Outline of the Future

This week the U.S. as a whole looked a flock of wartime sacrifice squarely in the face. Now the days are numbered until:

> 29,500,000 car owners--and their wives, their mothers and their progeny--no longer can use their cars for anything but the most necessary driving.

> Nearly 10,000,000 farmers and their families stay home or walk the long miles to town for the Saturday night jamboree.

> 12,500,000 townsmen who live in 2,300 communities without trolley cars or busses travel afoot on nearly all occasions.

> The $3,000,000,000 a year roadside-stand-tourist-camp business, whose thousands of establishments lived on the gypsy-like wanderings of Americans, becomes virtually extinct.

> The already punchdrunk filling-station business--which once had 240,000 outlets and 625,000 employes--gets kayoed.

> $60,000,000 worth of architectural masterpieces like New York's famed $60,000,000 Triborough Bridge lose their means of support.

> One of the great, main sources of the States' revenues--taxes on autos and gasoline--is on the way out, unpredictably changing State fiscal situations throughout the U.S.

Elder Statesman Bernard M. Baruch, Harvard President James B. Conant and M.I.T. President Karl T. Compton in 37 days had gone to the bottom of the rubber mess to get the ugly facts of wartime life.

Seldom had a report to Franklin Roosevelt minced so few words. Said the three wise men: "We find the existing situation to be so dangerous that unless corrective measures are taken immediately this country will face both military and civilian collapse. . . . The naked facts present a warning that dare not be ignored." If they are, the U.S. will have "no rubber in the fourth quarter of 1943 to equip a modern mechanized army."

The Committee found the Government's early handling of the rubber shortage a welter of "procrastinations, indecisions, confusions of authority and lack of understanding." Another horror the committee found was the fact that rubber officials had ignored the priceless advice of Russian technicians who had ten years' experience in making synthetic rubber. Said the committee: "Inexplicable!"

To conserve rubber the committee laid down hard and fast rules for all car owners in the U.S., strongly urged that the President put them in effect at once.

> Nationwide gasoline rationing to force a reduction in tire use.

> A national speed limit: 35 m.p.h.

> Restriction of average car mileage to 5,000 miles a year or less (normal: 8,200 miles). Since some war workers might run up 20,000 miles a year, nonessential drivers must be curtailed below this average.

For these drastic recommendations the Committee had reason aplenty: the U.S. will have only 631,000 tons of natural rubber to last until Jan. 1, 1944. Minimum military and essential needs total 842,000 tons. The deficit of 211,000 tons can be made up from only one source--the synthetic plants now abuilding.

To produce rubber the committee wants WPB's present synthetic program "pushed forward with all possible speed without further change."The committee also asked as a minimum margin of safety, that the entire program be increased 223,000 tons to 1,100,000 tons. Of this increase 40-50,000 tons can come in fast by using existing oil refinery equipment to make 100,000 tons of butadiene.

To control rubber the committee recommended that the President appoint a Rubber Administrator with full authority over research, development, construction, operation. For this nasty job he must be a man of "unusual capacity" with "thorough operating and manufacturing experience--preferably in rubber."

Next Job? The hard-hitting, hard-headed rubber report was needed and welcomed. It proved that Bernie Baruch, the grand old man of World War I, had plenty of zip and ideas for this war too. He and his two colleagues had proved worthy of another assignment. One possibility: making sense out of the steel situation--potentially dangerous and just as important as rubber.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.