Home Front

Donald Marr Nelson chose a new vice chairman for WPB last week and thereby underlined one of the biggest unsolved war problems now facing the nation. The new WPBureaucrat: short, sharp-eyed Arthur Dare Whiteside, president of credit-raters Dun & Bradstreet. His backbreaking job: to see that U.S. civilians are supplied with enough really essential goods and services so that war production does not suffer.

Keep the Home Fires Burning. Many historians agree that Germany was not defeated militarily in World War I until her home front began to collapse; and that the internal collapse came because the Army tried to convert everything to military use. Russia's present military strength is credited to the Soviet ability to preserve a minimum but healthy civilian economy behind the lines.

In the U.S. the plan during the early stages of the war was for a rough division of the economy, thus: 50% for the military, 50% for the civilian, in goods produced. The figure, long thought impossible of attainment, crept up & up; by last week production of war goods was 66%, just below two-thirds of the economy.

The U.S. problem was: What is bedrock? How deep can the civilian economy be cut without damaging war production? WPB has estimated that some $56 billion of goods and services (almost 50% under last year's consumer goods boom) is the least that the U.S. needs. But no estimate of a bedrock economy (even assuming that it could be accurate in the first place) is static: in a long war, as goods wear out, one year's bedrock can turn into the next year's breakdown, as need for replacements and repairs mounts.

Wolf-Wolfery. For two years the civilian supply issue has been a bedlam compounded of 1) cries of "Wolf!" from civilians and businessmen at every threatened cut; 2) cries of "Shame!" from other civilians and Government men bent on greater war production. The you-can't-do-that-to-me school kept the U.S. wasting precious materials much too long, delayed realistic decisions on how lean the U.S. economy could become. But the you-must-suffer school did equal damage by ignoring the obvious fact that a bedrock economy for the U.S. must be based upon the U.S. standard of living, the highest --and most mechanized -- in the world.

Unfortunately the shame-criers won the fight just when the wolf-criers finally be gan to be right. Most notable example of cutting below bedrock: farm equipment, where a WPB order cutting production to 20% of 1940 coincided with a draft and wage policy that drained workers off the farm and a farm-production policy that called for astronomical quantities of food. This manifest absurdity received only piecemeal attention until the U.S. food situation had assumed near-crisis proportions.

Washington Headache. The manner in which the Administration finally, gingerly approached the problem illuminates the real reason why civilian supply as a whole is now Washington's No. 1 headache.

Alone of all major Washington problems, civilian supply has had no czar. Since March 1942 the agency charged with civilian supply has been a division in WPB that did not even report to Donald Nelson, but to his vice chairman Charles Edward Wilson (whose job is production of war goods).

Small, intense Joseph Lee Weiner, head of civilian supply until last week, had no responsibility for the civilian-supply areas covered by all the czars. He was not represented on any major committee in or out of WPB. Unlike all the czars, he had no recourse beyond WPB on any home-front problem. Example: when washing-machine production was stopped just as women went to work in war plants, there was no home-front voice to insist upon more repair parts for washing machines or to argue that laundries are essential.

On an overall basis, the U.S. is still no where near bedrock. The civilian-supply problem will remain a problem of specific tight spots at specific regional pressure points as long as an inventory cushion remains -- and as long as U.S. distributors continue to stay in business in large numbers despite their troubles. But the pressure upon inventories and upon little businessmen is bound to increase. Next year, unless present danger signals are heeded, the breakdowns may be wholesale -- and destructive in a strictly military sense.

Home-Front Politics. By last month these long-neglected facts had aroused the U.S. Congress. Balding, shrewd Senator Francis T. Maloney (D., Conn.) began hearings before the Banking & Currency Committee on a bill to establish a Civilian Supply Administration responsible only to Assistant President James Francis Byrnes. That would place the civilian on an equal shouting basis with the Army, Navy, et al., when the U.S. supply pie is sliced.

The bill would also reduce Donald Nelson to a figurehead, since he has delegated war production to Charles Wilson. Result: last fortnight Don Nelson passionately opposed the Maloney bill before the Senate Committee; last week he appointed his new vice chairman in charge of the home front.

But to the press Nelson indicated that Arthur Whiteside's job would not be concerned with food, rubber, oil or transportation, which already have their own czars. Yet all these vital areas of the economy are intimately connected with civilian supply. Newsmen also remembered that, only a short time ago, Nelson had written to Jimmy Byrnes to suggest that Byrnes take the civilian-supply job off WPB's hands.

Senator Maloney still felt that the Balkanization of Washington war agencies had gone too far; that the home front would never get an adequate hearing within WPB. So did New York's New Dealing Senator Robert Wagner, chairman of the Banking & Currency Committee.

Maloney stood pat on his bill. Close-cropped, 60-year-old Arthur Whiteside, veteran of many an earlier Washington war (he was with World War I's War Industries Board, NRA and 0PM), prepared to move to the capital again. The U.S. civilian, for the moment, was getting almost too much attention.

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