Grab Bag

To the growing family of critically short defense materials, Senator Lyndon Johnson's investigating committee last week added an outsize, howling new infant: wool. The committee found "no wool in stockpile" and "no wool in inventory," because of "abysmal lack of foresight. If general mobilization were undertaken now," said the committee, "we would again be as bad off--or perhaps even worse--than we were during both World Wars." The Munitions Board, which is responsible for stockpiling critical materials, "has clearly and miserably failed." The board had even neglected to take title to 460 million pounds of surplus wool held by the Department of Agriculture, had let it be sold to private buyers. Replied the board: Congress itself had failed to give it enough cash to build up a wool reserve, and the authority to take over the surplus.

If the committee didn't like the look of U.S. stockpiling, Britons liked it even less. Britain's complaint was not that the stockpile was too small, but that the U.S. had set out on a "reckless" stockpiling of everything that was scarce. "American buyers right up to the Pentagon," said one British government consultant, "have been rattling around Europe buying metals from every scrap heap."

With key metals and other raw materials in short supply, some Britons warned that their industry would be crippled within six months. Actually, cutbacks in raw materials were no greater in Britain than those ordered for the U.S. But austere Britain had virtually no fat it could trim off its civilian economy. Shortages cut directly into defense production, sent prices skyrocketing.

The American take of the world's raw materials (about 50% of the total) might have to be cut. Last week at their Washington meetings Truman and Attlee laid the groundwork for an end to catch-as-catch-can buying (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS). Best guess was that a group similar to the Combined Raw Materials Board of World War II would be set up to make sure that the raw materials of the West went where they were most needed.

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