Word: knowlson
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...Purp's merits became more & more obvious, WPB's Industry Operations Director Jim Knowlson decided that it was the logical middle road between the old priorities system (which broke down because too many worthless ratings were issued) and the idealistic full-allocations program (which never got very far because too little was known about materials supply). With all manufacturing under Purp, WPB would at last have a complete record of how much of what there is and where it is going. So, three weeks ago, Jim Knowlson announced that, by June 30, Purp would take over the whole...
Industry Operations-a new division-will handle conversion of U.S. factories to war production, industry-labor committees, priorities. Its chief: handsome, brusque James S. Knowlson, president of Stewart-Warner Corp. (radios), one of the first big manufacturers to go after defense orders in 1940. An old friend of Donald Nelson in Chicago, Knowlson has been helping handle priorities since last September. All members of the all-out war-effort school swear...
Handsome, hard-hitting, outspoken James S. Knowlson, president of R.M.A., president of Stewart-Warner Corp., is one of the more foresighted radio makers. No sit-down capitalist, Knowlson was one of the first big manufacturers to go after defense business. A year ago he was telling skeptical Chicago cronies that business-as-usual was on the skids. At the convention last week, he was in fighting trim. First he warned his fellow manufacturers: "Whether it is one month or six months ... we are all going to find ourselves in the place where we are unable to get the last component...
Handsome, brusque James S. Knowlson, chairman and president of Stewart-Warner Corp. is a sensitive man. For weeks he listened to politicians and labor leaders yelp that big business was holding back defense by refusing to cooperate with the Government, asking huge profits. Last week he got sore, lashed out a snappy (17-paragraph, onepage) letter of explanation to his employes. Said he: "There has been a lot of bunk about industry. . . . If your friends ask you what your company has done so far, you can tell them this: Your company has bid (on a competitive basis) on ten millions...
...with competitive bidding has no moral. The company had simply underestimated its production costs on a new product (ammunition parts). Many aircraft, steel and shipbuilding contracts are now let on a basis which prevents losses unless a company is stuck with undepreciated plants at the end of the war. Knowlson himself "wasn't trying to give the impression that we expected to continue to lose." But there will be others like Stewart-Warner, who will pay to learn their jobs...