Hurry! Hurry!

There was no longer any hiding the fact; victory in Europe was at hand and it was long past time to get cracking on the work of reconversion. WPB, which had hardly unwrapped its plan for reconversion of U.S. industry (TIME, April 16), followed it up with fast action. Last week WPB announced that:

P: It had okayed production of $50,000,000 worth of new tools needed by the automobile industry to get started again in commercial auto production.

P: Its recently organized "Committee on Period One" was working out the ways & means of rapid reconversion.*

P: Its Requirements Committee, assuming that V-E day will occur "on or before June 30," had asked all claimant agencies (Army, Navy, etc.) to submit within ten days a list of raw materials they will need to finish off Japan.

Not to be outdone, the Army announced that it had abandoned a $200 million ammunition plant program. It also drastically cut production of tanks. Plans for the construction of twelve tank plants, four of them in the Detroit area, were summarily junked.

Amid this enthusiastic bustle last week was a sober note. Said WPB Chief of Operations Hiland G. Batcheller: the switch to a one-front war should involve little loss in employment or income. But after V-J day business will be on its own, and this is when the real test will come.

*The CPO, headed by WPB executive officer John D. Small, is the coordinator for eleven sub committees. All are charged with the job of guiding industry back to civilian goods manufac ture, while maintaining a war output sufficient to insure the defeat of Japan.

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