To Arouse the People

As a cub reporter on the Omaha World-Herald in the early 1900s, Henry Doorly held his job mainly because he was the publisher's prospective son-in-law. But he went to town as an advertising salesman, quickly became advertising manager, then business manager. Last week Salesman Doorly, publisher of the World-Herald since 1934, helped Donald Nelson sell other U.S. publishers on a worthy idea: arousing the people to gather steel scrap.

Smiling, hustling Henry Doorly had himself demonstrated how. In the World-Herald he put on a whirlwind drive to make all Nebraska scrap-conscious. In full-page advertisements, the newspaper trumpeted the campaign, treated it liberally in its news columns. There were prizes for those bringing in the most scrap; every movie theater in the State had at least one scrap matinee. On public golf courses and tennis courts, scrap paid greens and court fees; there were scrap trap shoots and scrap horseshoe meets. Airplanes made surveys of scrap piles, dropped leaflets to farmers. Worshippers brought scrap to churches, children became "scrap commandos." For three weeks the World-Herald, which has a monopoly in Omaha and blankets the State (circulation 185,632), talked of almost nothing but scrap, had Nebraskans talking the same way. Result: 67,000 tons of scrap (103 lb. per capita), half the State's quota for six months.

Last week in Donald Nelson's office, the 140 publishers who heard Henry Doorly describe his drive were warned by the steel industry's Salvage Committee that "only a miracle" can prevent the curtailment of steel production within several months for lack of scrap. Bluff Lieut. General Brehon B. Somervell, chief of the Services of Supply, said: "You are not going to get scrap by one blast in your papers. You will have to keep after it day & night, for unless everybody puts everything he has into this war, we are not going to win."

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