WPB Gets Totalitarian

WPB has now reached the "or else" stage in converting industry to war work.

Within three months or less there will be no more new metal ash trays, no metal clothes trees or coat hangers or curtain rods, no metal doormats, hand mirrors, hat racks, picture frames or shoe trees, no more metal wastebaskets or clothes hampers or percolators, mixers, whippers and juicers. There will be no more metal, in short, for a WPB list of 76 classes of adjuncts to easy living.

All these bans Don Nelson had ordered by last week, as "the way of total all-out war and the price of early victory."He had also ordered no more new construction with a value of over $500 without express WPB approval (TIME, April 13). But the biggest no-more order of all came this week: the use of iron and! steel was prohibited for any and all nonessential commodities. WPB's definition of nonessential, in terms of a long list of specific products, was expected daily.

Don Nelson added a quiet understatement of the real significance--in terms of war production--of his totalitarian orders.* "They make possible," said he, "the complete conversion of the men, materials and machine tools formerly devoted to these pursuits to war production." In fact, they make conversion to war work not merely "possible" but mandatory for all manufacturers who need metal and want to stay in business.

*The steel order looks Nazi-patterned.

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