate compulsion of their "order-number," "order-number," those who want to go first should be permitted to volunteer. The inducement of topping high current civilian competitive rates of pay for voluntary enlistment, won't work. It carries a hint of the stigma stig-ma of the old mercenary armies which is worse than that of the old "press-gang" conscript armies and it would make defensive costs nrn- hibitive. Major Eliot's recent suggestion sug-gestion of a few extra dollars added to $21 monthly base pay, wouldn't induce the kind of men we need to quit their jobs. A principal deterrent to voluntary enlistment is that the term is long and rigid. It should be one year or for duration of the emergency. Few men want to mortgage away three years of their lives in this rapidly rap-idly changing world on any ground except patriotism. We seem to be galloping in all directions di-rections on this manpower problem. Under the federal bureau of education educa-tion and WPA we have begun training train-ing men as mechanics who have assumed no obligation to serve. Under Un-der the volunteer plan, we are enlisting en-listing men regardless of their mechanical me-chanical training. The whole effort is hit-or-miss and haywire. If the true principles of selective service could be expertly applied on the basis ba-sis of experience, we would have the most fair, flexible, efficient manpower man-power system in the world. RUBBER AND TIN Some of its esteemed contemporaries contempo-raries do not agree with this column's col-umn's rebuttal of the constant claims that we are dependent on the British and Dutch East Indies for rubber and tin and that it was only the concurrence of England that has enabled us to maintain the Monroe Doctrine. Nobody has contested the facts that we could make better rubber than we buy or, that by using conservation, substitution and Bolivian Boliv-ian tin, we could get by without East Indian tin. But it is said that it would be inconvenient, take a long time and cost too much. I challenge all of this. As to rubber, rub-ber, the fact is that if we, who use 55 per cent of all the world's rubber, turned to mass production on that vast tonnage, it would cost no more than the present price which is low. Quite apart from all this, long ago it was reported by the President's own national resources committee that for less than the price of two battleships, we could lay in'i enough East Indian tin and rubber to make us independent of foreign sources for the reasonably expected duration of any war. This administration didn't do it. It seems to have some strange reluctance to take Uncle Sam's whiskers out of that revolving wringer in the Far East. Instead of buying vital tin and rubber, it bought billions of dollars worth of useless silver and unnecessary gold. |