First 60 Days

The man who is boss of history's biggest production line finished his first 60 days on the job this week. In his office in the Social Security Building, Donald Marr Nelson, Boss of the War Production Board, lifted his bland face from his desk, glanced at the hordes of advisers, callers, clerks streaming in & out, remarked: "This is a hell of a congregation I'm pastor of."

Some things in Mr. Nelson's pastorate were still in a mess indeed. Robert R. Guthrie, chief of the textile, clothing & equipage division, resigned in a huff, let out a puff that hit front pages.

Big, brusque, square-jawed Bob Guthrie had already earned more headlines than many a thrice-elected Senator. He had cut civilian wool use 50%, banned rubber in corsets, girdles, etc., told U.S. housewives to stop knitting, ordered tailors to design a men's "victory suit," told U.S. citizens to stop buying blackout materials, irked the radio industry by urging a complete stoppage of production (at the very time the industry was sweating over conversion).

As bumptious Mr. Guthrie bounced out, he bounced a rock off U.S. industry's head. He accused woolen and cotton manufacturers, carpet makers, nylon and rayon makers, leathermen of failing to cooperate in war work. Next day he denied that he was sore at the manufacturers, said that he had resigned "because of the conditions that exist within the WPB." There was too much inside opposition, said he, to a "really all-out effort."

Like his chief, Franklin Roosevelt, Pastor Nelson had a vast disinclination to fire anyone. There were still other sour voices in the choir-loft, bickerings among the elders. There were few new faces in WPB; most of them had come right over from SPAB and OPM. Tons of paper still needed seven signatures on each item. Jobs overlapped. In rubber, for instance: tall, bald Arthur Newhall handled the problem of rubber imports (there are virtually none). Production of synthetic rubber was technically under the command of WPB's raw materials Boss William L. ("Bill") Batt, was actually in charge of Hydra-handed Federal Loan Administrator Jesse Jones, who doles out the dough. Used rubber was under Sears, Roebuck's J. Lessing Rosenwald. Rubber rationing was under Price Chief Leon Henderson.

In his first 60 days, Boss Nelson had shown indications that he could get tough:

> When Nelson took over, OPM's power section had been trying for six months to get power lines into a plant abuilding at Lake Catherine, Ark., which will turn out 65,000 tons of aluminum a year. Nelson told his man Cliff Hill to get it done. That afternoon the order went out to the Rural Electrification Administration, while private power men and Congressmen squawked.

> Tangled up in red tape was a vast steel-expansion program for the West Coast. U.S. Steel and Bethlehem had won the contracts, but they seemed to be in no hurry. Don Nelson remembered a West Coast shipbuilder, Henry Kaiser, who had popped up nine months earlier with a project for building an open-hearth furnace on the Coast, had been gently waved aside. Nelson telephoned Jesse Jones, demanded a loan for Henry Kaiser. He got it in five days.

> A tight bottleneck in Army contracts was the custom among Army procurement men of giving orders to the lowest bidder. Nelson told procurement officers hereafter to negotiate all contracts, place orders where they will get quickest action.

Faint lines of strain appear nowadays in Nelson's normally chubby face. He lives alone in a small, furnished apartment. The big boss of U.S. industry goes to bed late, gets up around 7 a.m., breakfasts on a stool at the Broadmoor luncheonette, drives himself to work. In a day he sees from 20 to 30 callers, spends most of his time on the telephone. Once a week he lunches at the Raleigh Hotel with Leon Henderson and Milo Perkins, who runs the Economic Warfare Board. On those days, most of the power that drives the U.S. war effort is gathered at one table in the Raleigh's dining room. Other days, Don Nelson lunches at his desk.

"I'd give anything in the world," said Nelson wistfully not long ago, "if just one night I could finish a leisurely dinner, walk out on the street, drift in the crowds, footloose, drop in a movie when it caught my eye."

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