Word: wpb
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Dates: during 1942-1942
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Solution by Battle. Before Donald Nelson even knew he was in a fight, he had nearly lost it. He sent some of his top men over to the War Department as civilian advisers, to mesh WPB's production program with Army procurement. They did not stay civilians long. Instead of molding Army policy, Nelson's men were molded into well-tailored Army uniforms. General Somervell put the good men to work, boxed off the bad ones. In a matter of weeks, he was head man of production and Nelson had a row of empty desks...
Last month, while Nelson was realigning WPB to handle the new No. 1 problem of materials shortages, Brehon Somervell moved again. He drew up his own plan, making the Army boss of everything, leaving WPB a paper-shuffling agency. At last Donald Nelson realized that he was in a fight. He went to the White House; President Roosevelt vetoed the Somervell plan...
...General Somervell kept boring in. Immediately he suggested one of his own men-able Chairman Ferd Eberstadt of the Army & Navy Munitions Board-for one of the top new WPB jobs. Nelson turned down the suggestion, instead ordered the Munitions Board to move its civilian personnel into WPB quarters. There the fight rested this week...
...struggle to take away what power he had caught Nelson at a bad time. WPB's program was sadly out of gear. Some of the nation's bright, shiny, proud new factories would never turn a wheel, for lack of raw materials; some might even have to be torn down for scrap. This was not Nelson's fault: the Army & Navy had contributed to the shortages by prodigal waste in specifications...
...even Nelson's closest friends conceded that he had often been too easygoing, too loth to issue harsh commands when even a second's delay was fatal. The metal that poured into refrigerators and race-track grandstands six months ago, before WPB got around to calling a halt, was now irretrievably gone. And Nelson sat right where the blame, deserved and undeserved, would all fall...