43.6% for Rubber

When Bernard Baruch and his committee--Presidents Conant of Harvard, Compton of M.I.T.--estimated last summer that the country must have 1,037,000 long tons of synthetic rubber a year to get by,* that sounded to the public like the final word. But last week the U.S. learned that it was going to have to get by with a lot less -- and like it. From Economic Stabilizer Jimmy Byrnes came an order to blunt Bill Jeffers: as Rubber Director he could have top priorities on only enough key equipment to procure 425,000 tons of synthetic this year. That was 43.6% of the Baruch goal.

The Baruch report, the Administration now believed, had set its sights too high. The vital materials for a program of 1,037,000 tons could come only from still more desperately urgent war needs--building of naval escort vessels, manufacture of high-octane aviation gasoline. Bill Jeffers had tried to bull his way through Army and Navy objections, regardless. But now he had a new set of instructions.

Loafers and Expediters. The tough Rubber Director had seen the writing on the wall. Word in the capital was that he did not feel unhappy over the outcome, now that it was official. But his penchant for bluntness in public had rubbed a lot of official fur the wrong way, perhaps has jeopardized his public position, despite his executive talent. In Baltimore during the week, talking extemporaneously before the Council of State Governments, Bill Jeffers let go with this:

"In our failure to get what I would call even adequate [rubber] production we have too many so-called expediters . . . Army and Navy men, commissioned officers. ... If we can keep the Army and the Navy and these loafers out of these plants ... we will get the production . . . we will keep the country on rubber. . . ."

These hard-hitting words sent Washington into a dither. Apprehensive OWI Director Elmer Davis reminded Bill Jeffers that his "speech" had not been cleared by OWI. The Rubber Director snorted that he had not made a "speech," then added, "I will speak my mind."

A joint House military-naval subcommittee promptly undertook an inquiry into "loafers" and "expediters." First Witness Bill Jeffers explained: a loafer, in railroad vernacular, is "a person assigned to an unnecessary job." In that category he put "socalled inspectors and expediters" who were trying to "take over production and tell managers how to do their jobs." Answer came from another witness, Under Secretary of War Robert Patterson: Army and Navy representatives were "indispensable" breakers of bottlenecks in war plants; "Mr. Jeffers himself has a corps of expediters in his rubber program."

* While the U.S. sweated to get along with synthetic production, mouth-watering news came from Singapore: the price of Far Eastern rubber (22 1/2-c- a Ib. before Pearl Harbor, when it was America's chief source of supply) is less than 1-c- a Ib. Reason: now that the Japs control practically all the natural rubber there is, they cannot find a buyer capable of taking it away.

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