New Brooms

0PM last week got a new Supply Priorities & Allocations Board, but, more important to the muddled state of priorities, a clean-sweeping new order, aptly called Priorities Regulation No. 1, was issued.

Regulation No. 1, announced by Ed Stettinius the day his powers were taken over by SPAB, should have been the first rule of priorities long ago. It provides the framework for a real, working system of control by: 1) requiring manufacturers to accept defense orders no matter how busy and prosperous they are with civilian work, 2) prohibiting accumulation of inventories beyond normal levels.

For enforcement, it requires manufacturers to keep full record of all materials under priorities, of all orders and deliveries of these materials. SPAB can demand these records at any time, can use them as a basis of granting or withholding priority status, can use them also (if they are untrue) as a basis for criminal prosecution.

Trouble with OPM's priorities administration was that it never expected real shortages. 0PM handed out so many priority ratings that they lost all meaning. Manufacturers, under no compulsion to accept orders accompanied by priority ratings, were loathe to turn down such tried-&-true customers as the automobile industry for new defense customers.

This encouraged inventory hoarding, which 0PM did little to stop. Only last month did OPM undertake its own surveys of defense metal inventories. These surveys, which will be speeded up by SPAB, will establish for the first time whether materials are really short or only hidden. Two big hoarding suspects: Army and Navy, to which OPM always granted priority ratings as a matter of course. SPAB will apply the yardstick of immediate needs to Army and Navy orders the same as any other.

To civilian producers, SPAB and Regulation No. 1 make priorities more a matter of life-&-death than ever. But from the new system they may expect a break that Ed Stettinius' aimless methods never provided. Donald Nelson, who will run priorities for SPAB, believes that it is as important morale-wise to keep civilian supplies and factories going (at least in part) as it is to get guns built. At week's end SPAB played with the idea of determining minimum requirements of consumer industries first, allotting the remainder to Army, Navy and Lend-Lease--just the opposite of the present system. At the very least, SPAB expects to get the facts about available supplies. It will then be able to tell every U.S. industry in advance how much material it can buy in any one month.

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