Swan Song

The war job of the War Production Board had long since been finished. Its peace job of reconversion was virtually done. So last week President Truman announced that on Nov. 3 the giant war agency that once employed 22,000 would cease to be.

In an impressive swan song, WPBoss J. A. ("Cap") Krug reported on U.S. war production. Said Krug: in five years the U.S. had more than doubled its industrial production, had out-produced not only its foes but all its allies as well, had hurled $186 billion worth of weapons and supplies at the Axis. The report's most remarkable highlight: "Great as our war effort was, at no time during the struggle did it absorb more than two-fifths of our total national output." At first glance, the transition to peace looked just as good. In his second "Report on Progress of Reconversion," Krug announced that August civilian production was up to 51% of the average month base period of 1939, that in December it should reach 153%, by next June 238%.

But Krug, who knows more about U.S. production problems than any man, bluntly warned : "You can't draw any optimism from this report in the light of management-labor problems. It's a little silly to talk about reconversion with the strike problem [see NATIONAL AFFAIRS]. We have the paradox of working hard to get plants open for civilian production, then finding them closed down. . . . The answer . . . will have to come in two or three weeks to keep from upsetting reconversion entirely." To tie up the ends of reconversion (keep tabs on inventories and scarce materials, etc.), President Truman created a new agency, the Civilian Production Administration. Squarejawed, energetic John D. Small, 52, Krug's chief of staff in WPB, will boss it. Some of the WPB staff will stay on to help him.

But most WPBigwigs are going back to their prewar jobs: Field Operations Vice Chairman James A. Folger to his coffee company in San Francisco ; Operations Vice Chairman Harold Boeschenstein to the presidency of Owens-Corning Fiberglas Co. WPB has set up an employment agency to help place smaller fry, has found industry eager to snap them up. Cap Krug has been offered a job with Transcontinental & Western Air, Inc., was rumored to be dickering with Atlas Corp., but he has not yet decided what he will do. "I'm as obsolete as a machine gun," said Cap Krug.

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