Show GENERAL j HUGH S JOHNSON quo washington D 0 DEFENSE priorities there la Is about to issue in washington an executive order recreating something very close in form at least io fo the war industries board of 1918 while it will not disturb th the e recent quad u of sti amson for or the army knox lor for the navy knudsen for industry and hillman for or organized labor knudsen will be the be actual working member and the show will center around him like the 1918 organization there will be departments tor for priorities commandeering and price control some of the latter will not be the central organization neither were they all there in world war 1 I the price fixing commission was then a separate organization housed with the war industries board the chairman of which was a member the commandeering section was composed of officials of the various purchasing departments and while its orders had all to be signed by the chairman of the big board its organization was separate of these three key departments only the priorities commission was an integral part of the big board in practice it made no difference they all worked in perfect harmony this is the general pattern of the new proposal with mr Stettin lus fus probably at the head of the priorities division mr sidney hillman conducting labor relations and leon henderson presiding over prices if this happens priorities and price control will both be outside the production office of the fourman four tour man control and in the advisory commission if there Is a disagreement be between tween these two the army and navy see secretaries ret aries will have the deciding votes this is unfortunate these gentlemen want ever increasing production and are bound to be impatient with delay the most obvious delays will be labor strikes and disputes it if the army and navy side with industry mr knudsen the welkin will ring with complaints not only from labor but from every red radical element in washington none of which like this arrangement anyway and all of whom think bustness business men should not be in it so the armed services will come in for or a hall hail of epithets reactionary tory brass hat martinets dictatorial tat orial and even nazis or fascists this is too bad neither the army nor the navy should be put in a position of having to decide such disputes some wholly imp impartial artial agency should do that and this organization does not provide such a tribunal the split in the ranks of organized labor makes mr hill mans position doubly difficult A NEW ORDER early to in this new year there Is a lot of talk about bringing a new order this new order seems to be some kind of regimented society socialism in england mr winston churchill tells his people there will be 1 something new that more people win will have more privileges far be it from this column to depreciate the prime minister we might not agree with churchill but we must admit that whether it Is his american blood or the british blood of one of the greatest of soldiers the duke of marlborough mr churchill is a lorce force in the world this Is not intended to be a critique ol of war strategy it is a criticism of economic strategy do we have to remake our world on some sort of regimented pattern of h human u man effort the idea on which america was built was half thomas jefferson an and d half adam smith their greatest works came out in the same year 1776 we dont hear so much about mr smith we hear a lot about mr jefferson both said the same thing in different ways they said that it if we release the energies of millions of people to invent ven t their own fortune and future in their own way the human race will progress much taster faster than if we try to tell people from some central fort of knowledge and goodness how to be prosperous free and happy it is doubtless true that in our more crowded communities more regulation is necessary but there is still no man sufficiently smart to be smart enough for all men there has been no man since jesus good enough tor for all men what we need Is to con continue our trust in the mass of us after all what went before democracy was effort regimented by some king or tyrant there Is nothing new in these new ideas the question is simply whether regimented effort Is better than free effort what we have done in this country by free effort speaks for our system the american formula of democracy of leaving every man not only free but dependent on nothing but his own efforts is what our fathers thought would produce a maximum result tor for all people shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations means nothing more whether men are dependent on what their fathers have saved or whether they are dependent on a beneficent government which means on the rest of us the Is the same they simply are not no any good |