Revision under Fire

With the breath of war blowing hot on the nape of its neck, the Office of Production Management last week revised its organization. It had to. In the six months of its existence, OPM had become hopelessly complicated, endlessly tied up in red tape that grew around its acts like ragweed in a melon patch. Manufacturers seeking to get started on vital contracts had to fight their way through labyrinths of bureaucracy. For any broad-scale ruling they had to go to the purchasing division, then to production, then to priorities. The rulings had to be reconciled. In the process thousands of hours of vital time were lost in conferences, argument and devitalizing hiatuses while heels and ardor cooled.

Weeks ago, knowing U.S. citizens tumbled to the realization that the job done by OPM in directing the course of national defense was not all it was cracked up to be. Last week OPM admitted the awful fact by announcing its own reorganization. Administration men privately told reporters that even this reorganized OPM was still on trial. If it does not do better with production now scheduled within 60 days, if its residual red tape continues to slow the production of planes, tanks, ships and guns, the whole setup will be scrapped. Something else will be tried, perhaps the one-man control of defense that patriots like Wendell Willkie have been crying for. In the prospect that all this may have to be done after the U.S. has gone to war, not even an isolationist could find anything to cheer about.

New Plan. To short-cut red tape, let manufacturers settle their problems in one office instead of three, OPM changed itself from a horizontal to a vertical organization. Under the new plan, effective within ten to 14 days, some 30 Commodity Sections will be established. Each will handle the problems of one commodity. Thus a manufacturer, setting out to make uniforms, will go to the clothing section. There he will find (if the plan works) most of the rulings he needs on the three Ps that lie between the drawing board and quantity output: purchasing, priorities and production.

At the base of each section, advisory committees will be set up, composed of as good men as the Government can get from industries already preoccupied with war-building. These industry advisory sections, headed by Coordinator Sidney James Weinberg, gossipy partner-on-leave from Goldman, Sachs & Co., will try to smooth the manufacturers' way.

Topping this organization will still be the Divisions of Purchases (Donald Marr Nelson), Production (John David Biggers) and Priorities (Ed Stettinius). Each division head will continue to have the final say in his field, will work closely with each of the Commodity Sections. All three will get added work. Biggers will also head the Commodity Sections responsible for steel, aluminum, magnesium, paper, pulp and chemicals. Nelson will boss the sections where purchasing problems are most important, such as textiles, food, drugs and clothing. Silver-topped Ed Stettinius will also take on rubber, copper, zinc, similar materials, but will continue to exercise his statutory control over priority matters. All actions for priority, in whatever section they originate, must be approved by him.

That revision of OPM would speed its processes was at least a hopeful prospect.

That the revision would have little or no effect on preventing basic mistakes by OPMites that have plagued and harried the course of national defense was also obvious. If the new arrangement works, it will speed such projects as the eight new aluminum plants (annual capacity 600,000,000 Ib.--see p. 28) on which OPM got going last week. But it will have no effect on defense planners who set their sights too low.

To furnish aluminum for planes, OPM fell for the representations of Aluminum Co. of America that 800,000,000 Ib. a year was enough. Now it knows that twice that much is none too much. Aircraft manufacture waits while aluminum production is stepped up.

Last week the men of OPM, who had believed the aluminum industry, were still on the job and the U.S. public could hope they had profited from what may still turn out to be a disastrous experience. But other underestimators were on the way out.

Gano Dunn, who turned in a rosy-hued report on steel production (TIME, March 10), resigned three weeks ago his job as special consultant to the Materials Branch, after issuing a second report that made the records straighter.

Last week Power Consultant Charles Wetmore Kellogg gave up his job. Reason given: that his job as president of Edison Electric Institute made him ineligible, as an employe of a trade association, for a job on OPM. But it was only a month ago that Lightman Kellogg trumpeted for all to hear that U.S. electrical generating capacity had a 20% margin of safety for defense and civilian needs. OPM soundly spanked him in a public statement of power shortages known to be imminent, gave citizens to hope that it did not intend to get trapped again by all's-well-with-the-world pronouncements.

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