Word: opm
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Fortnight ago, OPM's Priorities Division acknowledged the strain on aluminum and machine tools, put their customers on rations (TIME, March 10). Last week three more industries went under full priorities. Two-nickel and magnesium-were competitors of aluminum (nickel is an ingredient of stainless steel). The third was neoprene, the high-cost Du Pont synthetic which too many defense manufacturers prefer to rubber (for gaskets, hose...
...fitted for uniforms. First was zinc, of which the U. S. supply had dwindled to two days' worth. As a first step, last week trading was banned in zinc futures on the Commodity Exchange and producers were asked to earmark 5% of their April output for allotment by OPM...
Second was scrap, for which OPM set a price ceiling at $20 a ton. Third was lumber, which Price Commissioner Leon Henderson had already forced down below $25 a thousand board foot (TIME, Feb. 3). Last week, to avoid future dislocation, the Government talked of acquiring its own stock pile...
...Mandatory priorities" was OPM's phrase for this control. Manufacturer Reeves, many another in his spot understood precisely what the phrase meant. For him, it meant that his aluminum supplier (Alcoa) now had to send its order books to Washington once a month. Somebody in OPM would carefully scan those books, allot to each would-be buyer one of a series of preference ratings. If Mr. Reeves by some miracle were rated AA, his aluminum would be shipped posthaste. But top ratings were reserved for such MUST customers as aircraft manufacturers. Other ratings ran all the way down...
...OPM's only control up to last week had been through voluntary priorities (i.e., suppliers were asked but not ordered to follow Government preferences). To all defense materials except aluminum and machine tools, this halfway control (or none at all) still applied last week. But official pressure on the producers and fabricators of tungsten, zinc, stainless steel, nickel, copper, steadily increased, their control became less and less voluntary. Mandatory priorities were surely in the offing for a big segment of U. S. industry. OPM continued cheery about the situation, just as Mr. Stettinius had been two months before...