Word: opm
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...final tatters of respectability were ripped last week from the old highfalutin promise that U.S. aluminum production capacity was plenty big enough for all needs. The Office of Production Management, whose high-rankers were parties to the mistaken promise, announced through OPM's Ed Stettinius aluminum's prospects for June. They were not pretty: defense was going to take nearly 100% of the month's production...
Having admitted aluminum's poverty, OPM proceeded to pass the hat for it. In interventionist Richmond, Va. and in isolationist Madison, Wis. (and their counties), it put school children. Boy Scouts, American Legionnaires to work collecting aluminum scrap. This week the experiment ended and OPM waited for the returns to come...
Before its test collection, OPM put on a surcharged publicity campaign, announcing that both cities were going to be asked to make a "sample sacrifice'' for national defense. To a citizenry worked up to the point of donating its blood or staying up all night, the sacrifice of a few pots & pans was easy. In both cities, old aluminum poured...
From able Economist A. W. Zelomek of Fairchild Publications, now dollar-a-year man with OPM, the delegates got a good idea of how potentially explosive the price situation was. On a chart he showed that total U.S. production had risen sharply last year until about October. Then, as the U.S. neared the limit of present productive capacity, it reached a plateau which can slope upward only slowly in the future. But the amount of production going into armament had increased sharply since October, would increase even more in the future. Henceforth production heretofore taken by civilians would have...
...OPM's Knudsen was clearly on its side. Said he: "What would we do with 30,000,000 tons more? That's too much for me. I'm not smart enough to pass on that. Let's keep our feet on the ground." Moreover, OPM recommended against Engineer Henry J. Kaiser's loan application for 1,500,000 tons of new capacity on the West Coast (TIME, April...