First Year of Fiscal War

The U.S. Government ended its first full fiscal year of defense this week. During that year it had let contracts to U.S. manufacturers totaling more than $17,500,000,000. Actual disbursements, which measure deliveries of defense materials, were rising:

1940

July $175,000,000 August 233,000,000 September 267,000,000 October 328,000,000 November 403,000,000 December 495,000,000

1941

January 738,000,000 February 725,000,000 March 867,000,000 April 919,000,000 May 932,000,000 June (estimated) 950,000,000

These figures (from OPM statisticians) include all U.S. defense payments, including merchant marine and RFC loans. Considering the slow rate of increase in recent months, they are not very encouraging.

To businessmen, a year of rope-learning in the defense business had not proved encouraging either. Each of the two defense agencies with which they chiefly deal signalized the end of the fiscal year with an overdue crisis. OPM reorganized itself (see p. 30). OPACS met the first challenge to its price-fixing powers, prepared to battle for them in Congress (see p. 58).

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