"Purp"

As WPB moved toward real totalitarianism last week (see col. 2), it had one solace for its frantic victims. There was going to be less red tape. After four months of trial, WPB had a grown-up plan for distributing scarce materials. Its official name -the Production Requirements Plan-had long ago been affectionately shortened to "Purp" by the 7,000-odd manufacturers already working under it.

Purp was a pre-Pearl Harbor invention of Don Nelson's, aimed at the mountain of paper work (see p. 80) that a war manufacturer has to go through to get separate priorities for dozens of separate materials and purposes. On huge, bright pink Purp blanks, a manufacturer can list all his material needs for all purposes for the coming quarter, get priorities clearance on the whole smear at once. If his needs change during the quarter, he can fill out similar yellow blanks for "interim assistance." Small firms (gross business under $100,000 a year) can use a simplified form.

For a harried manufacturer, Purp not only saved time and agony on priorities matters, but enabled him to plan his production three months ahead.

But, to get under Purp, a manufacturer must also make a detailed breakdown of his inventories, shipments and unfilled orders by class of product and by destination. Thus Purp's advantages to WPB-and to the war effort as a whole-were far more important than mere convenience. In so far as it was used, Purp 1) gave WPB an airtight control over the flow of raw materials; 2) prevented automatically any leaks of material to non-rated uses; 3) gave WPB an over-all moving picture of war production and of raw-material needs and uses that umpteen other surveys had failed to produce.

As Purp's merits became more & more obvious, WPB's Industry Operations Director Jim Knowlson decided that it was the logical middle road between the old priorities system (which broke down because too many worthless ratings were issued) and the idealistic full-allocations program (which never got very far because too little was known about materials supply). With all manufacturing under Purp, WPB would at last have a complete record of how much of what there is and where it is going. So, three weeks ago, Jim Knowlson announced that, by June 30, Purp would take over the whole field-including the strategic Prated industries (aircraft, tanks, etc.), which up to now have had blanket- ratings, for the most part with no limit upon the time or quantity they were good for. Thereafter nobody, no matter how strategic, will get any priorities help except for a specific amount of material for a specific purpose for a specific length of time.

So far Purp has enlisted only volunteers. But, come July 1, whatever war and essential civilian manufacturers have not accepted Purp as a WPB gift will get it as a WPB order.

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