Word: nelson
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Those who have had business abroad (Herbert Lehman's OFRR, Nelson Rockefeller's OCIAA, Elmer Davis' OWI) have slowly, painfully learned that all foreign business must funnel through the State Department. The hard-to-handle exception was Henry Wallace's Board of Economic Warfare. When BEW was scrapped by Executive Order, Secretary Hull promptly stepped up and claimed the scrap pile...
Then last week WPB Chairman Donald Nelson issued his own chart showing official U.S. war-production progress. Nowhere on it was the deep dip in output that the alarmists had reported in the past two months. Production was still rising, if only 2% in June. To most citizens, the chart looked like glowing proof that the U.S. had pulled off a production miracle. Even if output now seemed to be leveling off, ever-optimistic Donald Nelson had an explanation: "Additional increases are harder to get. . . . America is now in the stratosphere of production, and to reach higher altitudes requires supercharging...
...Donald Nelson's chart had two faults. The 2% overall rise concealed alarming declines in specific war industries; and the tough job of U.S. production is not to keep just ahead of previous output but to make substantial gains, stratosphere or no stratosphere, to meet the armed forces' increased demands as the decisive battles near. Optimist Nelson's chart would have served the anti-complacency drive better had it shown U.S. production inching up gradually against a background of swiftly rising military demands. At the halfway mark in 1943, 43% of the year's "currently scheduled...
...Nelson's figures did not look as good as his chart...
Lord Halifax, Britain's towering Ambassador to the U.S., fixed things so that when the smallish mayor of Nelson, B.C., delivered his welcoming oration at the depot they would be approximately face to face. The mayor stood on the train's rear platform, Halifax on the ground. "Ladies and gentlemen," began the mayor, as the train moved down the track...