Word: baruch
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Elder Statesman Bernard Baruch, after much pondering and consultation in his office (see cut), five weeks ago submitted a report to Home Front Czar James F. Byrnes on the much muddled problem of U.S. manpower. Czar Jimmy hugged the report to his well-tailored weskit, declined to reveal its contents. Last week, chivied by suspicious Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg, Czar Jimmy reluctantly released the report. The reason for his reluctance became plain. Though many of the details had leaked out, the sharp, critical tone had not come through...
Said plain-talking Mr. Baruch: "Proper handling of manpower has been made impossible by the failure of Government agencies to work as a team with a clearly defined program. Measures undertaken by one agency have been undone by the conflicting actions, or inactions of other agencies...
Those who insisted that the report was as significant as the famed Baruch rubber report exaggerated. Baruch, assisted by Byrnes's consultant John Hancock, had not intended to make an overall manpower study. At Czar Jimmy's request, he had sat down with aircraft makers* on the bench in Washington's Lafayette Park, and there had worked out a plan to avert a disastrous slump in West Coast airplane production. His recommendations, to set up a labor budget and balance West Coast manpower with production by funneling workers into essential plants, have already been put into effect...
...Baruch insisted once again that these, and all other measures, must be coordinated into an overall, efficiently administered plan. Then he evoked the bogeyman: "The only alternative to some plan of this sort is a national service act for the drafting of labor...
...shortage is needlessly complicated by having labor and production balanced by two committees, one run by WPB, one by WMC. But Byrnes, following recommendations by Bernard Baruch (see p. 19), gave them a potent weapon lacking in Buffalo-authority to cancel less essential contracts, if necessary, to create a labor pool and thus funnel the workers into the top priority industry-aircraft...