Two Heads for One

Both the great democratic governments, after much huffing & puffing, have recognized a big sociological fact of World War II: that labor must be a full partner with industry in preparing for war and winning it.*

Last week, when 80-odd White House correspondents filed into the President's office, they knew what his chief subject would be: his reorganization order giving a head to the defense organization and delegating to it the powers that his National Defense Advisory Commission sadly lacked: power to act instead of to advise, to decide without running to the President for his ruling. What would he do with labor? Could he find a single man who would have the confidence both of Henry Ford and Roland Jay Thomas of the United Auto Workers? Would a labor man or a management man be tsar of defense? Only a couple of days before, Britain's Minister of Labor and National Service, Ernest Bevin, had been put in charge of all war production. It might happen here.

Seated at his desk, his cigaret holder jutting up at its usual 30DEG angle, the President gave his answer. Grinning a tired grin, he picked up his reorganization order, whisked through it swiftly.

As he had announced a month ago, the order set up a four-man board--the Office of Production Management--to direct the defense program. The board would consist of a Director General (Knudsen), Associate Director General (Hillman), the Secretaries of Navy and War. The board would have all the power the President could give to survey, formulate and execute for national-defense production. "The Director General in association with the Associate Director General" would do the administrative job, subject to the "yes" or "no" of the President.

Within the office of OPM would be at least three divisions--Production, headed by Glassman John David Biggers; Purchases, bossed by Sears, Roebuck's Donald Marr Nelson; Priorities, bossed by Steelman Edward Reilly Stettinius Jr. The President paused, blew out a cloud of cigaret smoke. The questions popped.

"Does this mean that Mr. Knudsen is the head of OPM--or Mr. Hillman?"

Franklin Roosevelt grinned. Both of them. Incredulous, someone asked the question again. The President tried for an analogy. Knudsen & Hillman should be considered like a firm--like that famous law firm of Roosevelt & O'Connor. You went to Roosevelt and O'Connor. And you'd go to Knudsen and Hillman. If a conflict over policy should arise, Knudsen & Hillman could always consult the President. But it was silly to worry about disputes between them. Even over a labor question--say, Ford Motor Co. contracts? Yes, silly. The head man of national defense in the U. S., the President said, was a fellow named Knudsenhillman.

Whether Knudsenhillman would get along with himself, no man knew. That Knudsen & Hillman should work well together was a vital national necessity. Whether they could was another matter. That it was the easy way to mollify both industry and labor was plain to see. The inference of the President's act was that, although the nation's defense cried out for a boss who would have the confidence of both capital and labor, there was not a single man who could fill the bill. Perhaps such a man would emerge later, forced up by the pressure of events. But at present he had to be two-headed.

* For what one of the democracies' churches thinks about future society, see p. 61.

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