Get-Together at the Top

Last week, to help deal with the serious oil-transport situation (see below), the leaders of the oil industry began to form a committee at the request of OPM. Theirs was the second industry to form such a group since defense began. (The first: steel.) But it will not be the last. As defense problems get tougher, intercorporate councils--modeled after the War Service Committees of World War I--may be expected to pop all over the industrial scene.

Main obstacle to this popping was Trustbuster Thurman Arnold, who is as wary of businessmen getting their heads together as OPM is anxious to encourage it. Many a manufacturer trying to follow OPM's lead has imagined Arnold's hot breath on his neck. But last month Attorney General Jackson announced that OPM-approved industry committees would not be prosecuted under antitrust. By last week he had completed a further arrangement, which makes the Antitrust Division virtually an enforcement body for defense.

Henceforth OPACS, whenever it suspects illegal collusion on production, prices or patents, can use the Antitrust Division's bulging files. As soon as OPACS certifies a case, the Antitrust Division will investigate and prosecute at once. Thus businessmen working with each other and OPM to increase production can forget about the antitrust laws. But wherever collusion is hampering defense, the Justice Department will help OPM break production bottlenecks, help OPACS crack down on prices.

This arrangement, worked out by Jackson and Henderson, was a rebuke to rambunctious Thurman Arnold. For some time Jackson has thought Arnold was getting too nervous a trigger finger, scattering his shot, using the laws to advance his own theories about the danger of monopoly rather than as a weapon to aid defense.

The industry committees, as they form, will be welcomed by more than one defense official. Reason: they replace the ready-made trade associations, officered by economists and figureheads, which have acted as a curtain between defense officials and the real industrial producers. With committees on which the Fairlesses, Graces and Girdlers are represented by themselves instead of by front men, Washington can deal more realistically.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.