Word: opm
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Dates: during 1941-1941
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Last week, to help deal with the serious oil-transport situation (see below), the leaders of the oil industry began to form a committee at the request of OPM. Theirs was the second industry to form such a group since defense began. (The first: steel.) But it will not be the last. As defense problems get tougher, intercorporate councils-modeled after the War Service Committees of World War I-may be expected to pop all over the industrial scene...
Main obstacle to this popping was Trustbuster Thurman Arnold, who is as wary of businessmen getting their heads together as OPM is anxious to encourage it. Many a manufacturer trying to follow OPM's lead has imagined Arnold's hot breath on his neck. But last month Attorney General Jackson announced that OPM-approved industry committees would not be prosecuted under antitrust. By last week he had completed a further arrangement, which makes the Antitrust Division virtually an enforcement body for defense...
Henceforth OPACS, whenever it suspects illegal collusion on production, prices or patents, can use the Antitrust Division's bulging files. As soon as OPACS certifies a case, the Antitrust Division will investigate and prosecute at once. Thus businessmen working with each other and OPM to increase production can forget about the antitrust laws. But wherever collusion is hampering defense, the Justice Department will help OPM break production bottlenecks, help OPACS crack down on prices...
...building shops had shut down; a third suspended operations at a fabricating plant; two others were running through their last steel inventory. Iron Age reported fortnight ago that most freight-car builders were running at less than 50% of capacity owing to lack of certain necessary special steels. OPM has subordinated railroad orders for steel plates to those of shipbuilders, some of whom can't get enough either...
...could be relied on to turn out the work. Over 85% of the large contracts were let to 80 companies. Three companies (Du Pont, Bethlehem Steel, General Motors) willingly or unwillingly took 23% of the contracts, while most of the 184,244 U.S. manufacturing companies got none. Last February OPM set up the Defense Contract Service division to spread the defense load by encouraging the big firms to subcontract. For its head, OPM picked hard-hitting Robert Lee Mehornay, a onetime Army captain...