Riding the Cow

For three years the Administration had juggled the nation's manpower, substituting makeshifts for direct action. Reflecting on the legal machinery available, Home Front Czar Jimmy Byrnes philosophized: "When you can't ride a horse, ride a mule; if you can't ride a mule, ride a cow." But at week's end the Administration sounded like a man who hoped to ride a horse.

Proposing a National Service Act again --but this time as though he really meant it--Franklin Roosevelt told Congress:

"It is not too late in the war. . . . Bitter experience has shown . . . the closer we come to the end of the war the more pressing becomes the need for sustained war production. . . . [National Service] would assure that we have the right numbers of workers in the right places at the right times."

"Pending action," the President asked for quick legislation to put all of the nation's 4,500,000 4-Fs to work in the war effort.

Needs and Shortages. The President had raised his voice in the midst of many confused voices. The background was just as confused, but in broad outline this was the situation:

War industries needed some 300,000 more workers. Army & Navy officials estimate that in 1945 the armed forces would need 1,500,000 men for replacements and expansion. They would draw a scant 700,000 from the fresh crop of 18-year-olds. Some of the others would have to come from the able-bodied men deferred for agriculture.

For Better or Worse. Selective Service broadened its hunt for soldiers. It sent a summary order to draft boards to draw tighter the nets around men in the 26-37 group who are not in essential jobs; it also ordered boards to re-examine (on the basis of new, lower Army physical standards) some 847,000 4-Fs who once, but no longer, held essential jobs.

Nothing was said about some 3,650,000 4-Fs who never had essential jobs and are performing none now. Selective Service would presumably get after them when it got a law to work with.

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