Word: barucher
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...armaments' sake, domestic economy was started toward complete rationalization. Baruch later said that if the war had lasted another year "our whole civil population would have gradually emerged in cheap but serviceable uniforms. Types of shoes were to be reduced to two or three. The manufacture of pleasure automobiles was to cease." As it was, the Board cut the number of steel plow models for sale in the U.S. from 312 to 76, tire sizes from 287 to 9, styles and colors of bathing caps to one per manufacturer, kinds of wooden coffins...
...would be commandeered by the Navy; other recalcitrants could not get railroad cars. Yet rarely were the teeth even bared. Working through war service committees in each industry, the Board made a fetish of putting its decisions in the forms of requests, let patriots carry them out voluntarily. Boasted Baruch: "Not one [industry] had to be coerced." Said Wilson: "The highest and best form of efficiency is the spontaneous cooperation of a free people." But a different tribute to the Board came from Hindenburg: ". . . A ruthless autocracy was at work. They understood...
Most of them were under 50; few were top-flight tycoons. Vice presidents and managers rather than board chairmen in private life, they were picked (mainly by Baruch) from industry's "coming...
After the war, Baruch offered his country three modest recommendations for preparedness: a skeleton defense staff of civilians, a skeleton munitions industry, a subsidy for the home production of imported strategic materials. None of them was followed. Fifteen years later, under onetime Board Member Hugh Johnson, NRA modeled its code authorities on the old war service committees. Such committees and trade associations are far more numerous and better versed in self-regulation than were their prototypes of 1916. But if the Board itself were to take up where it left off, its methods might not be so gentle. To Baruch...
...staff go to New York for a meal and gabfest with their wartime chief. These men, who did the job once, have long been ready to do it over again, if called. But none of them was called to the War Resources Board (chairman: Ed Stettinius) last fall. Baruch himself has been consulted by the President in the current crisis, but not with any idea of giving him the job. If history repeats itself months may pass before industry, combed for "coming men," is given authority to get results...