Odium's Circus

The biggest program of Government ballyhoo since Liberty Bond days rolled out of Washington this week on wheels. Three six-car trains painted red, white and blue and ten truck caravans left for a 40-day series of one and two-night stands to carry the message of subcontracting to thousands of little businessmen throughout the U.S. It was Floyd Odium's circus.

The circus had a clinical air. Aboard were parts and samples of defense equipment; the little men could see and feel the guns, gears and gas masks their Government needs. Blueprints, specifications and experts littered every car--from OPM, Army Air Corps, Engineers, Ordnance, Chemical Warfare, Medical Corps, Signal and Quartermaster Corps, Navy, and Maritime Commission. By tour's end, Odium hopes 30,000 small manufacturers will have flocked around the samples and said, "I can make that."

Thus did the new head of OPM's Contract Distribution Division, after nine weeks in his job, set out to lick the most serious economic problem now facing the U.S.: the democratization of defense. His attack had characteristic energy and bravura. He worked from 9 a.m. to midnight, ate 20-minute lunches, burned out three assistants.* From the Budget Bureau he asked a whopping appropriation: $23,470,725 for the next twelve months. Of this, $5,000,000 was for his gigantic promotion plans, including the traveling circus, $1,000,000 worth of permanent exhibits and $422,500 worth of movies and slide films. The remainder was for a staff: some 700 employes in Washington, some 3,800 in the field.

An accomplished witness, Odium told the Senate Defense Investigating Committee his difficulties and his plans. After much bickering he had obtained from the Census Bureau as many detailed figures as the law permits them to reveal, had broken them down:

> The U.S. had 184,000 manufacturing concerns.

> Of these, the armed services listed 25,000 ready for participation in fulfilling M-Day plans, actually has used but 10,000 to date.

> 133,000 concerns employ fewer than 20 persons and 30-45,000 of these, which will be affected by shortages, cannot, thinks Odium, be efficiently converted for defense use. To keep them in business, reduce the blood offerings demanded by defense, Odium suggested for them 1) cash relief or 2) allocation of 2% of estimated 1942 scarce raw material supplies.

> To the remaining 26,000 or more concerns, convertible to defense, Floyd Odium intends to devote his sole attention. He wants an emergency pool of scarce materials to tide them over the six to eight months it will take to convert them to de fense. Meanwhile, he must increase the amount of subcontracting on new defense orders. Of the $41,000,000,000 of defense commitments to date, only 25% has been subcontracted--and many of these are not really subcontractors but vendors. Will trains and ballyhoo increase subcontracting? In Washington even Odium's friends, who thought trains and ballyhoo a good idea, could not see how. The biggest obstacle to subcontracting is not the ignorance or remoteness of the U.S.'s small manufacturers. It is the fact that Army & Navy procurement men do not relish subcontracting and are fighting. Odium has tried persuasion, but not of a sort brass hats understand. Unless and until he has a showdown with the men who sign the checks, Floyd Odium's circus trains will be just another circle tour.

Odium got a real lesson in how not to promote subcontracting last week from Army Ordnance, Bill Knudsen and Chrysler's President K. T. Keller.

Ordnance, faced with a doubled tank production program, had asked Keller to double his Detroit tank arsenal's capacity. Keller agreed. When the contract (for $18,875,000) crossed Odium's desk, he balked, notified Knudsen that at least 25% should be farmed out to small plants already in existence, instead of building new facilities from scratch.

To good friend Knudsen, Keller simply explained that plans were already drawn and anyhow Ordnance wanted it. Knudsen approved the contract. So, dubiously, did Odium ("Well, Knudsen's my boss, isn't he?"). Then he left for Kansas City to spread the gospel of subcontracting.

*This week he, too, was ill in the Mayo Clinic with inflamed ankles.

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